True to my word, I went ahead and watched the first episode of Baccano off of metalsnakezero’s suggestion. Keep these recommendations coming! The episode has the amusing title “The Vice President Doesn’t Say Anything About the Possibility of Him Being the Main Character” which is about long enough to be the name of a Fall-Out Boy song. As with most of these shows, so far, I found my expectations continually confounded every time I thought I’d pegged the tone of the show. The jazzy opening theme starts with a caper by Bonnie and Clyde-style couple pulling off a heist dressed as a pumpkinhead and pirate (or was it a witch? It went be so fast). I figure I’m in store for a modern version of LUPINE III, which was certainly welcome as I thoroughly enjoyed CASTLE OF CAGLIOSTRO when I first saw it as a teenager.
Then, of course, and I suppose I really shouldn’t be surprised, things get really meta.
By “meta”, I mean meta-fictional, which is a narrative sub-genre that either has characters jumping into what they see as fictional story or conceitedly pointing out that they, themselves, are in a fictional story. There are plenty of examples of this in Western popculture. PLEASANTVILLE, LAST ACTION HERO, THE NEVERENDING STORY… even Deadpool and Bugs Bunny’s tendency to talk to the audience are examples of metafiction. In this case, the metafiction manifests in framing sequences of a dialogue between the titular Vice President and a precocious junior reporter. They’re discussing who the main character in this story could be. I’ve found it’s always been impossible to judge whether an actor speaking in another language is any good at his performance but, in this case, there seemed to be a higher level of… expressiveness in the voice acting. The Vice President, in particular, was FEELING his role.
There’s fantasy upon fantasy in this series, and it was a bit of a trip to see Japanese immortals with dyed hair running around my hometown of Chicago (or was it actually New York? It wasn’t entirely clear.) To me, it felt like some bizarre fever dream I might experience after history class followed by a watching of, I don’t know, Darker Than Black. If the imagination of the English is perpetually stuck in the era of the Tudor Dynasty and Chinese’s forever caught in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms era, than Chicagoans’ minds are always in the 30s Prohibition period this series is set in. Sadly, Al Capone is probably the closest equivalent we have to Ben Franklin in Philly.
Anyway, I’m intrigued to see where this geographically, chronically and metafictionally-twisted opus will go. I might check out episode two once I get through some more pilots online, so keep those recommendations coming because I WILL watch them! I CHALLENGE you to!
– Tom Pinchuk is the writer of UNIMAGINABLE for Arcana Comics and HYBRID BASTARDS! for Archaia Comics. Watch out for the HYBRID BASTARDS! hardcover collection this March – - available for pre-order now on Amazon.com .
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