The production formula for Great Pretender seems to be pretty straightforward:
- Hire a bunch of really talented people
- Give them shit-tons of cash
- Butt out and let them do whatever they want
- Bask in the glow of great anime
As opposed to the alternative, prevailing anime production model:
- Get a production committee together
- Don’t do any of those other things (except #1 sometimes)
- Get 95% of the anime schedule
It’s not a hard and fast rule, but any time a series can get me to yell “Fuck me!” at the screen, it’s pretty much a given that it was great. It took a lot of buildup to get to that point, but buildup is what caper flicks are all about, really. And that’s what Great Pretender is, basically, a caper flick. It’s anime and doesn’t lack a certain anime sensibility, but this is as Hollywood as it gets. The writer isn’t an anime writer of course but he is Japanese, and he manages to very convincingly capture the essential nature of this sort of story. From the Walter White references to Salazar’s arch-typical Mid-city house to the LA fixation with sushi, Great Pretender just gets so many little things right.
Essentially, as so many of these sorts of flicks are, this is a sting operation. But Edamame’s role in it is complicated. The more we learn about his background (which is very cleverly exposited over the course of 5 episodes) the more we see how conflicted he is. A guy who genuinely wanted to do right, whose circumstances conspired to make him do wrong. A guy who wanted to save his mother and in the end, could not. Makoto could have been in on the truth, but I think Laurent’s master plan would have failed if he had been. Makoto needed to be genuine, the fish out of water, the lynchpin – he had to believe the conflict he was going through was real – for all this to work.
Makoto’s most immediate problem is figuring out how to cook up a batch of Sakura Magic convincing enough to get Eddie to hand over the $10 million. That he learns courtesy of video lessons from the “Wolfgang Puck of cooking street drugs” which Aby delivers through Salazar’s bedroom window. Meanwhile Makoto is bonding with Salazar over family matters – Salazar has a son, Tom (Tanezaki Atsumi), who lives in a foster home and only sees Salazar on Sundays. Makoto has a personal connection here of course, though I think Salazar is romanticized a little too much. Someone having a kid – even loving their kid – doesn’t mean they aren’t a bad person. And Salazar, at the very least, has a lot to answer for.
The first major twist comes when the FBI agent Paula Dickens (Sonozaki Mie) ambushes Makoto in the crapper during a theme park outing with Salazar and Tom. She offers him a plea bargain and trip back to Japan in exchange for his cooperation, and a pair of transmitter glasses for him to activate when he’s ready to seal the deal. This is complicated for Makoto, but it’s important to remember that at this point in the story he believes Laurent and Abby are forcing him to make drugs (heroin-based, no less) for easy consumption. This is comfortably outside his moral strike zone, so it’s hardly a surprise that he eventually caves – though his attempt to protect Salazar in the process fails miserably.
The thing about sting operations – especially convoluted triple-crosses like this one – is that everything pretty much needs to go perfectly, and rarely does. It’s Makoto himself who screws everything up for Laurent by flying into a rage and playing hero after Laurent and Aby are killed by the SWAT team. This was unplanned to begin with (that’s the risk of keeping one key player out of the loop), but the real problem comes when Eddie takes advantage of the confusion to blow up the evidence (and most of the factory), and try to make his escape.
I loved the aftermath of that event – the sound design here is outstanding. It may be a stretch to think no one would have been killed – not even one of Anderson’s crooked LAPD cops, who weren’t in on the operation either – but the plan eventually goes ahead. The thing is, somebody like Eddie buying his way out of this isn’t all that far-fetched in the American justice system – though it usually happens later in the process. And it seems as if the naive Edamame has learned a cruel lesson about how things work across the big muddy.
As I said, good caper flicks are all about the buildup. The payoff – the “fuck me” moment – is the climax, but it doesn’t pack any punch unless the setup is convoluted and internally consistent enough, like a narrative Rube Goldberg machine. And so it was here, very much so. I was skeptical of Laurent and Aby’s deaths for obvious reasons, but I didn’t put all the pieces together until Edamame woke up on the beach and then – before we ever saw Cynthia – I knew. Fuck me. There’s one more twist here, and that’s what Makoto does after the after-party, and what he needed “three or four years” for. But I think that twist was internally consistent too, and very much in-character.
“Bravo” is really all I can say, because that was a terrific five-episode story arc. It was confident, smart storytelling paired with fantastic production values and Kaburagi Hiro’s usual stalwart direction. He’s a great and versatile director anyway, but it’s no coincidence that the same guy helmed Great Pretender and 91 Days, as they’re probably the two anime in the past decade that most successfully capture the spirit of a Hollywood genre film. Great Pretender isn’t getting as much attention as it should in the West because of its distribution, and fans of a certain blockbuster franchise may be raging because Wit dared to do something else with their time. But none of that is relevant when it comes to the series’ innate brilliance, which it has in droves. If this is the future of Netflix and anime, we should be so lucky.
