What we have here is an expression of love for art. It’s a treat in every sense of the phrase, being sweet to the taste beyond expectation and a dietary rarity worth your appreciation and indulgence. As time goes on, television ad rates plummet, and production committees get stingier and stingier with their limited funding and man power, impossibly ambitious original anime become more and more financially harrowing to fund and logistically nightmarish to create. Yet somehow, here we have it, the beauty to behold: Great Pretender.
How much of what I’m about to tell you which you find completely obvious is entirely dependent on how ... blind, deaf, and senseless you happen to be, because if you ask even such a staunch critic as myself, this is the hardest masterwork to overlook and the single most broadly appealing triumph of entertainment I can name. From the drop dead gorgeous artwork and animation to the surprisingly thoughtful, endlessly amusing storyline, and from the delightful cast of lifelike characters overflowing with charisma to the fantastic music which itself is just as charming and built with just as much personality as any one of the characters, every facet of the show is delivered with expert craftsmanship awarding its audaciously dedicated production values. Given just how expressive, experimental, and downright weird the roots of anime are, most of the standouts which you can find therein are just as esoteric, and Great Pretender stands to be an exception the likes of little before. Inspired by Western crime dramedies which it swiftly outclassed in a single debut episode of exceptionally clever episodic structuring and excellent visual direction, Great Pretender follows amateur swindler, Makoto Edamura, as he gets swept away by the real deal, a gang of con men with whom he exploits others and entertains himself all whilst reaping the seeds of trickery they’ve all sown together…which is what I meant by “broadly appealing.” Yes, I conveniently left out the show’s thought provoking themes, all its discussions and ideals on social injustice justifying an individual’s turn to crime, but my basic summary of the plot is no lie, and it is such a cliche setup as to be almost embarrassing, so the fact I can even get close to calling it the masterpiece which I nearly have already speaks to the brilliance of all involved in its peerless creation. Great Pretender is solid proof a simple concept can write its way to a classic. It’s exploding with life, love, and lavishness in every way it can, and anyone unable to appreciate the monumental effort and unrivaled talent necessary to deliver on such a beauty or empathize with the unflinchingly human psychological core behind all its scheming and hilarity is simply beyond my comprehension, or somehow just contrarian enough to deny it all.
If I had to oversimplify it, what makes Great Pretender so good in a single phrase is the tact with which each episode is handled and the way in which they are uniquely cared for by whichever member of the directorial staff headed its careful creation. Despite being an arc structured show which does not hesitate to grab you with low-stakes, hardly annoying cliffhangers, the true method to the narrative’s madness is every single episode feeling like an open and shut case nailing the finish and leaving you as gratified as you are dying for more, whether you be left hanging on the cathartic conclusion to a resonant character development, the satisfying resolution to an episodic or overarching plot point, or simply on the butt of an actual joke, landing yet another delightful punch line driving home the show’s damn funny comedic identity just a little more. Unlike most anime and, quite frankly, most entertainment in general, Great Pretender is self-aware regarding all its metatextual eccentricities and in-universe contrivances, so no matter how hysterically outrageous nor matter how artistically bold the story goes about presenting itself, it will always be tongue in cheek enough to come across as jest as opposed to being an irksome logical conundrum, and while not every episode is as perfectly balanced as the last, the show as a whole certainly is. Most anime which aren’t made for TV find themselves with the privilege to be as uncensored as they’d like, and by extension, they often end up leaning too hard on their freedom to finally incorporate vulgarity and nudity to their heart’s content, but Great Pretender stands as a complete and total exception. Accompanying its boisterous comedy and sensational personality is an incessant sense of realism offered by—yes, those brands of obscenity—but also by its deftly paced character time and nuanced characterization sewn throughout the hijinks. Comparable only to the best of Shinichiro Watanabe’s works from Cowboy Bebop to Space☆Dandy, Great Pretender has mastered the art of endearing and repulsing the audience with its duplicitous adult cast, the push and pull which invests viewers in the among the most human yet still the most entertaining on-screen individuals one can find in the most natural way one can find them.
What makes building a character such a delicate science is you want to make them worthy of the screen by having their actions be somewhat absurd enough to be entertaining, but you also want to keep their passions down-to-earth enough to be emotionally engaging as relatable human beings, and this is where Shinichiro Watanabe truly excels. No one just throws on episode one of Samurai Champloo immediately invested in characters as ostensibly ridiculous as Mugen, Jin, or even the comparatively normal Fū, but given how well-written and smartly characterized these misfits are over the course of the show—the show which itself makes a point to show them at their lowest, most vulnerable points in life and at their happiest, most unapologetically free spirited—even the most jaded among viewers will finish the journey completely immersed in their stories, assuming, of course, they weren’t cynical enough to drop the show before then. Great Pretender is not only a master of the exact same craft, but one which has just as handily mastered the accompanying craft of outstanding voice acting. Complementing the prepossessingly sharp character designs of industry legend, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, every character is deftly brought to life by a cast of talented actors and actresses who’s voices embody their respective characters to a tee. As Makoto and his compatriots march along the vibrant parade which the animation staff has made their lives, skeletons start falling out of closets just as you’d expect them to from the secret histories of real people, and the characters subtly progress in intimacy as they overcome problems of life and love alike. Be it Laurent, the mastermind fueling every fire under everyone’s asses; Abby, the blunt, stoic braun serving as the honest counterbalance to Laurent’s conniving brains; or Cynthia, the absolutely badass, electric heroine who you’ll be wanting as a best friend for life or desiring as a wife by the end of the show depending on your sexual preferences; every single one of the colorful personalities on screen has just as much to learn and love behind their beautiful faces as does the cover of the show itself. And speaking of having a colorful personality, Great Pretender is one hell of a feast for the eyes!
