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REVIEW: Night Raid 1931 Blu-Ray

Overall: B+

Night Raid 1931 ultimately gets a little too ambitious for its own good. It wants to be both a hard historical fiction work and a super-powered spy story, two foci which sometimes detrimentally compete with each other and, in so doing, fill up so much of the time that little is left for proper character development. None of the plot twists are particularly fresh, either, and the final disposition of one of the main characters feels unsatisfying.

Along the way the series shows snippets involving the heavy-handed way that the Japanese treated the Chinese, looks at how girls and young women from desperately poor families were sold off to help their families, touches upon the scourge of opium dens, and suggests that Japanese elements may have influenced China's internal conflicts during the time period. The occasional narration makes sure that viewers understand what is going on, too. In short, it is as unflattering a portrayal of Japan as one is likely to see in an anime series, and the creative staff at A-1 Pictures deserves credit for not pulling their punches on any of it.

How does that equal a B+ Key?
I mean, just for novelty sake?
For art sake?

As far as war stories go, FLAG is probably the closer comparison to something like Grave of the Fireflies than anything here.
Accuracy is nice, but unless you can emphasize "why" (I mean... shouldn't a period drama [especially one about something important] hammer the nails of truth a bit more... urgently?), then "why" watch?
I know I shouldn't compare an A1-Picture to something like Fireflies... but I dunno.

So what would you give it, then? Regardless of how you feel about how the series handles its subject matter, it is a well-made series and its structural, technical, and writing flaws aren't big enough to warrant it being thoroughly slammed.

But that's normal for anime titles that endeavor to portray historical events. Look at Grave of the Fireflies and Barefoot Gen: both of them showed the awful stuff that happened, but in a generally non-judgmental way. There are no recriminations in those movies, no one either overtly or covertly saying that such-and-such was right or wrong. They just lay out what happened, documentary-style, and let the audience be the judge. Tokyo Raid 1931 is far more similar to those than it is to Flag, which did have a lot to say and wasn't shy about saying it. Self-recrimination in cinema seems to be more of a Western (and especially American?) phenomenon anyway.

I mean, letting the audience feel everything for themselves generally does more for internal conflict than glazing history with spoiler[inexplicable superpowers, wooden characters, and an otherwise indifferent handling].
FLAG provided multiple sidepoints (one of the greatest and boldest decisions as I'm sure you'd agree too, if you haven't already) to the story; compared to a haphazardly planned piece of hollow, wood like Night Raid, wouldn't you say that the show failed?
I mean... what exactly was the point?

The creators just wanted to tell a spy tale that was deeply imbedded into actual historical events. Their biggest fault is that they got carried away with developing the historical context, doing so at the expense of character development. And the whole super-powers thing? I just looked at them as a substitute for all of the fancy gadgets normally seen in dedicated spy series. (And really, if you think about it, don't all of James Bond's cool toys have something of a super-hero flavor to them?)

Basically, I thought the historical context and a handful of really sharp episodes (the "Demon in the Opium Den" episode in particular) carried the weaker elements well enough to justify the writing grade I gave the series, and with all of the technical and dub merits being strong I didn't feel justified in giving an overall grade lower than what I did.

BTW does anyone else find it odd that Karbowski has been called to be the lead role in 2 almost back-to-back Sentai releases? I think there's a thing called actor overuse, and Sentai has achieved it.

I'm honestly not sure that this show can redeem itself after the awful cat-chasing episode, which brought back bad memories of GetBackers! Honestly, the teleporter and the telekinetic in Night Raid plagiarize Ban & Ginji, and the episode served no purpose but to showcase these striking--ahem--"similarities ", and allude to a similar "more than friends" scenario.

The annoying Chinese girl, their attempt at unneeded comic relief, truly grated on me.

Who is this Kirino in Night Raid, I thought the girl's name was Yukina.