Quote:
Originally Posted by SeijiSensei
I'm afraid I'm leaning more toward Sorrow-K's view about this show. I do like the glossy noir style and the acting, but so far the story seems almost childish with holes you can drive a truck through. Along with Ryoko's miraculous avoidance (survival?) at the bar, her whole approach to law enforcement reminds me of America in the 30's.
Perhaps I missed something, but isn't Ryoko both an officer of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police and the CEO of her family's private security firm? Nah, no conflict of interest there. What about minor things like warrants? Do Japanese police forces routinely break into suspicious buildings on their own and pilfer evidence?
I like the glamour and the romance. (It seems Ryoko must end up in Junichirou's arms at least two or three times per episode.) However, office romances between superior and subordinate almost always end badly in real life (been there, done that), and Ryoko's aggressively sexual manner with Junichirou makes me cringe a bit. I feel sorry for the guy; even if he has feelings for her, he'd still be putting his career on the line if he ever expresses them.
As for the opening credits, of course they're a tribute to Maurice Binder, who created the dancing nudes sequence that became the trademark for the Bond films. The first episode plays on the Bond theme as well, dressing Junichirou in that elegant tuxedo. There is also, perhaps, a touch of satire here, since it's unclear which of our leads is really the Bond-equivalent. Perhaps it "takes two" in this case mixing Ryoko's smarts and intuition with Junichirou's fists and more plodding, but still effective intelligence.
I'm still going to watch this for a while for its pure entertainment value and its adult cast. But having just watched all of Kure-nai again before starting this, the contrast was rather large.
And, tiger, I'm a bit surprised that you can sport Sora as your avatar and then say there haven't been any good jazz scores in anime since Cowboy Bebop. Maybe it's because I'm old enough to remember the big-band sound that Yusuke Honma exploits so well in Oh! Edo Rocket. |
Ryoko is not the CEO, his dad is, althrough Ryoko is a shareholder and heiress. As for conflict of interests, it doesn't really exist in Japan (at least in dramas and anime) Beside the setting of the story is that JACES is the perfered place to work for retired officers and high-rank police so they there's no way they can stop Ryoko from being an officer and no one can stop her raising hell nor did they try other than Yukiko. ( Japan has a system that political/judicial figure tends to work for corporations after their term ends or retires.) And even she can't stop Ryoko because she can rarely out-argue Ryoko.
Case in point, there was once in novel Yukiko confronted Ryoko about sharing investigation information to her loli-maids and have them helping her in a case with weapons and computer hacking. Ryoko's reponse was:
1) Loli-maids are off-clock so now they are just nice civilians willing to help out and assist the police, not to mention they don't cost the govenment when usually in these civilian-assist scenario that government will provid some gratuity to the civilian/informants.
2) All guns are registered, therefore they are not illegal.
3) The system they are hacking into is JACES system, and as one of the majority sharholder, if she didn't mind, than it's non of police' bussiness.
And that shut Yukiko shut quite nicely despise the obvious fact that she know the loli-maids are basically Ryoko's personal force.
As for warrant, it never stops Ryoko before so why should it now. Besides it was sort of explained in episode one, the building owner(?) said he'll cooperate with the investigation and allows them to go in and look for what they want in return for Ryoko not leaking infomation about possible bribing/corruption. That's pretty much all Ryoko needed as excuse and to her it an free-for-all, lifetime membership pass.
As for Junichiro's career, it had already went down the drain the moment Ryoko made him her subordinate. He had a promising career path as an elite NON-CAREER officer. Now thanks to Ryoko, if she ever decide to dump him, his career would be pretty much finished because the rest of the police world had already put him as Ryoko's accomplice and would only try segregate him. ( Not that they are not doing it to him already) So sticking with Ryoko-sama is his only way to survive and only option.
But I doubt there will be any closure to their relation as the novel is still on-going and one of the great dynamic is that while Junichiro is a capable officer, he become incredibally dense when it comes to women.
After the first anime case, I felt a little letdown that there wasn't a monster in the first two episode, The snake doesn't count because it was just a normal snake on suped up steroid/HGH. On the other hand, while they linked this with exlicr and immortal drug, it wasn't linked to a specific legend or forklore like the novel always do and the plot isn't as tight as I would like.
But all in all, while the anime is definitly not on par with the novels, it is still pretty good series in my mind, espcially for poeple who had read the novel.