Shelf Life

Bac It Up

Next up was a series that I continue to be excited about, Claymore. Alas, the satisfaction wasn't immediate. After popping in the fourth disc, I could only watch about ten minutes of it before I had to dig out my third disc and rewatch the last episode, because there are some weird pacing problems in this show. It seems that once they started with the whole Clare-is-actually-really-good-at-killing-Awakened-Beings bit, the story lost a lot of its flow. Now they just throw her into situations in which she can “level up” her fighting abilities, and get one step closer to killing Priscilla. She continues to meet new Claymores, but the story is the same. They scoff at her low rank, but eventually realize that she's really impressive, and then they end up respecting each other, all while taking out an Awakened Being in the meantime.

For those who don't remember, in the last volume of Claymore, Clare inherited a new ability (and something else) from another Claymore that allows her to move her arm really fast and slash enemies with lightning speed. Armed with this new trick, she heads off to find her friend Raki. Along the way, she runs into a group of Claymores who are in town to fight an Awakened Being. Conveniently, this segues into some important exposition about where Priscilla is, and also why there are some Super Bosses that need to be reckoned with.

At this point, one of the drawbacks of Claymore becomes apparent. With 50-some Claymores around, it's really hard to keep them straight. Up until now, we'd only have to deal with a couple at a time, but by the last episode, we end up with a group of 24 Claymores—some of whom viewers had seen before. Whether or not viewers actually remember them is a little dicey. To their credit, they announce who each person is (“*gasp* It's Number whatever! Muriel! The One-With-The-That-Thing!”), but that doesn't really help. Supposedly some of these women may have fought with or against Clare before, but with their white hair and their grey eyes, who really remembers? That's the biggest visual downside about the show—while the austere appearances of the women (and the grotesque faces of the youma, but the disturbingly beautiful Awakened Beings) give the show a lot of artistic oomph, it does make the characterization a little vague. You can develop a relationship all you want to, but unless viewers can attach some memory or meaning to it, it doesn't live up to its potential when it's reintroduced.

Yes, the show is becoming increasingly choppy, and it seems apparent that the creators were rushed in their efforts to push the series towards a suitable ending, but there's enough inherent suspense that it's hard to stop watching. At this point, if you've been faithfully watching the show, you've moved past the point of no return, and now you need to know what happens next. Although Clare started off as somewhat of a dud, her determination and somewhat contrived ability to always win makes her a heroine that's easy to get behind. There's enough momentum from the first half of the show to carry viewers through to the end, and I hope that it can keep itself together long enough to deliver a decent ending.[TOP]

One more single volume release to stoke my fire—Baccano! volume 2. This show is so sexy. Way sexier than the 1930s even have the right to be, because nothing says hot jazz and glamour like sweet, sweet poverty. All the killing aside (because that's a downer!), there's just something about this show that makes it pop. Maybe it's the big band music that blares during the knife fights, or the cool mobsters in suits, or the madcap chaos that permeates this show, but it's lively, it's exhilarating, and gosh darnit, you will like it.

Even the bad guys are cooler than your average antagonists. There's this one guy who absorbs a person. Like, he actually puts his hand on some guy's face, and sucks his whole body through his pores. It's so cool that it's not even gruesome. The backstory of all these people who can absorb each other is explained later in the volume, but seeing it for the first time without explanation was absolutely surreal and amazing.

Part of what makes Baccano! so interesting is that it's somewhat of a jigsaw puzzle. Nothing is told linearly—the series is made up of a seemingly scrambled collection of action-packed scenes, that are slowly pieced together over time. Sometimes scenes will double back and get replayed from a different character's point of view, sometimes a story won't be fitted together until after three chronologically mixed takes. And it's not just the way that the show is set up—even the different elements that make up the series are like puzzle pieces taken from other action shows. There are mobsters, bootleggers, thieves, alchemists, demons, and even homunculi. It is one big bag of awesome things that someone threw in a burlap sack, then violently shook before finally throwing the pieces onto a storyboard. By the time the story elements, and the timelines, and the character relationships are finally pieced together, you're left with a story that's full of secrets, supernaturalism, and turf wars.

The series also does a really good job of grafting in a really swanky atmosphere into their dank 1930s setting. The soundtrack is full of slinky bass lines and slick riffs, and it goes well with the industrial backdrops of a dirty city. If I were to complain about one thing, though, it'd be the bizarre Brooklyn accents that some of the English voice actors are sporting. I don't want to single out any (or several) of the actors, but they're not consistent, and they kind of sound like caricatures of what a Texan might think a Brooklyn accent sounds like. Sometimes the accents are there, sometimes they're not, and sometimes, they end up sounding more like Tweety Bird. Throw in the Slavic accent that one of the alchemists have, and the whole production ends up sounding more like a bad video game (though he does a bang-up job, compared to his Brooklynite co-stars). It does add something to the series that makes the dub more fun to watch than the original Japanese version, but sometimes, those accents are really bad. I'd rather watch a period piece with newscaster English than one with bad accents, but at least it's not all bad.

Overall, Baccano! is amazingly fun. It may be a little jarring for those who are more used to linear storylines, but for those with the patience and attention span to piece these bits together, it's well worth it. The story is a lot of fun, and it's more complex than one would originally think. It's definitely worth picking up, even if it's being released one volume at a time.[TOP]