Baccano is a highly acclaimed anime and you will see a lot of people saying how its confusing story makes perfect sense by the end. If I didn’t see those comments I would have dropped this anime before finishing the first episode. After finishing it, I can say that Baccano’s is told in an incomprehensible and convoluted way for no reason at all. There is no mystery that gets revealed piece by piece, no message, and nothing that would warrant the effort to sit through this anime.
I will start with the first episode since it is one of the worst beginnings I have ever seen. We start with 2 people who will have no impact on the story and don’t show up again except one of them as a voice. They start talking about where we should start the story of Baccano and who the main character should be showing random scenes and spoilers along the way. The dialogue is meaningless, you can literally cut all of the pretentious dialogue between those two and lose nothing. They are just a way for the makers of the show to say “Our story doesn't have a main character and is non-chronological!” as if it is some great achievement on its own. Even if the sheer volume of characters or the non-chronological storytelling had any purpose, anyone can see that they exist without pointing it out. The whole dialogue only serves to waste time. Disregarding the condescending parts about journalism and truth, which literally have no reason for existing besides padding out the episode.
Even the parts where they show random parts of the story only serve to confuse and waste time at best. They show that a little child is immortal, which when we get to the scene where he dies drains all the tension out of it. It also makes the latter reveal that the boy was immortal and showing a character's surprise at this incomprehensible. Did they forget what they put in the first episode? The answer is yes if you are wondering. Here is a screenshot to prove that:
The girl in white with the spear isn’t in the anime nor are some of the background characters, like the girl with the katana. We don’t know where they are, we don’t know what they are doing. This scene doesn’t happen in the anime. We don’t even see this character again. The scene serves no purpose other than to waste time. I guess the people that made the first episode didn’t even bother to watch the rest of the anime or vice versa.
This philosophy of being convoluted to achieve nothing but waste time consumes the entire anime. Events are presented in random order for no payoff. There isn’t a mystery and no reason to tell the story in this incomprehensible way. The supernatural elements get explained in the stupidest ways possible that I genuinely believe leaving them unexplained would have been better. Immortality is explained via alchemy, in the same episode we learn that it exists. The train murderer is also revealed to have worked in a circus, which is meant to explain him being able to climb and stick to the outside of a moving train like spiderman.
The story when complete is just a string of random events. Why are these people immortal? Because they drank this elixir. How did they get a hold of it? A random guy burned down a building accidentally at just the right time. If it was something so benign what is the point of obfuscating it?
Characters in this anime do not grow or evolve and can be summed up in a couple of words. Crybaby that is actually super strong, carefree dumb thieves, crazy mob guy that likes to kill, chivalrous mob guy, abused kid, etc. Barely anyone has any personality that extends beyond a character trope, and the thieves don’t even have separate personalities. There is also a massive issue with the “bad guys,” they aren’t any worse than any of the other characters. A character that killed a few people and a guy who killed a few immortals are treated as if they are the scum of the earth and one is tortured. We have seen most characters kill more people on screen than those two did. They just happen to be two that drew the short straw and became the “bad guys.” Like most characters, this is also their entire personality.
The specials are also massive wastes of time. They barely resolve anything and introduce some random guy that shares the “crazy guy that likes to kill” personality and we spend far too much time with. And of course, he isn’t even mentioned once beforehand, since I guess we had more important things to showcase like the girl who never shows up or the comedic duo in a mine for 4 minutes straight.
The last episode of the specials has the two idiots from the first episode return and ramble on about how imagining an ending is good so that is why so much is left unresolved. I could agree with it only if they didn’t stick 3 unnecessary episodes to the end of this anime to resolve it but gave up halfway. They could have just left the anime alone and that message would have been clear to anyone that watched it. If they believed that they wouldn't have spent an hour and a half on nonsense then condescend to the audience like they are too dumb to know what an open ending is.
There is a decent anime buried in there somewhere but the whole thing is consumed by needlessly convoluted storytelling. Thinking about Baccano and its story while you are watching it is a waste of effort. The only parts I enjoyed were when the comedic duo managed to make me laugh. I wouldn’t recommend this anime to anyone.
106 out of 174 users liked this review
