91 Days is a lot of things. It is a story about familial love, ambition, greed, betrayal, conviction, internal conflict and, ultimately, revenge. But predictable it is not.
A video review can be found here: https://youtu.be/YnuyRV2gzDc
___Premise and the protagonists_:__ Angelo Lagusa, (who will be referred to as Avilio Bruno henceforth because that's the pseudonym he chooses to go by for a better part of the series) - is our protagonist who goes through the pain of losing his family at a young age. And that's because they all get murdered in front of his eyes. He survived that night, but his will to live surely didn't. Since then, all he's done is listlessly spend his living moments away surviving as a empty husk. That is, until the day he receives a letter. A letter that lights a fire within him - one that tells him where to direct the hatred that's slowly but surely been festering within him all this time. The Vanetti. They are the people who destroyed his life and now it is time for Avilio to pay them back several fold.
And that's where the second main character of the show comes into the picture. Nero Vanetti. Nero is the charismatic scion of the Vanetti family. He's the brash guy who does what he likes and is carefree for the most part. But the one thing that he values above all is the pride of his family. The Vanetti family. All of his actions are dictated by his personal code of placing the "family" before everything else. As long as it helps uphold the family name, nothing is off limits. He will do anything for his family.
Story: This is a story about Avilio's revenge. But it is also a story about Nero and his core principle of placing the Vanetti name above all. As such, while we do see the story through Avilio's eyes for the most part, Nero also acts as a second protagonist throughout the rest of the series.
91 Days is the story of how the fates of these two young men intertwine to create an interesting yet brutal crime drama set in the prohibition era of the 1930s where booze is gold and violent mafia clashes are the norm. The Vanettis, the Orcos and the Galassias are the big Mafia families in this story, and most of the revenge plot here is centered not just around the two primary characters, but also the internal politics between these three big powers.
But yes, I called 91 Days "interesting" because it isn't often that you get anime set in a specific time period, let alone stick to realism and be free of any kind of supernatural influence. There's a general lack of typical japanese anime humor and a complete lack of any kind of fanservice and that really makes this a breath of fresh air compared to most series out there. This series sticks to its guns about strictly adhering to realism as much as it possibly can throughout the entirety of its run.
Well, except one character. But we can focus on him when we get to the characters. Anyway, getting back to the story, I think I'd say that overall it is pretty good. Due to the combination of the setting and the characters' ambitions that stem from multiple factors like familial love, greed and revenge, death isn't really uncommon in this story. But death certainly isn't meaningless here. The anime manages to do a really good job of getting us acquainted with the state of mind of its characters - that is, by having us know and understand what makes them tick, what matters to them and so on. It is precisely because of this that a lot of those deaths actually become a lot more impactful than they usually would.
I've already covered how the world and the tone of the anime feels realistic, but it would be incomplete without possessing characters that feel like they belong in it.
Characters: The two main characters, Avilio and Nero, are fleshed out relatively well. They live and die for their ideals and can do anything for it. We've already established that. But what about the rest of the cast? Are they given the kind of care in their writing that these two here did? Thankfully, the answer is a resounding yes for most of the important ones. Corteo, Avilio's childhood friend, is a complete 180 shift from Avilio at first glance. He's not assertive, he doesn't seem to have a knack for coming up with manipulative plans like his buddy does and nor does he seem like he has any conviction that drives him as a person. But as the story goes on, you get to see more of him - when the time really comes for his character to shine, he makes it clear that he's not a prop for the other characters. He has his own moral code and reasons that drive him. That's really what makes his character realistic. Which holds true for the large majority of the remainder of the cast except one. Okay, let's talk about him.
Fango. Fango is an anomaly. He doesn't really gel well with the rest of the world of 91 Days for being a bit too cray-cray. You could always chalk it up as him being one of the psychopaths from among the prohibition era's society, which he most definitely is, but he still feels relatively out of place among the rest of the cast. He just feels more like your average crazy anime guy who has been put in there just to spice things up a bit and add a layer of unpredictability to the plot. Don't get me wrong, I'm not really complaining - his voice actor, Kenjirou Tsuda, does such a terrific job at voicing him that I just can't help but think Fango as a whole was an asset to the show rather than acting like a detrimental factor. But I kiiinda had to bring him up, y'know, because he's just that crazy.
I think that more or less sums up what I had to say about the cast. But with that out of the way, let's talk production values and voice acting.
Production Values: 91 Days started off looking really good. I was actually really surprised by how sharp the visuals were and how the characters almost always stayed on-model. But as is the case with a lot of anime out there, the series dips a bit in the quality of its art and animation a bit towards the middle and never really recovers to reach the heights established in terms of its visuals in the initial episodes. That's not to say it ever looks ugly, but just not as consistently beautiful as it did before. Studio Shuka, nevertheless, deserves props for delivering for the most part.
As for the soundtrack, hmm. I'm not sure if there's anything that has really stuck with me after finishing it with the exception of the main theme. But whether or not you can listen to the soundtrack on its own separate from the series is just a bonus, it really isn't the main factor to decide whether or not the ost was good. What matters the most is whether or not it compliments the show - and that is something it manages to excel at. I have to give the composer, Shōgo Kaida, massive props for coming up with a soundtrack that really fits the tone and setting of the show to the T. And not just the soundtrack, the audio engineering in general is exceptional here. There are many scenes that have stuck around in my head since I finished it and most of them can be attributed to exceptional choice of music and really good mixing on the sound effects. Definitely a job well done in my opinion.
Also, before I move on to the conclusion, I'd really like to bring notice to the exceptional voice acting in this anime. Almost everyone's performance is excellent here, but the voice actors for Nero, Avilio and Fango are exceptional in this series. Fango in general is the best, but Nero's and Avilio's VA work in the final batch of episodes was something else.
Conclusion: 91 Days is a really good anime. It is a tragic story that primarily deals with this one single question - whether revenge can really be the sole sustainable reason for the existence of a person. It reaches that answer by presenting us with the story of two characters who parallel each other a lot but whose reason for existence lie at the opposite ends of the spectrum - one seeks to protect while the other seeks to destroy. Whether or not you agree with the answer it presents you with, you gotta admit it does a damn fine job at telling its story and presenting its ideas to you. It does that with little to no problems in its pacing while looking and sounding really good for the most part. And for that, I believe 91 Days deserves your attention.
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