A mafia turf war is raging on the mean streets of the Big Apple, a place where regular joes bounce between backdoor booze joints and the breadline. But this caper ain't about a simple gangland brawl. It's about hoods who can't seem to die proper after catching a bullet or five between the eyes. Sadistic hitmen and the dames they love, mad bombers going boom, monsters going bump, and soul sucking alchemists bootlegging an elixir of life.
If you watch the first episode of Baccano! and are thoroughly confused by it, don't worry, that's supposed to happen. The story is presented in a very disjointed way, constantly jumping back and forth between the years that it takes place in. The whole thing is very confusing until you get far enough into the series and things start getting explained, which inevitably leads to the story jumping around in time more to show previous events from a different angle. Baccano! really isn't something you can just stick in your DVD player and let play in the background while you do something else. You'd never be able to understand what was going on as you really need to give it your undivided attention.
This isn't helped by the fact that there is quite a large cast of characters for such a short show, most of whom play a major role in the story at one point or another. So many character and organization names get tossed around so frequently that it's easy to get overwhelmed by them. With a cast as large as this it would be impossible to talk about each one and still keep this review a reasonable length. Instead I'll just focus on the few that really stand out.
If I had to pick one character who really steals the show, my choice would easily be Ladd Russo, a central character in the part of the story that takes place aboard a train named The Flying Pussyfoot. He's a completely sadistic, murdering bastard, who stands out simply because he has no ulterior motive. He doesn't kill for money, or to reach some goal of world domination, he happily slaughters people because he just enjoys it. Ladd is perhaps a bit disturbing, but he's at least an interesting character to watch. From dancing in someone's blood to skipping gleefully because he hears gunfire, he simply revels in the suffering of other people. He's not a deep character in any away, he's just thoroughly fascinating in his simplicity.
The runners up for stealing the show would have to be Isaac and Miria, a hopeless pair of thieves. These two are the comic relief characters of the show, giving us a break from all the blood and violence. Truth be told they're probably a little out of place in a show like Baccano! with it's rather serious nature and content. But there's something endearing about the two that makes them such great characters that it doesn't matter if they don't belong. They're both extremely weird, yet entirely loveable characters that I wish they had gotten more screen time, which isn't to say that they don't have a lot already as they're at least somewhat involved in each major story going on.
I've mentioned that the series is bloody and violent, but I really need to put more emphasis on that. This isn't the sort of violence you can just shrug off like in something along the lines of Naruto or Bleach. You have the normal things like characters getting shot or stabbed, but then there are things like characters having half their heads cut off, or throats being slit accompanied by the appropriate ridiculous blood spray. The violence in the series culminates with one character whose preferred method of killing is hanging people over the train and dragging their arms or faces along the tracks. Needless to say it can be quite grisly if you aren't prepared for it.
Baccano!'s art does an excellent job capturing the mood of the setting. Scenes set in Great Depression era New York have a very drab colour scheme to them, making liberal use of grey. You rarely get a chance to see how fluid the animation is, but during the few fight scenes set on top of the Flying Pussyfoot the series finally has a chance to show what its capable of. The fluidity of the animation for these particular scenes is more than you would expect for a series that doesn't place emphasis on fighting, and it's more than what you see in some series that actually do. The character designs are all fairly normal, but still great, sometimes going into incredible detail in close up shots. It's an excellent production overall.
Funimation's dub of Baccano! does things quite differently than the original. They made the smart choice of giving the characters accents, though they made them sound more like something from a movie set in the 1930's as opposed to more realistic ones. That isn't a bad thing, although some may feel that the cartoonish sounding accents don't necessarily fit with the content of the series. As far as individual performances go, once again Ladd Russo steals the show. Brian Massey gives a phenomenal performance in the role, perfectly capturing the absolutely sadistic personality of the character, which is helped by some minor script changes that really accentuate how insane the character is.
Chuck Huber also shines in his role as the Devil, mostly because the Devil is more of an ethereal voice than a person. This gives the actor a chance to focus on just acting without having to worry about matching lip flaps, and how much that helps really shows in his performance. Something this dub has going for it is that it doesn't rely too heavily on the normal stable of Funimation voice actors, or at least when given room to really stretch their legs in a role it doesn't sound like it uses too many of them. It's a phenomenal dub overall that really helps heightens the experience of the show.
Extras on the DVDs include the normal textless opening and closing, and trailers. We also get commentaries for four episodes, which seems like a lot for such a short series. Whether they count as extras or not the set also includes episodes 14 to 16, which weren't originally broadcast in Japan. Some places list them as an OVA but really they just feel like the last three episodes of the series, either way they're there. Other extras include a short promotional video, and a short documentary of the production of the series titled “Baccano! Propaganda Program.” Nothing really great as far as extras go but still more than what we get from most sets.
Baccano! is an excellent series, if perhaps a bit on the violent and bloody side. Its storytelling may be a bit confusing for the casual viewer, so unless you're really interested in what Baccano! has to show you it may not be the series for you. But, if you don't mind all the blood and violence and are willing to devote your full attention to it, the great story and interesting characters make Baccano! a series that you absolutely must see.
The Packaging
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