Title: Bakumatsu Gijinden Roman, 幕末義人伝 浪漫
Producers: TMS Entertainment, Nippon Columbia
Genres: Fantasy, Historical
Duration: 23 min. per episode
The stage is the close of the Edo period, an age when, not unlike our own time, both natural and man-made disasters left chaos in their wake. Manjiro makes a living helping the people of the troubled capital city, but behind the scenes, he also works in secret to take back precious belongings stolen from the people by unjust political powers and conspiratorial menaces. The people call him “Get-backer Roman.”
Fansubs watched: Crunchyroll
I am still not really getting into this anime, maybe it’s the animation or the premise, or the stupid derp dog. Roman is busy stealing form the rich again but is stopped by an unknown person, whom we saw last episode, but Roman is able to escape but without the money. Roman is worried how someone was able to catch him and wishes to sleep but having a hard working sister isn’t going to work. We are then introduced the man that stopped Roman, Suzuki Magoichi, who apparently turns down an offer to drink with the police chief. It also seems that the Kyoto Minawarigumi are getting a bad reputation for not being able to catch Roman. Suzuki is out to look for Roman, who is busy saving a girl from a crazy man with a knife. He is able to take the crazy down, but with help from a rock, and is then approached by Suzuki. He has a job for the helper, to help him find Yohei who is a leader in the group of travellers, and offers a large payment for the deed. But Roman declines the request. Suzuki is then seen reporting to a suspicious person who warns Suzuki about some people. Then, an old person is seen being chased by ninjas, who injured the old man and is found by Roman near a well and injured.
The man introduces himself as Yohei, the same person Suzuki was requesting and he doesn’t know why he was attacked. Suzuki rejects another offer from the police chief and the force gets suspicious with him, since you’re not suppose to reject the chiefs offer. Instead he is seen sleeping with one of the princess (I assume) where the other princess, the one in Roman’s dream in the first episode is seen with a ninja telling her that Yohei is seen. At night, the same group of ninjas attacks Yohei again but is saved by Roman and his friends, the zombies and log throwers. Roman is then confronted by Suzuki who says he is also here to protect Yohei. Then the ninjas finally arrive and he tells Roman that he will take care of them, with Roman taking the boat and rowing away with Yohei. Suzuki is fighting the ninjas when he grabs out his two golden guns and slaughters them all. Yohei escapes safely and is greeted by his travelling group, where Suzuki talks to him about Osuzu’s daughter, which he doesn’t know. Yohei and his group depart and Roman and Suzuki become friends. Suzuki is then seen talking to the same guy saying that Yohei doesn’t know about Ousuzu’s daughter and crosses Yohei’s name off a list.
For some reason this anime isn’t really appealing to me but there could be a number of reasons for this. It could be the weird animation, the odd premise, odd characters and story elements, and derp dog. The jokes and comedy in the episode isn’t very well done as well, though this episode is more enjoyable than the first. The episode seems to moving advancing a fair bit introducing new characters and possible villains, which is usually a nice thing. But I just really don’t like this anime as a whole. It’s not that I hate it but rather I can’t really get in the mood to watch it, get excited throughout the episode or even be thoroughly entertained. The episode had a better execution than the first and less jokes, so there must be some correlation here. The characters thus far are not really engaging and have no real depth.
For the more analytical side of things, we found out that Suzuki seems to be somewhat shady behing the scenes and the fact that he has guns, in the edo period. Something is seriously odd with this, especially when they are golden and extend into a sword. We can’t really tell if he wanted to protect Yohei, but he seems to be a reliable guy albeit with little emotions or feelings. We also are introduced to the police force, but that isn’t all that important. We also see a bit more of the princess, that she is apparently pulling the strings behind the attack on Yohei and is somewhat a villain. Which means that there are quite a number of villains so far, one to steal the sakura trees, one to search for Osuzu’s daughter and one for… something. Another odd thing is that crazy man with the knife, the rock that attacks him was thrown by somewhere else, most probably from Suzuki but that was not confirmed. The small chase scene of the ninjas and Roman is somewhat entertaining, somewhat.
This episode also introduces the opening; which has a very upbeat song that reminds of something oldish, like sort of retro. The song itself isn’t overly bad but not magnificent either. The animation concentrates a lot on abstract and secondary colours, which gives it a retro vibe as well, fitting with the song. There isn’t anything absolutely amazing in the animation but there is a use of CGI in the opening, which isn’t anything amazing either. But I guess all the colours and happy faces fit well with the theme of the music, and the anime’s goofyness.
While the second episode of Bakumatsu is better than the first, it still fails to captivate me or motivate me to watch more. There is no real complexity to the characters or plot, the animation is not to my taste and just not entertaining. I’ll give it one more episode to present to me something good.
