Baccano! - Reviews

With tons of anime out there already, finding new and creative ways to be enjoyable might be considered a hard task. Thankfully Baccano! successfully pulls this out of it's hat and gives us an action packed, awesome and hilarious series.

Story: Baccano! successful keeps us captivating with it's interesting plot-lines. Multiple stories going on at the same time, and each story being as awesome as it can be. It really does make you ask yourself "What's next on Baccano?". Although, there are two things that the story could improve on. One deals with a plot-hole that contains spoilers, so I can't explain that, and that part of the story has a good ending anyways, so, it doesn't matter. The second part is that there are 1-2 episodes that focus more on the characters and seem to slow the plot down. But other than that, it's pretty damn good. Oh, and if it confuses you the first time around, it'll make more sense once you see it again.

Characters: Almost all the characters are pretty cool. To go into why each character that is awesome would take all day. But I will say, all the likable characters are likable in their own unique fashion. These characters are well made. As for the ones that aren't as likable, well, I can go into that. 1st Czeslaw, while he's not a bad character, he does have plenty of room for improvement. 2nd, Szilard. Holy crap is he bad. He's just an asshole for no perfectly explained reason. He's interesting, but still crap. But despite those two, the rest of the cast makes up for it tenfold, so, no need to worry.

Art: The artwork is simply amazing. Everything fits and it's not odd, or out of place, it's just right. You can tell the artists took there time to make sure that it flows well. It's just awesome, like the rest of the series of course.

Sound: The OST is really cool. It fits the time it takes place in perfectly, and still does a good job at carrying what we're supposed to feel at the time. This is an anime that I would watch dubbed. Because it's solid. Like really solid.

Overall: Baccano! is a really awesome, and it's worth viewing at least once, if not more. I'm sure someone who watches this over and over again can still have fun as a person seeing it for the first time. Despite it's problems, it'll be a really cool ride aboard the Flying Pussyfoot. 9.5/10

This anime starts off all over the place :P All I can say is keep watching and you will fall in love with the beauty of viewing an event friend many character perspectives.

This is a very sophisticated way of presenting an anime. Using the event of a train hijacking, Baccano explores gang warfare and adds a hint of supernatural with the eternal life elixir given by a demon. The fight scenes are full on! The mix of sword, gun and hand to hand combat gives a variety of fighting styles to adore.

The animation is product of the time in which it was created. Probably due to budget and the fact that the creator was only beginning in the anime/manga world, at this stage would, accounts for some of the poor cut scenes. Despite this the emotions conveyed on the faces of the characters was splendid.

Due to the magnitude of characters I will just discuss me favourites:

>Ladd Russo - a man with the desire to fight and always has a smile on his face when he does so

>Firo - Young in appearance but has great influence within the Martillo gang as his true age in around 90

>Jacuzzi - Timid up until his friends are threatened which turns him into a dependable strong man

>Isaac & Miria - Seem to be out of place 90% of the time yet are well accomplished thieves and are like a bonnie and clyde duo

Overall this anime is a must watch and will make you laugh, cry and make yourself drawn to different character traits!

SECRET SANTA 2014 REVIEW

Found it to be very interesting and funny show. Some great characters to get be hide to either like them or hate them. Thought the music was also good. The only problem I found with this anime was when it jump back and fourth along the story. Granted that was the way it was meant to be and it did flow but it isn't something I like unfortunately.

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.

Baccano

Story:

Baccano is about the stories of different characters but somehow their stories intersect at a certain point of the story. You will see that everyone of them is connected wheter it is through coincidence or not. One of the thing that makes Baccano interesting is how creative the story is narrated. It is not narrated in chronological order like a typicall story. There are different timelines in the story, the story that happened in different years. On every episode, the story would start on what happened on a certain year and shows you what happened on the other years and so on and so forth. Sounds complicated? somehow, although that what makes it unique. At the first few episodes you will really be confused why these things are happening but as you watch further you will gradually understand why these things are happening. You will discover new things while watching every episode and every episode will leave you with questions, "Why is he like that?" "How did he became like that?" "Who is really is he?". The series ended answering all of the unanswered questions in the story. 

Animation:

The animation is pretty decent and I have no issues with it. How the characters are drawn really suits their personality. And the fights are well executed.

Characters:

Another unique feature of this anime is that it has lots of characters and each of these characters really play a major role of the story and you can't really tell who the main character is. It has an interesting set of characters: a typical hero type boy, a crybaby who becomes cool, a comedic pair of thieves, a homonculus who is finding the meaning of life, a maniac who loves to kill, the legendary rail tracer and many more characters.

I can say that this anime is really a well-played, creative and unique one. You will definitely enjoy this if like animes that give you a lot of questions while watching but answering them gradually. Hope this helps