Great Pretender

Great Pretender

A Netflix original anime by WIT Studio. It follows the antics of con artist Makoto Edamura who's dragged into bigger escapades than he can imagine. Has anyone checked it out yet?

Edited by ChicoTheParakeet on Sep 6th 2020 at 10:18:07 AM

Only seen the first arc so far but I enjoyed it. Might binge the second arc soon since this is the kind of show that's made to binge. Favorite character is definite Edamura so far but Pola Dickens might overtake him depending on how the second arc goes.

I’ve finished up to Snow of London arc. It’s a fun watch. The cast is colorful and the schemes they pull off tackle subject matter you don’t usually see in anime. Snow of London arc legit hit me in the feels.

Edited by fillerdude on Sep 6th 2020 at 10:06:10 AM

Anybody else finish the final arc yet? I feel it has some great highs, but I'm not fond of the ending. Especially the final two episodes and the con there.

Yeah, those last couple episodes have some things that really nag me, fumbling the ending to an otherwise stellar show.

One being bringing back the previous villains - all serious scumbags - who are no worse for wear, apparently totally cool with getting scammed, and the protagonists are totally fine working with them too. So obviously morals aren't really an issue here, but whatever. They're all con men; they want cash, not change. But that begs the the question: then why were they choosing these cons in this way? Which ties into the next issue.

The big thing being the way Makoto's character is handled, ending up having even less agency than he did at the start.

Everyone he ever knew has lied to or manipulated him, all for the service of this single con.

Culminating in him being explicitly left out of the loop when (as far as he knew), his father betrayed him and his friends were killed, leaving him to resign himself to handling human trafficking (and at least they handwave that away by saying that all the kids were bought up by Laurent's crew - and if I had more interest, I'd try to see if people at the auction could be spotted in the groups shots of con men - but again, how much do morals really matter here?).

Maybe, charitably, Makoto had it in the back of his mind that this still was all just con, but that's still a fucked thing to leave with a guy, as we explicitly see with Laurent in the aftermath of Dorothy's death. At least she has the excuse of having amnesia.

Everything he rants about to Laurent and Oz in the office is completely true. Manipulating his life and others just to fulfill their personal desire, not even really for revenge, but just to get their last job done right.

And then immediately after acknowledging those issues, the narrative rejects them, responding with... what? "Git gud scrub"? And then Oz caps it off by saying all this - including multiple attempts to control his own life - was just Makoto going through "a rebellious phase"?

tldr: the narrative leaves Makoto out of the loop too much, and puts Laurent in too much control.

Edited by Eschaton on Sep 27th 2020 at 12:30:20 PM

I've just started it (the English dub), and I like it a lot. I'm three episodes in. It's a very genre-knowledable anime. I can clearly see echoes of Ocean's Eleven and Leverage, among other con artist related works.

The above spoilers kind of concern me though.

Something I found kind of interesting/unique so far is the characterization of Makoto. What I mean, is that although it's pretty typical for manga/anime to have a Japanese protagonist on a multi-national team, and it's also not unusual for a protagonist to be a Butt-Monkey. But what is unusual is that while Makoto is a sympathetic character, a lot of the bad things that happen to him are karmic. And he seems to particularly invite bad karma whenever he engages in Patriotic Fervor.

Edited by Hodor2 on Dec 15th 2020 at 9:05:29 AM

I've just finished watching the show and pretty much covers anything I could say about the it.

I felt like the first Arc was the peak, with two and three starting to show some cracks that would continue in four. But for the most part being pretty solid.

Then four is just generally a big let down.

The music and animation was fantastic though, but with everything else I think this show lands as solidly average with some very high points once everything balances out.