Great Pretender, visually, is straight fucking unbelievable. While you may get this impression immediately, credit to Takeda Yūsuke’s ever legendary background art, all facets of this anime prove themselves to be crafted to the perfection of a Production IG classic back from the days of the Kamiyama Team who shared the same art director. Be it the explosive yet expertly balanced coloration and its astoundingly consistent shading, the flawless character artwork and the intricately detailed linework required by those razor sharp designs, or the flowingly lavish animation elegantly weaving it all together, every frame of Great Pretender is laudable to some degree even at its very lowest points and worthy of a standing ovation at its mountainous heights. Everything is overflowing with personality and branded with an unforgettable artistic identity such that I can promise with complete confidence you’ve never seen anything quite like it at such a high production value, and I promise just as easily you’ll never see anything like it again outside the purview of Production IG. This is the first project handled by WIT Studio with the exception of their debut series with Mitsuhisa Ishikawa’s full involvement, and his intimacy with this endeavor is no secret given the amount of IG names inscribed on this gem. With Takeda Yūsuke having already been mentioned, Kyouji Asano, the now legendary graduate of Team Oshii and Animation Director for Psycho-Pass and the first two seasons of Attack on Titan, has made his return along with too many animators to count, and Ishikawa also seems to’ve organized the recruitment of the best of the best not already under the illustrious IG umbrella. From the criminally obscure genius color designer behind works such as Space☆Dandy and Redline, Yūko Kobari, to the industry veteran sound director who’s so prolific and who’s been around for so long that he worked with Chiaki Konaka in bringing to life the brilliant soundscapes of Serial Experiments Lain and The Big O, Shouji Hata, Great Pretender is stacked with more talent than you could ever imagine, and somehow, every little bit of it shows. Great Pretender is the first time WIT Studio has fully lived up to both the technical perfection and unflinching consistency of their founders at Production IG, and it never ceased to take my breath away.
The introductory paragraph of this review is worded in such a way to mirror the first anime review I ever read, which I’d directly quote if not for having unfortunately forgotten the address of whatever blog I saw it on. I only remember the impression its wordage left on me. Sentimental, I know. It was a review for an anime equally ambitious and equally outstanding as Great Pretender which shocked as many critics as fans it elated. It was a work also made at the dawn of a new decade, relatively speaking, and much like this decade, it was a time in which anime as a whole was on a downturn. Studio Madhouse had just thrown out Masao Maruyama in the face of their ambition fueled bankruptcy, and now, a decade later, their only remaining holdout of talent is Director Natsume, who’s work is the only excuse optimists have left to not call the studio dead. Gainax had been exposed for their toxic business environment which drove away Hideaki Anno only to then lose its remaining creative leads, who now, nine years later, are thriving in their own limelight at studio Trigger whilst proudly carrying the creative torch of the Gainax of old before it all went sour. More positively speaking, Kyoto Animation was redefining the word “polished” and winning award after award for their work on genres most powerhouse studios would scoff at, yet now, nine years later, a fifth of their staff was horrifically massacred in an inhuman arson which has gone down in history as the second most deadly mass killing on Japanese soil since the end of the Second World War. So much has changed since that review was posted, so much, except the studio which pioneered the anime it was reviewing. That’s right, the studio was Production IG, and the anime was Psycho-Pass. The reviewer offered his thanks to the pantheon of artistic prowess and creative genius which had, in such an incredible fashion and with such an epic production, restored their hope in an industry they saw as stagnating, and now it’s my turn to do the same. The son has grown into the shoes of the father, as WIT Studio has finally, unequivocally matched their founders at Production IG, and with their achievement, my own hope in the anime industry has been restored just as those of the cynics before me.
Thank you for reading.
Information Type: TV Episodes: 23 Status: Finished Airing Aired: Jul 9, 2020 to Dec 17, 2020 Premiered: Summer 2020 Broadcast: Thursdays at 00:55 (JST) Licensors: None found, add some Studios: Wit Studio Source: Original Duration: 23 min. per ep. Rating: R - 17+ (violence & profanity) Statistics Score: 8.211 (scored by 320,428 users) 1 indicates a . Ranked: #3572 2 based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded. Popularity: #310 Members: 662,011 Favorites: 9,950 Available AtResources |
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