×
  • remind me tomorrow
  • remind me next week
  • never remind me
Subscribe to the ANN Newsletter • Wake up every Sunday to a curated list of ANN's most interesting posts of the week. read more

Joker Game
Episode 4

by Jacob Chapman,

How would you rate episode 4 of
Joker Game ?
Community score: 4.0

For as much as Joker Game has continued to impress me, I seem to keep getting the opposite of what I asked for when it comes to character development. In the first two episodes, we got a compelling if somewhat distant character arc for our D Agency focus character, sakuma. In the third episode, the D Agency spy Hatano was reduced to a butt-kicking action hero with no real interiority. And now in the fourth episode, our new spy Fukumoto acts as little more than a plot device in an episode that isn't even told from his perspective at all. If I wanted more character development from this series, I should apparently stop asking for it!

Regardless, episode 4 is a major step up from everything that's come before in terms of raw, undiluted commentative bite. If the episodes before it were a fairly standard anti-nationalist reflection on the follies of World War II, this story is fueled by pure frothing liberal anger at the staggering hypocrisy and evil endemic to Japan's imperial army during this dark time in history. It takes many twists and turns to get there, but by the end, author Kōji Yanagi frames the occupation of Shanghai as a hierarchy driven by double lives, where systematic pederasty is so common amongst high-ranking Japanese "ambassadors" that they are compelled to cover it up with self-sabotaging acts that they blame on anti-Japanese sentiment from the common people they exploit. It's a horrifying dynamic where evil men feed off the "sinful" opportunities Shanghai offers them with one hand and bolster the city's further subjugation and invasion with the other. The end result is a haunting episode with a shocking conclusion, even though it has very little to do with Colonel Yuuki and his super-spies at all. Fukumoto is in and out of the episode with scarce minutes of screentime, acting the powderkeg that (temporarily) dismantles corruption in Shanghai, but the story is actually told by a sakuma.-like true believer named Sergeant Honma, who's forced to see his imperialist dogma unravel in spectacular fashion.

To help me understand the issues at stake in this episode, I read up a little on the conditions of Shanghai during Japan's wartime occupation. Turns out the city was so tense and politically divided that it's stressful just to read about, so I can't imagine what the experience of living there must have been like! Long story short, Shanghai was the hub of Japanese occupation during the war, and yet it functioned as one of the safest places to live as an Axis dissident in China. As a thriving urban center surrounded by war-torn chaos, it became a place of refuge for people the Nazis would normally exterminate (Jews especially), but Japan still technically controlled the city and they definitely did their darndest to control the media, which was practically vibrating with repressed anti-Japanese sentiment from native Chinese and anti-war Japanese alike. Fukumoto actually catches the attention of Sergeant Honma by posing as a liberal reporter who was so much of a firebrand that he'd caught flack from the government for his opinions before. The reporter's notorious reputation makes Honma more open to his observances of the anti-Japanese terrorist attack on his boss that he finds himself compelled to investigate.

Of course, Captain Oikawa orchestrated the attack on his own manor to both cover up his sins and incense further subjugation of China, but Honma's journey to the truth is paced so perfectly that his boss' shocking conspiratorial efforts feel more inevitable than surprising. In fact, if there's a place that the episode stumbles, it's in Oikawa's cackling reveal and hyperviolent demise. Cartoonish facial expressions aside, Oikawa's characterization is fine. He's incredibly evil, but in an upsettingly human way. His perversions and self-righteous attempts to cover them up in a way that would further the war effort seem pretty textbook for someone in his position, and the montage of disillusionment and despair we see him go through as he tells his story is downright chilling. It's also highly likely that his actions were based on some realities of Japanese military action during Shanghai's occupation, because they do make a great deal of sense considering the political climate at the time. Horrible, stomach-turning sense.

But there is something a little bit ridiculous about watching Oikawa reveal his twisted plot to Honma right before getting shot in the head by an unnamed officer who was also part of this corrupt pederast cabal, just out of impassioned revenge for the boy Oikawa sacrificed in the fake terrorist attack, because that one was his favorite. Deus ex Sex Predator, I guess. It's an important moment because it establishes that Oikawa's terrible actions were not unique amongst imperial officers in Shanghai, but Joker Game continues to not give a single flying duck about subtlety. I feel like there should be more decorum in a show that wants to provide commentary on real historical events, but then again: these guys are Nazis. When it comes to Nazis, I guess all bets are off. Go big or go home!

Ultimately, "City of Temptation" not only tells a chilling story of the fragile repression and hypocrisy fostered by Japan's imperialist dogma, it also firmly cements the D Agency as an actively anti-war initiative working counter to their government's wishes. We may not have learned anything about Fukumoto (except that he's really good at changing his face), but we've seen the true face of Colonel Yuuki's dream for Japan. Exposing Captain Oikawa's corruption was actively harmful to the continuing war effort, and even calling it beneficial for national security seems like a stretch. There was no other reason for Fukumoto to blow that whole situation up, except to weaken Japan's stranglehold on the city and their depiction in the media. Sergeant Honma is pretty clearly not going to stay silent about what he witnessed, and good luck cleaning up that office without anyone noticing! Anyway, I'm not sure what Colonel Yuuki thinks he can accomplish by picking away at the war effort under the watchful eye of his own government, but I'm eager to find out in the episodes to come.

Rating: A

Joker Game is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Jake has been an anime fan since childhood, and likes to chat about cartoons, pop culture, and visual novel dev on Twitter.


discuss this in the forum (121 posts) |
bookmark/share with: short url

back to Joker Game
Episode Review homepage / archives