OP: “G.P.” by Yutaka Yamada

Well, that was easily my favorite episode of Netflix-produced anime so far.  From the glorious 70’s caper film-style OP directed by Deai Kotomi to Kaburagi’s own feline fantasy-themed ED set to Freddy Mercury covering The Platters and everything in-between, Great Pretender’s premiere was glorious.  Netflix and anime has largely struck me as a missed opportunity so far.  I’m glad the relationship exists, but I wish the money were changing the industry in some meaningful way.  And even when working with top talent like Yuasa Masaaki, everything Netflix has funded (until BNA, arguably) has gotten bogged-down in pretentious faux-edginess and cool.

No more.  It’s only the premiere and 23 episodes gives Great Pretender ample opportunity to screw it up, but this was an order of magnitude better than what’s come before it.  This was cool, don’t get me wrong – but it wasn’t faux anything.  This was a scintillating result of talent that understands the genre it’s re-imagining, and has the chops to make it work.  From director Kaburagi Hiro to character designer Sadamoto Yoshikyuki to writer Kosawa Ryota, everyone was on their game.

Interestingly, though, perhaps the most notable staff contribution in the premiere was from someone I hadn’t even realized was working on the project.  That would be art director Takeda Yuusuke, because the first thing I thought of when the action started was Uchouten Kazoku.  As distinctive as Sadamoto’s character designs are (and they’re pretty unmistakable) it’s Takeda’s very particular aesthetic that defines the first episode in many ways.  From Tokyo to Los Angeles, this is a look that’s very familiar to fans of his work – playful, colorful, just a little surrealistic.  And for the material, it works perfectly.

Con men make great fodder for fiction, that’s evidenced by how often they get utilized as subjects.  Anime has attempted to pay homage to the Hollywood caper film fairly often, though with limited success.  This however is a very promising start.  We have a young Japanese “scammer” named Edamura Makoto (Kobayashi Chiyaki), who works with a much-older partner named Kudou (Tadano Youhei).  Edamura has quite the delusions of grandeur – he thinks he’s fluent in English (evidentially he’s not), and that he’s the top scammer in Japan (inferentially he’s obviously not).  But he seems to make a living pulling small-time cons on old ladies and swindling tourists out of a few thousand Yen here and there.

Enter Laurent Thierry, who Edamura initially mistakes for a yokel tourist in Asakusa.  Turns out Laurent is a con-man too, except he fights in a much-higher weight class than “Edamame”.  In a very clever conceit he’s initially voiced by Stefano Paganini (an Italian playing a Frenchman speaking English – oh, well) and communicates in a mix of English and broken Japanese, while Makoto speaks in a mix of broken English and Japanese.  About 10 minutes into the episode a graphic announces that the dialogue will switch to Japanese for “our convenience”, and Suwabe Junichi takes over (though Paganini does deliver the odd line when occasion calls for it).

A lot of coincidences seem to play out here, as the cops move in on Makoto and force him to flee at a moment when Laurent is hailing a cab nearby.  He winds up following him all the way to L.A., thinking he’s going to get the money back that Laurent lifted from him on a double-switch, and the pair wind up at the Beverly Hills estate of a movie producer named Eddie Gassano (the wonderful Ono Atsushi).  Laurent is running a long con here in more ways than one – his game is selling Eddie the rights to a new Japanese designer drug that delivers coke in a potent and almost-untraceable form, and he’s roped Makoto into playing the role of the doctor who designed it.  But that’s not even the tip of the iceberg.

There are no coincidences in Great Pretender, as the twist ending here shows.  Laurent has been scamming Makoto since back in Tokyo (Kudou was in on it, and so was the mark they were scamming for water filter money, and Aby the aspiring “actress”).  Just why Laurent needed Edamame specifically I’m not sure, but I’m perfectly fine not getting all my answers in the first episode.  The point is this was really fun, really smart, and looked and sounded great – a thoroughly professional effort all around.  Great Pretender comes off as a show with a very clear idea of what it wants to do, and the chops to pull it off with panache.

ED: “The Great Pretender” by Freddie Mercury