Man, in all of my years watching anime, I've never watched such a good show that left me with such a bad taste in my mouth. Before I get into the meat and potatoes of my review, let me first say that I will try to avoid spoilers for those of you who aren't watching the sub online off of Netflix, since the final arc isn't available on US Netflix yet. Furthermore, a lot of my harsher scores in the story, character, and enjoyment areas are heavily influenced by the final arc, and especially the ending, so if you don't want to be jaded before
...
the final arc officially releases, just stop reading here.
Story: 4
The story follows the exploits of Makoto "Edamame" Edamura, a two-bit scam artist who took advantage of old people in Japan until he meets Laurent, the first person to con him. After joining up with Laurent, an enigmatic and charismatic confidence man, Edamura gets roped into several schemes all targeting wealthy criminals who have used their influence to avoid justice. The series takes a mostly light-heated and fun approach to each of these cons, although there are moments of genuine emotion sprinkled throughout that help make the cast a lot more likeable and relatable. Furthermore, there are enough twists with each of the cons to keep them exciting, though some of them do require a good deal of suspension of disbelief. This fun story manages to stay consistent for 14 out of the 23 episodes before taking a sharp turn in the final arc. In order to avoid spoilers, I'm not going to talk much about this final arc, but basically the plot becomes silly at best despite the grim subject matter -- international child sex trafficking -- and the resolution feels like a slap in the face given how the story had played out up until that point. One of the interesting ideas of the show is that Makoto is one of, if not the only good person in Laurent's crew, and he essentially acts as the heart of the group comprised of manipulative narcissists. Because of his earnesty, Makoto ends up being taken advantage of constantly in Laurent's schemes, often finding himself completely in the dark about what's going on until the final minutes. The final arc deconstructs this aspect of Makoto in a really interesting way as well, essentially exploring the hypocrisy of Laurent's group and how their actions might actually push Makoto far enough to turn on them. However, in a massive cop out that I will not reveal, this whole character arc gets completely uprooted, leading to an unsatisfying conclusion that completely ignores the previous 3 arcs and just feels hollow. On one hand, I understand why the show did this, given that one of its core themes, especially in the final arc, is forgiveness. In every previous arc, one or more of the characters learned either to forgive themselves or one of the people they were scamming, so it makes sense that this theme continues in the final arc. Hell, you could even try and call the ending a subversion of expectations given how it really does subvert the viewers expectations; however, subversion for subversion's sake isn't inherently good, the payoff has to be satisfying, and it just isn't here. Furthermore, the way that this theme is explored in the final arc with Makoto just isn't satisfactory and honestly felt very contrived. There's honestly no reason for Makoto to forgive these people, especially considering what they put him through, and yet he does anyway. Maybe this speaks to my own poor character more than poor writing on the part of the show, but still, there are still examples of undue forgiveness past this moment in the finale that are even more contrived and a lot harder to rationalize for me. Finally, there's the post credit scene at the end of the final episode, which I don't even want to think about and I honestly can't make sense of. It seems like sequel bait, but it completely spits in the face of everything the final arc was about, making the last nine episodes feel like more of a waste of time. All this being said, the actual resolutions for each character outside of all of this are really sweet and pretty satisfying, though what comes before it is legitimately awful.
tl;dr: a great story that manages to drop the ball spectacularly in the final few episodes. If you're going to have a tonal shift in the final arc, at least follow through. Also, the way they pulled off the final con was stupid at best and reminded me of a quote from Community which I will paraphrase: So, according to the Sting, in order to pull off this grift, we need a full crew, a bunch of briefcases, and a fake hospital for some reason.
Art: 9
Yeah, the art is mostly really great and expressive, but the CGI looks genuinely awful. Even though the CGI is stylized, it still looks super jarring and it's even worse when characters are modeled with CGI. Everyone keeps comparing this show to Lupin, but Lupin's recent anime and films blow GP out of the water completely.
Muisic: 8
A pretty above average soundtrack overall, though there are quite a few tracks that blend in with one another. The vocal tracks are all pretty excellent, though.
Characters: 6
Again, for the first half of the show, the characters are all really great. Edamura is a likable lead, Laurent is incredibly funny and commands the screen when he's on, Abbie is one of the most charming characters of the year, and Cynthia just oozes with charisma. Plus, each of these leads has a really compelling backstory and character motivation, and each is given some genuinely superb character development throughout the series. The villains are all fairly one-note, but it works in the show's favor because it gets you to really despise them. The one stand out is Suzaku, the villain of the final arc, who is not only despicable, but sympathetic in a way because she develops a really compelling relationship with Makoto, almost becoming like a surrogate mother to him. Unfortunately, the main cast outside of Abbie all become genuinely insufferable during the final arc and that's when you realize that they've been self-serving, hypocritical narcissists for the entire series and have been insanely cruel to Makoto for almost no reason, seemingly enjoying his suffering and treating him as a joke throughout the entire series -- literally none of the characters actually call him by his proper name. As a minor spoiler, I think it's really telling that while Makoto is basically in the middle of a mental breakdown after a severely traumatic event, the rest of the cast is at a hot spring having the time of their lives -- it really shows how awful the rest of the cast are, which makes the resolution even more frustrating when none of them actually get what's coming to them in spite of Makoto's really passionate and eloquent rant about why he hates them all. Again, like the story, the characters are great until you realize that everyone but Makoto is a legitimate piece of shit who never gets theirs.
Enjoyment: 7
I think the one takeaway from my review is that it's a really enjoyable show and if you just ignore the final arc, the show's probably like a 9/10. Unfortunately though, you can't just pretend that almost half of the show doesn't exist. Maybe I'm an outlier in terms of how I wanted the ending to play out, but from what I've seen online, I'm not the only person upset with the ending in general. A bad ending can really mar what could have been a great show -- just look at GoT -- and Great Pretender has joined the ranks of other really promising shows that just couldn't follow through in the final stretch. It's the first show in a long time that has genuinely made me feel conflicted after watching it, not sure if it was worth my time or not. I enjoyed it, but I was only able to tolerate the show's absurdity up to a point.
Overall: 6
I was really rooting for this show, and it was genuinely the most fun I've had with anime in a really long time. However, I just can't look past its ending and final arc in general. The writers seemed to through everything fun and compelling about the show out the window in the final arc in favor of a forced tonal shift that they didn't even have the guts to follow through with. I know my other scores average out to about a 7, but I felt that it deserved to be docked another point for the post credits scene, which just felt like a slap in the face after an already flawed and frustrating arc.
Overall tl;dr:
A good show that had a lot of potential, but completely squandered it in the final 9 episodes.
Sep 23, 2020
Great Pretender
(Anime)
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Man, in all of my years watching anime, I've never watched such a good show that left me with such a bad taste in my mouth. Before I get into the meat and potatoes of my review, let me first say that I will try to avoid spoilers for those of you who aren't watching the sub online off of Netflix, since the final arc isn't available on US Netflix yet. Furthermore, a lot of my harsher scores in the story, character, and enjoyment areas are heavily influenced by the final arc, and especially the ending, so if you don't want to be jaded before
...
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