Dauntingoverlord
June 11, 2020 at 4:26 amThis was great… ah ha. That was a wild ride. I do kinda agree with you on Salazar, but the way he keyed into Makoto’s arc was really good, so I’m letting it slide. I should’ve known that Dickens reveal twist was going to happen, and yet I kept doubting. Good job the Great Pretender, good job.
Red
June 11, 2020 at 7:16 amI thought, in the beginning, this would be like the ‘Catch me if you can’ flick, at the end of this arc, it pulled an ‘Ocean’s eleven’. Exquisite work all around for the makers of this series.
Great review as always, I didn’t know about that LA-sushi connection.
Even though I like my anime weekly, there is some merit to releasing a bunch of episodes, at once, since with a series like this I’ve been left wanting more to see the next episode, more than a few times.
Guardian Enzo
June 11, 2020 at 9:33 amPart CMIYC, part Oceans Eleven, part Breaking Bad.
LA is absolutely obsessed with sushi. Including claiming the best there is better than the best in Japan (it’s not).
Rworld
June 11, 2020 at 11:53 amYou do realize this is pretty much a duplicate of the Sting. Not a criticism because Just about every show or movie about cons is a copy of the Sting.
Guardian Enzo
June 11, 2020 at 12:42 pmThere’s a structure to these things, a formula, and GP certainly follows it (as did The Sting, which was hardly the first of its breed). I don’t personally see this as a duplicate of The Sting (the details are quite different) so much an amalgam of sting movies and TV shows about confidence men. I don’t think Great Pretender is any more a copy of The Sting than, say, Sneaky Pete is.
Yukie
June 13, 2020 at 8:37 pmI didn’t even know about this show until it came out, and now it just might be anime of the year for me (the cat ED was the finishing blow for me). I’m enjoying it so much that I’m actually spreading these episodes out to tide myself over these days (good anime is so scarce), when I used to marathon good series. The moment Abby and Laurent “died,” I suddenly made a connection between Cynthia and the pink-haired woman in the promo picture (which I guess, spoiled me). As someone who never got into the AoT fandom (watched one episode, didn’t like it, and never looked back) and is kind of over the amount of people gushing over it, I’m kind of grateful for its existence now, especially if all that AoT money became the funds for anime like Vinland Saga and original stuff like this.
Guardian Enzo
June 13, 2020 at 8:48 pmYeah, I’m honestly thrilled that Wit – which always seems overwhelmed – is unburdened of the albatross of AoT. They’re capable of so much better, and this series is a good example.
BluBlu
August 4, 2020 at 11:48 pmI was just wondering about something. I know that movie wasn’t a critic success and was during Will Smith’s dark period, but am I the only one who screamed “Focus” since the end of episode 1? And that episode 5 even strengthened that. I mean, yeah, I won’t lie that I believed during few minutes when they were shot (especially as based on the titles, the series seems to be “split” in different faces so it could have been a transition for our main character). But once FBI asked for MORE money, at that moment I immediately screamed once again “Focus” as that movie is so fresh in my mind. Not downplaying anything here or pretending (oh oh oh!) that one invented or whatever, was just curious about anyone thinking the same (I have not read the comments of the subsequent episodes).
Anyway, that’s a cool show. I actually appreciate the fact that it seems that not all the show is about only one scam (well, like…). Of course, being anime, there are scenaristic ease which would be more criticized in if it were a live-action movie.
Honestly, won’t be surprised that the opening song is also referencing “Lupin III” (but anyway, the topic and the era of that latter also matches so…)
Now, will “honestly” patiently wait in Netflix jail. But hoping that the trick won’t always be the same…
Guardian Enzo
August 5, 2020 at 8:54 amNever seen Focus TBH, so I can’t say I had that reaction.
Onix Franceschini
August 21, 2020 at 2:11 amJust watched this today (since it’s officially out of Netflix jail) and WOW. I haven’t binged an anime this much in a long time. Great stuff, and I adored the call back to Breaking Bad (which is my current favorite TV show.) Looking forward to the next episodes and your posts, of course.
Guardian Enzo
August 21, 2020 at 1:42 pmSeptember 21 is when it returns with new eps, if I remember right. I binged through the first 14 eps pretty quickly myself, though not as much as I would have if I hadn’t been blogging them. Certainly the leading contender for my AOTY list right now (well – one of two, at least).
kiwi
September 22, 2020 at 4:54 amwow this series is amazing!! I feel like this kind of show is what anime has been lacking for several years now. The brilliant art direction, sound design, snappy dialogue, unique setting, (the ending by FREDDIE MERCURY??), everything. This show oozes style and originality, and I’m so heartened by its existence. (also the backgrounds remind me of Uchouten Kazoku; they’re absolutely beautiful)
Guardian Enzo
September 22, 2020 at 9:15 amWell, same art director as Uchouten as I noted in the First Impressions. It’s a terrific show, no doubt – looking forward to watching the rest now that it’s available.