'Baccano!' Is an Awesome Anime That Is Criminally Overlooked

Baccano! was released in 2007, but it was only a few years back that I got wind of it when I was actively looking for great but not so popular anime.  However, I only watched the first episode.  I can’t even remember if I finished it or gave up halfway through.  I wasn’t compelled to give it time and watch the rest.  But, recently, I decided to give it another go.  I started with the first episode again – since I already forgot how it went; this time around, in a span of three days, I got to finish watching all 16 episodes.  And I was blown away by how masterful its storytelling and characterizations are.  For me, it felt like a gloriously excellent composite of the styles, concepts, and structures of Cowboy Bebop, Black Lagoon, Pulp Fiction, The Godfather, Once Upon a Time in America, Game of Thrones, Sin City, The Highlander, and Snowpiercer.

It is highly entertaining and addicting, and succeeds exceedingly well on the fronts it chooses to work on.  It can get utterly side-splitting (especially when Isaac and Miria are involved).  It can get powerfully suspenseful.  It can get kickass and action-packed.  It can get ultra violent and gory.  It can get tragically dark.  It can get thoughtfully poignant.  Heck, it even can get genuinely romantic.

Set mostly during the Prohibition Era in the USA, it’s an anime about immortals, mafias, assassins, alchemists, homunculi, demons, thieves, cultists, hijackers, robbers, and information brokers.  It’s such a unique, stylish, multifaceted caper that it’s hard to truly detail its plot without being spoiler-y and lengthy.  So please allow me to describe it simply in a single word: brilliant.  Trust me, that should be enough.

Baccano! follows a ton of complex, intriguing characters, and it’s impossible to pin-point a true main character.  A couple of them can be considered the lead character at different points.  Its opening title sequence enumerates the major characters one by one, but a few significant characters aren’t even introduced at all (maybe for the intention of surprise).  Regardless, despite the fact that it’s packed with characters, none of importance feels underdeveloped.  Everyone is thoroughly interesting in his or her own way.  Everyone has something going on for himself or herself.  In addition, characters are “grayish” in their morality, in the sense that “good guys” have shades of “bad guys” in them, and vice versa.  It’s an ensemble of anti-heroes and anti-villains.  It’s pretty much like Game of Thrones with regards to characterization.

Aside from the assorted characters, what makes the anime further intricate is its unconventional storytelling.  Instead of telling the story in a linear, typical manner, it instead jumps around different events/storylines in the past, present, and future.  There are also times when certain moments are repeated and played out through the perspective of a different character from before (similar with how it was done in Dunkirk).  As a result, this may make the narrative confusing and disjointed during the first episode or so – first two and a half episodes at most – for some, which is likely the reason why I gave up on it the first time around.  However, the strength and richness of the unconventional storytelling soon become apparent, constantly yielding riveting results from then on.  And when one re-watches the first episode(s) that he or she initially felt is(are) muddled, he or she actually realizes that they are as logical and outstandingly executed as the latter episodes.

Another praiseworthy aspect of this anime is the soundtrack.  The opening music, “Guns & Roses” (not the band), in particular, is one of the catchiest music in anime ever.  It will remind anyone of another iconic anime music, Cowboy Bebop’s “Tank!”, as they have similar basslines and jazzy eminence.  The two can easily be performed as a medley.

For me, Baccano! is flawless.  It’s terrific all across the board.  I truly think it’s one of the greatest anime ever made.  That’s why it shocks me that it bombed when it first came out.  And even now where it has become a cult classic, it’s still not as well-renowned as it deserves to be.  Seriously, if you are a fan of anime and you still haven’t seen it, please do so!

It’s now about 11 years since the anime was released, and it’s quite upsetting that there’s still no follow up to those 16 episodes when there’s still much material from the light novels to be covered.