OP: “Downtimer” by RetBear w/unknown Vo: O2

We’re only in about the bottom of the 2nd inning, but Revenger was easily the best premiere of the winter season so far for me.  It had just about everything I would want – setting, production values, interesting characters, engaging premise, music.  A pretty timeless anime story for sure, one that wouldn’t have seemed anachronistic in any decade it aired (except maybe this one, to an extent, by that very element of its nature).  Original anime has not been flying high these last couple of years, so it could really use a tentpole or two to hold up its creative reputation.

Aye though, there is a rub.  This was penned by Urobuchi Gen, and we’ve been down this road before.  Urobutcher is great at openings – most of his series have great ones, in fact.  It’s endings he struggles with – endings and the buildup to them.  I have no idea whether he actually loses interest in his own material before he finishes it or that’s just the impression he often gives, but in practical terms the impact is the same.  I’ve learned by hard experience not to get ahead of myself where Urobuchi shows are concerned.

Still – we can only judge what’s placed before us.  I take heart in the fact that this was a very good introduction indeed – it looked great and had a very compelling narrative flow.  There’s also the fact that a terrific director, Fujimori Masaya (Kemono Jihen and the very underrated Tribe Cool Crew among others), Ajia-do’s top gun, is attached to the project.  It certainly helps if you like historical settings – in this case Nagasaki during the Edo Period – though there seems to be some implied magic/fantasy element (and with Urobuchi that’s usually a good bet).

Revenger takes us immediately into the story of Kurima Raizou (Kasama Jun), a Satsuma retainer who’s about to commit a murder.  The target is his soon-to-be father-in-law, an official of the domain, who Kurima has been told is secretly engaging in the opium trade with the West.  At this time Nagasaki was the only port in Japan open to Westerners, who conducted their business and lived on the Dejima Trading Post, an artificial island (fancifully depicted in the cold open), built by the Tokugawa Shogunate to maintain the separation between Japan and the Westerners.

We don’t know any of this at the time of course – and Kurima doesn’t know that he’s been set up.  In fact the one with his hands dirty is Mitsumine, the finance minister, and the man Kurima killed was about to expose him.  The one who clues both of us in is Usui Yuuen (Umehara Yuichirou), a local artisan and merchant who’s clearly a lot more than that.  After finding Kurima – too ashamed to face his clan even believing he’d done the right thing – sleeping under a bridge, Usui and his young associate Nio (Kanemoto Hisako) save Kurima when Mitsumine’s men show up to silence him permanently.

Obviously a samurai in Kurima’s position would be focused on seppuku at this point.  But Usui offers him a reason to at least defer that act – Mitsumine lives and prospers, and the honorable thing would be to bring him down.  Usui and his group – we meet a few of them here but only he and Nio (who I’m pretty certain is a boy, by the way, despite their wardrobe and bearing) have much to do – are intending to do that.  And they need someone with inside info to help them do it.  Kurima agrees, but he’s thinking one step ahead – he denies the existence of a secret escape route, which he knows Mitsumine will use when his villa is attacked.  Kurima gets the titular revenge he seeks, but this doesn’t end well for him by any means.

I’m not certain where Urobuchi is going with this but he’s clearly incorporating some very Nagasaki-specific elements.  Foreign trade for one, and Christianity for another.  It was officially banned in Japan at this time but secretly practiced by both foreigners (Dutch at this stage, presumably) and even Japanese in Nagasaki.  Usui has the Virgin Mary tattooed on his back and evokes her as he kills, and there’s talk of his group meeting in a church.  After his wife’s suicide one would expect Kurima to follow her into the afterlife but I think he’s going to wind up working with Usui (and perhaps even converting, having been forsaken by fate as he has).

It’s all a rather heady and interesting mix, and very well executed.  Again, many grains of salt much be acknowledged here – as Baloo said to Kit Cloudkicker, “Take-offs are easy – it’s the landings that are hard”.   And all the more true when Urobuchi Gen is the pilot.  But the bones of a very good tale are in place – both the world-building and the cast clicked for me, and I’m very interested to see where the story goes from here.

ED: “un_mute” by Maaya Sakamoto