'Great Pretender' Is Cool

Appare-Ranman! was my favorite anime watch last summer 2020.  But a very close second was Great Pretender.  It’s a crime comedy anime about a group of con artists who perform elaborate hustles against rich and powerful scumbags from across the globe.  It has 23 episodes (I don’t know if there’s going to be more), which are divided into four story arcs for four different con jobs – “Cases”, as they are referred to in the episode titles.

The main protagonist of the show is Makoto “Edamame” Edamura, the self-proclaimed greatest con man in Japan.  One day, he pulls off a con on a French tourist, but as he discovers later, he’s the one who got conned instead.  As it turns out, this “tourist” is actually the gentleman thief Laurent Thierry.  While running away from cops, Edamame catches up with Laurent, and ends up coming with him to Los Angeles.  There, Edamame finds himself getting entangled with Laurent’s latest scheme.  Apparently, Laurent serves as the mastermind of a gang of con artists who scam wealthy, corrupt individuals for all their worth, and in the process, expose their transgressions and leave them financially ruined.  From then on, Edamame keeps on getting manipulated by Laurent into participating in his gang’s international hustles.

Like Deca-Dence, Great Pretender was not one of the new anime shows debuting in summer 2020 that I initially picked up.  There wasn’t really much hype surrounding it.  Thankfully, I caught some wind of how good it is, and checked it out.  And I’m glad I did.

If there’s one word to describe this anime, it’s “cool.”  This is manifested through the elegant writing, striking animation, and immersive music (the ED, most especially, is amazingly perfect as it is the Freddie Mercury rendition of the song “Great Pretender”).  And it’s simply oozing with suave and style; the tone and presentation have the same kind of appeal as another crime comedy anime masterpiece, Lupin III.

Visually, it’s sheer eye candy.  This is one of those anime where every frame can be a painting.  The backgrounds are fascinatingly minimalistic; any negative impression that may come from their rawness is offset by them simply being vibrantly gorgeous.  Moreover, the simplicity of the backgrounds subconsciously leads the eyeballs to focus more on the characters, allowing the expression of their personalities and emotions to be detected more potently.

Another way of roughly describing Great Pretender is it’s the anime version of Leverage (a TV series that I love, by the way. Side note: a revival is coming!).  And if you know Leverage, you will probably appreciate how spot on that comparison is.  For not only do they have somewhat similar premises, but the storytelling techniques are also analogous.

The plotting is layered, and these layers are peeled masterfully across its overarching story arcs.  Plot twists are staples – designed to be rewarding surprises for the audience to excitedly anticipate.  These eventual reveals completely change how you look at past events.  Seeming conflicts, drawbacks, and coincidences turn out to be staged.  Seeming trivialities turn out to be serving a grand plan.  There’s truly much gratification to be had whenever the overall picture or the true context of the narrative is finally divulged.

In my opinion, the strongest, most unpredictable, and most magnificently Leverage-esque the show has been is during Case 1 (i.e. “Los Angeles Connections”, episodes 1 to 5).  It’s because this is where the audience gets gradually introduced to the members of Laurent’s gang and to the extent of his brilliance in manipulation and strategy.  As each of these details unfolds, there is much genuine surprise since it is being learned for the first time.

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The second best Case is the fourth and last (i.e. “Wizard of Far East”, episodes 15 to 23).  There’s an argument that this is actually the peak of the series.  But there is one major twist in it that I’m unsure about as I feel it kind of undermines their works in the previous three Cases.

This anime does have a few plot developments that I don’t like.  But it’s not because they are the result of lack of thoughtfulness.  I just don’t agree with the directions taken.  Nevertheless, they do fit nicely to the narrative and themes.  The script is pretty tight.

Moreover, Great Pretender has an interesting cast of characters.  Each one is well-realized, has depth, and given a poignant backstory.  My favorite is, of course, Laurent as I adore fictional characters who are genius tacticians.

On the other hand, my least favorite is Edamame.  I don’t necessarily dislike him.  Again, like the others, a strong backstory (which becomes a significant factor in Case 4) makes his arc worth following.  However, he’s often the one that’s being manipulated to do something and the one who’s left in the dark of the overall plan.  This makes him an extremely effective audience surrogate as the impact of the plot’s surprises is experienced through his own astonishment.  At the same time, this also somewhat emasculates him as a character.  In a gang of highly skilled individuals, he comes off as a loser.  But you still sympathize with him since he really desires to turn his life around.

I’m not sure if there are still going to be further episodes.  Episode 23 not only wraps up the fourth arc neatly, but it resolves the series’ overarching storyline as well.  However, it also leaves open the possibility of return.  A scene near the end heavily hints on whom Laurent is targeting next, which (mild SPOILER) is the newly elected POTUS (who uncannily looks like Joe Biden.  Is Great Pretender predicting that Biden will beat Trump in November?  And is it implying that Biden is a crook? LOL).  Also, in the epilogue, there’s this one final big revelation that lays out an unresolved plot thread.  However, I feel that Great Pretender has already ended at a strong note, and that final “unresolved” plot thread is something that, for me, can be satisfyingly treated as a cruel joke that fate has pulled, and thus, a resolution is not required.  Anyway, that may be the genius of it, since regardless of whether a continuations stems out of it or not, I’m fine either way.

To sum it up, I enjoyed Great Pretender immensely.  Delightful, subversive, and stylish, it’s absolutely must-watch anime.