Anime Review: Baccano!

Baccano! was a series of light novels (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_novel) written by Ryohgo Narita and illustrated by Katsumi Enami, that got adapted into a 16 episode anime series in 2007. Since then the anime has been lavished with praise by the western anime community and held in high esteem as one of the best shows in the last few years.

Praise well-deserved.

Baccano takes place in the Prohibition era of the United States, between 1930-1932. The show often switches back and forth between different time periods without warning, creating a non-linear presentation.

There are three main tales in the story: The first concerns a struggle involving an immortality-bestowing elixir in 1930, the second chronicles the doomed voyage of the "Flying Pussyfoot" train in 1931, and the third and final story is young Eve Genoard's struggle to find her missing older brother Dallas Genoard in 1932.

What really makes Baccano is the characters: simply put, they're all awesome, which is pretty good considering how large of a cast it is. Pretty much all of them are in a morally grey area at best (considering most of them are criminals), with some just being downright bad, but even so they all remain charming and likable and you want to find out what happens to them.

The only character who I couldn't really find myself giving a shit about is Eve's brother Dallas; to put it without giving any outright spoilers, unlike characters like Ladd who are charmingly evil, Dallas is just an outright douchebag without many redeeming qualities to him whatsoever.

But outside of his bitch ass, everyone is baller.

Baccano also has a surprisingly stellar dub by Funimation, which I have yet to see myself, but it's gotten lots of praise from just about everyone I've spoken to, and it's even one of the dub jobs most of /a/ likes. So I assume it must be pretty good. So you can go either sub or dub for this one.

It's worth noting that the anime does not cover all of the light novels, which are still being published in Japan. If you look around for Baccano stuff you will see many characters who have yet to be introduced. Hopefully someday we will get a second season that covers the remaining stories.

In short: with a fun and diverse cast spinning very interesting stories within the span of a small 16 episodes, Baccano definitely should be on your watch list.