Summary: >

America in the 1930s was a period marked by violence. Some people thrive in this environment, and are often associated with the mob. Stranger than these people are those who don't fear death not because they are untouchable, but because they cannot die.

Thoughts: >

Baccano is a series that attempts many interesting ideas, but only manages to do a mediocre job with them. It's not bad, but it falls short of where it should have. This series runs into trouble with both it's characters, and the way it tells its story.

Baccano consists of three different stories (and one oddball episode) taking place at different times, but instead of developing them separately, Baccano cuts them together and flips back and forth between them. Under normal circumstances this wouldn't be a problem, but there is a sizable cast of characters spread throughout the show and most of them don't show up in the other two stories. This leaves each story disjointed and even worse, makes it very hard to identify which character is in which story, who is of any importance, or what they were doing. The biggest strength of this this editing method is completely missed by Baccano, that is: at some key point the story has an interesting intersection. Instead these are really just three separate stories. Pulling them apart would also reveal that two of the three don't really have any significance nor does anything get accomplished. Only the train heist gets to the point where I found the story compelling. What might be associated as filler in many titles, is inserted in various places but cleverly camouflaged. Padding the title out this way I don't think is a big deal, but it's unfortunate that the reward for following those threads is paltry at best. The approach taken by Baccano is unnecessary and doesn't mesh well with it's large cast of characters.

How many characters are there in Baccano? The short answer is too many. Strewn across three stories with nearly 20 people to follow, it's surprising this ever makes sense. I only liked two of the characters: Eve, who is a little girl part of a mob family looking for her brother. She's a sheltered rich girl with an temperament uncommon to anime, but very appropriate for the setting of the 1930s. The other is Chane Lafort, who is in the background as "the woman in the black dress" for most of the title, but shifts to a prominent role mid way through. The story surrounding her becomes something like a strange noir piece that didn't turn out too bad.

On the other side there is a very long list of characters I actually hated, mainly because their personalities were senseless, annoying or generally both. I really wanted to like Isaac and Miria, especially when they go to the trouble to dress up like baseball players before beating up mobsters with baseball bats, but in the end I found their intended comedy to be dumb and irritating. (Comedy teams work best as a contrast, not when both are silly.) Speaking of annoying, there is a guy with a tattoo on his face named Jacuzzi (seriously) who whines and cries all the time that made me want to gouge my eyes out. Even Worse then him, are the people who enjoy killing. There's the hit man who likes to talk about killing as much as doing it. He often mentions to his girlfriend about how he would like to kill her, and I'm like: "Uh, is that a joke?". That's only the tip of the iceberg for these sorts because they like to go into long winded speeches about killing as well. These seminars are basically attempts to make the dialog drivel sound more intelligent than it is. One guy is convinced he's the only person that really exists - which was odd but fit him well enough for him to be excused. In the end the problem was the story is cut up, and there were too many characters: Baccano should have done one or the other, not both.

Baccano likes to revel in violence, but the shock value wears off quickly and from then on becomes a gimmick. Not being able to tell mortals from immortals, I just assumed everyone was immortal. This blunts the fear of brutality going on here and cheapens the violence to something reserved for extras that play no role or for those who can't die anyway. I also realized the immortality thing wasn't even necessary, aside from being an excuse for more violence. Nearly all motivations could have been accomplished by something else. If you do like violence for the sake of violence, then this is most certainly a plus for this anime.

Baccano does deliver in one department, and that's style. The 1930s environment is uncommon in anime, and done well here. The swing music soundtrack also succeeds to this effect. If you're the sort that would watch a mob movie, but just fast forward to the gun battles, this really would be the perfect title for you.

The last notable thing is that the dub makes a worthy effort with trying to fit within the period. The accents are quirky and maybe not spot on, but done well enough. I enjoyed hearing how some of the voice actors I'm familiar with adapted to the dialog. The script also makes some fun attempts at reproducing the lingo of the day which I think worked pretty well. Unlike most titles these days, Baccano has a cast not entirely consisting of 14 year olds, so the more mature cast was a refreshing change.

Substance wise, I think Baccano is weak, but based on merits of environment and style I think it scores pretty well. Personally I find Baccano to be a title that thinks it's way more clever than it is, but it's a reasonable watch for the other uncommon things it brings to the table.