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
Right, onto the anime with the stupid derp dog. I will be frank; I could never fully get into this anime and can’t really like it to any extant, I’m sorry. Now onto the review of the episode; a building is seen on fire and a weird person with a frizzy white afro is seen with the red haired princess. He attempts to sleep with her, pulling down her clothes and doing some really kinky stuff- shoving her fingers down his throat- but is then hypnotized by the princess. The guy is then seen around a bridge, where the police find him and call him out as a criminal. The guy then jumps of the bridge, after coming out of hypnotism for a second before seeing the colours once again. After a brief narration about the main characters and their role, the helpers are contacted with another job. This time they are tasked to find a map, the map of Japan, which would be dangerous if it were in foreign hands. Roman goes on a hunt to look for the map and finds the name of a seemly rich criminal from loosing to another gambling game. Roman then looks for the criminal in a nearby neighborhood, where he meets a small girl. The girl then screams and proclaims Roman to be a kidnapper and pervert, when suddenly her sister appears. And it’s the redhead princess, which apparently Roman has helped before by placing a sparrow baby back into its nest, because the redhead couldn’t do it herself. Roman leaves the area and is worried that he couldn’t find the guy, but then as he crosses a bridge the doctor tells Roman about a corpse he just found, the very criminal he is looking for.
Suzuki is seen with his ‘master’ who hands him a picture of the foreign person from episode one, and tells Suzuki that he needs to eliminate him. It cuts to the princess where she disappears and changes into another set of clothing. Koharu, Kanade and derp dog are together looking for leads to find the culprit who stole the map. The dog then gets a scent and follows it. A weird nun woman-who looks like the princess- is seen with a ninja-like person who is informed that the cage is ready. The dog follows the scent which leads him/her/it? -To a bunch of people who are moving a box, where the dog bits one of the cases prompting the guard to drop it. Derp dog then goes into ‘cute’ mode and the guard forgives him/her/it? Koharu then spots the map as the guard is picking up his case. The girls follow the guards to a large fort, where they see many foreign guards inside and wait for Roman to arrive. The nun presents the map to the foreign leader, described in the note and from the first episode, who apparently has red hair. The helpers arrive and Roman begins his assault on the fort. Unfortunate for him, he is outgunned buy still has his weird transformed power ranger armour, which Gennai states that it belongs to his father. Suzuki is seen hiding nearby intrigued by the amour and the person wearing it. Koharu then joins in and helps Roman in the assault and he manages to take the map from the leader, but just as the timer on his armour runs out. The timer expires and Roman is then in battle with the nun, who removes her clothes and shows herself to also be a foreigner with blonde hair, and manages to scratch Roman on his nose. The girl then goes for another attack but is protected by Koharu, and after some inexplicitly untold reason, she leaves them alone and throws the map to the escaping general leader, red head guy. Suzuki see’s him escaping and fires a shot at his back, when the red head suddenly fires his gun at the incoming bullet without turning. The helpers all come to Roman who is apparently poisoned from the scratches. The next day, the princess is overlooking the town, where she claims that she can’t wait to see the place in flames.
Right, I thought I was going to give a very brief summary but oh well. Anyways, this episode was the best one so far but it still isn’t enough for me to continue or find anything outstanding. This episode felt rather disjointed from the previous ones, and while there are some reoccurring characters, nothing much really carries over from the previous episodes. It is also strange to see how Koharu behaves in this episode, being a typical sister who for some reason loves to be praised by her brother, when in previous episodes she pretty much bashes him up. So that is very odd to say the least. Also, it seems that the princess’ hypnosis eye is the sharingan, it is pretty much the same design. Other than that, this episode is to build up the plot for the rest of the series since I get the gist of the larger story, which somehow involves the foreign person wanting to steal the sakura trees. While the plot is just slowly picking up, I wont continue to.
The animation doesn’t really attract me and since I haven’t seen Lupin III, it won’t draw me in further. There are many attempts of humour and almost all of the jokes fail to make me laugh or amuse me. The plot itself isn’t anything interesting thus far and I don’t really seeing it go far. Sorry if I am sounding too negative but the anime just isn’t appealing to me properly, since all the elements by themselves aren’t amazing and neither is it when all the elements are combined. That’s the underline of the anime, it’s not amazing, well its not bad nor good either, so mediocre might be the best term. So I am keeping this anime on hold until I get time to watch it, whenever that is.
