Baccano: Series Review

I chose Baccano as my first post-bar-exam anime conquest. It more or less paid off in entertainment value and was generally very fun, but the show lacks that special touch, that emotional punch, and would likely have zero re-watch value.

STORY
The storyline in Baccano unfolds in a decidedly non-linear fashion and skips across time and across different points of view. Because Baccano encompasses a cast of over 15 characters, the plot is an ambitious one that tries to tie everyone together in one massive cross-century story. Scenes skip in time, place, and POV, and while I didn't find it confusing, I could see why some might lose patience with the show's slight schizophrenia. The same events will often be portrayed in at least two different ways, creating the appearance of depth and texture.

The problem with breadth, of course, is that in most cases it compromises depth. It was interesting to see the pieces fall into place and the characters' roles get filled out in the plot, but once the plot is all pieced together, it's actually pretty simple. I'm not sure that if the story were told in a linear fashion, it would have been at all compelling (which, to the show's credit, means the writers were smart to jumble it all up as part of the fun). That is to say, Baccano is a show I've watched this once and will probably never watch again.

ANIMATION
Baccano is quite pretty and stylish, with its 1930s backdrop and dark, muted colors. Nothing too bright, although sometimes the faded 'faraway' 1930s look was overdone a bit. I was afraid that I would get everyone confused with the large ensemble cast, but the character designs were unique enough to keep everyone straight. No one character stood out stylistically, though, which in retrospect might have been a good thing. As for the action, while I enjoyed the tommy guns and bloodspatter and knife work, they were nothing special or unique. I also found that some of the scenes on the train (e.g., involving the Rail Tracer) were almost too dark for me to see what was going on.

SOUND
The opening sequence to Baccano is extremely catchy, fun, and also helpful in that it reviews the names and faces of the huge cast of characters. This is the only show that I have watched other than Darker Than Black where I don't skip over the title sequence to start the episode immediately. The music was just too much fun to fast forward through! I wasn't similarly impressed with the ending sequence, but I thought the music throughout the series--all very '30s and jazzy, of course--was well done, though not as cool as Cowboy Bebop or Darker Than Black.

CHARACTERS
Whew, there were a LOT of characters on Baccano. The show, I thought, was an exercise in character definition, not character development. None of the characters were really developed over the course of the series; they stayed pretty much static, with the possible exception of Ennis.

That said, the show did a pretty good job of defining its huge cast of characters, which was necessary to keep them all straight. Well-defined characters don't necessarily translate into good characters, though, and for the most part, I found the characters to be hit or miss.

For example, Isaac and Miria, the two incompetent, stupid, eccentric thieves were kind of funny the first few times they appeared, but then they just got irritating; it didn't seem as if they were contributing anything valuable to the storyline either. Similarly, Eve Genoard and Lua Klein were both meek, subservient, boring characters with no personalities, and Vino/Clare Steinfield and Ladd Russo and the mechanic dude in the OAVs were all pretty much the same character: crazy homicidal maniac. By contrast, I found young Czeslaw quite fascinating and wanted to know more about him and his motives. I wanted very much to like Firo, but I don't think he was developed enough for the audience to really connect with him at all.

...which about sums up my reaction to these characters. They were flashed on the screen, quickly defined so you could tell who they were, but then sort of just plugged in where they were needed. I didn't really have emotional investment in anyone in the huge cast.

OVERALL
I enjoyed Baccano, but it didn't really hit close to home or resonate with me on an emotional level, which isn't to say it isn't good entertainment. Its fun soundtrack and great opening sequence kept me clicking "Play Next Episode" despite the fact that I didn't feel a need to know more about the characters or the plot. All in all, pretty good, but not that great.