Customer Reviews

Baccano: Volume One

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Think the review title sounds nuts? Think the product description sounds nuts? It is. The show is sixteen shades of crazy. It's tragic and hilarious and full of action. There are even some beautiful, lasting romances. By crazy people. Very, very crazy people. Most of whom have knives, guns, explosives or some combination of all of the above.

Baccano is a collage of sorts, jumping backwards and forwards in time, skipping between characters and locations. Mostly it's set in the gang wars of the 1930's. The main set piece is a train robbery, one that lasts for the entire series. The problem is that, while one group of people wants to rob the train, another group wants to take a small group of passengers hostage, a third group of people want to kill half the passengers and ransom the other half, there is a genuine article monster on board, or three or more depending on how you define 'monster'...

Short version? It's fun. It's really fun. The animation is good, the music is good, the voice acting is good (in Japanese anyway, have not heard the dub) the action is intense and the characters are very memorable. Rail Tracer and Ladd. I am just saying. Watch the show. You'll find out.

I recommend this to anyone who can stand a bit of gore, non-linear time lines and really sadistic things happening to something that looks like a child.

Baccano! comes across as a complex and suspenseful story, which does not unfold in a linear way; the story is told by shifting back and forth across its timeline, giving you the thrill of putting the pieces together as you watch and learn more, so that's a big plus if you like this format.
Do you like 1930s gangsters? Do you like mistery? Are you interested in supernatural phenomena and the occult? Do you enjoy a dark and bloody storyline, with appropriate characters to go with it? If you like all of these, you just hit the jackpot. You'll even get some comedy and humor thrown in there.
Baccano! is one of those superb animes that don't come along very often, and it is surely destined to become a success -judging from the first volume.

In 15 years I haven't watched as much as most self-Identified Otaku, but I've certainly watched enough to say that this is everything and nothing to expect from Anime. It is as confusing as it is blunt, as east meets west as it is post national, as human as it is cartoonish.

Fair warning, this anime is insane! Picture if you will: gangsters, alchemists, fanatics, bumbling theives, sadistic assassins, immortals (who truly fit the name), a first-class train for the common man, and monsters all thrown together and told in a non-linear (almost stream-of-conciousness) style by two reporters(?) who are trying to make heads and tails of a train heist/hi-jack gone wrong. The comedy is a blessed sigh of relief that without this anime would be a depressing blood-fest. The violence, as stated, is pretty intense but not to the point where it becomes a gratuitous gore-fest that serves no point. The violence is done almost artistically that actually helps tell the story. The comedy is random and often times silly (just slightly less silly than Excell Saga for example).

The story is down right confusing in the first episode but by the second a casual viewer should be able to make "some" sense of the mayhem. There is no "main character"; everyone is both protagonist and antagonist!

A must for any fan of anime. Also a good choice for fans of mob-films, comedy, and action as well. The series is rated TV-MA and I totally agree. Not for kids due to violence, language, and the sheer non-linear-ness of it all.

Honestly, I didn't know what to make of "Baccano!". Don't get me wrong--I loved all the action and comedy set in the 1930s.

However, there were so many characters in the first four episodes that I gave up trying to keep up with the anime.

For starters, the anime is set in 1930s America, involving two stories. The first covers the violent train murders. The second involves the development in the city of an elixir for immortality.

The train story involves a wide range of characters. The first two are Isaac Dian and Mirva Harvent, two funny thieves who just happened to catch the train to meet their relatives in the East. Other people riding the train include a Mafia group who wants to eliminate everyone on the train. The other is a group of assassins, led by the psychotic Ladd Russo. He's hell bent on killing people just for the heck of it.

The story in the city features Szilard Quates, who informs some gentlemen that he has developed the elixir for immortality. He sends his servant, Emile, to get the potion from the professor who is developing it. However, the laboratory was set ablaze when Emile arrived. Emile happens to run into Firo Pirochainezzo, a member of the Camorra mafia. Emile drops one of the cuff links on her suit, and Firo chases after her, to return the cuff link.

As one can see, this is a confusing blend of a humongous cast of characters. And I'm not even finished writing about the side stories. A young girl named Eva Geonard is looking for her big brother. Nice Holystone and Jacuzzi Splot are also on the train for some reason, but we don't get to hear from them until (presumably) volume two.

It's a shame that the story is so mixed up, because "Baccano!" features some of the best looking action sequences. Anime fans will gasp in horror when someone cuts off Firo's fingers, only to see his blood and fingers returning to his hand as it regenerates. And Ladd Russo's action sequences are just plain brutal.

Isaac Dian and Mirva Harvent make for great comedians as well. After digging in an abandoned mine in California for gold and coming up empty, they get money through other means. In other words, they knock off some mafia members with a baseball bat and steal their money. They're probably the most enjoyable characters in the series.

Other than that, this series is average at best. Sure the action is great, but the plot is so big and perplexing that I just gave up after episode four. Then again, maybe the next volume is better, but I was disappointed.

(edit: Keep in mind that I changed my opinion of the series in my review of volume two.)