(L+CR) Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens

[Yu Ominae]

https://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?t=150583

Created the thread for the ongoing LN series.

[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by Irenesharda

Another great episode.
I'm a bit surprised that they didn't let the mistaken identity with Saito go on for longer. I expected them to go after him first, but it looks like they smartly figured out quickly that he was just the fall guy.
Lin is a guy on a mission, and he is amazing with a knife. I love how many different knives he has for different situations. That Chinese boss is scum though. I'm hoping that Lin makes him suffer.

I hope Lin pays a professional to make him suffer.

[Irenesharda]

You know, it wasn't until I ran the numbers that you realize how unsustainable this world is. 3% sounds small, but when you apply that to a large enough population, the amount of people that are hitmen in this world in such a small amount of space is ridiculous.
The current known population of Hakata is 228,000 people. This means that about 6,840 of those people are all hitmen, operating in a space only 31.47 square kilometers big.
I can't see how all of them would be able to find work on a regular basis and not be stepping on each other's toes? And where are all these people with all this money that seem to all be in Fukuoka's general area, that can pay for all these hitmen? Are there really that many people to kill?
And even if each hitman killed one person in the entire year, that would mean that Japan has at least, almost 7,000 violent crimes happening every year in this one small section alone. That more than 15x the amount of murders that happen in the entire country in recent years.

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

I hope Lin pays a professional to make him suffer.

Yeah, you're in an area where professional torturers advertise on the street, you might as well make use of them. Plus he'll probably give you a discount!

[LG-MAX 2.o]

I live in Brazil, so I really wish only 3% were murderers here.

[Haak]

Okay fine, I'll stick with this show a bit longer only to see what happens to the crossdresser. Still feels like it's trying too hard to convince me that it's got style when it doesn't. That Niwaka Samurai flashback was pure cringe.

[bakato]

Originally Posted by Irenesharda

You know, it wasn't until I ran the numbers that you realize how unsustainable this world is. 3% sounds small, but when you apply that to a large enough population, the amount of people that are hitmen in this world in such a small amount of space is ridiculous.
The current known population of Hakata is 228,000 people. This means that about 6,840 of those people are all hitmen, operating in a space only 31.47 square kilometers big.
I can't see how all of them would be able to find work on a regular basis and not be stepping on each other's toes? And where are all these people with all this money that seem to all be in Fukuoka's general area, that can pay for all these hitmen? Are there really that many people to kill?
And even if each hitman killed one person in the entire year, that would mean that Japan has at least, almost 7,000 violent crimes happening every year in this one small section alone. That more than 15x the amount of murders that happen in the entire country in recent years.

It's not like they hit on a daily basis. From what we've seen of Saitoh, a single hit rewards quite a bit of money. They probably have other part-time jobs to maintain civilian identities. You're looking at the wrong statistic. Hitmen don't always just flat out murder people. There are avengers who don't necessarily kill their targets and the hitmen might have to make their kills look like accidents. So we should be looking at deaths not related to disease.

[Irenesharda]

Originally Posted by bakato

It's not like they hit on a daily basis. From what we've seen of Saitoh, a single hit rewards quite a bit of money. They probably have other part-time jobs to maintain civilian identities. You're looking at the wrong statistic. Hitmen don't always just flat out murder people. There are avengers who don't necessarily kill their targets and the hitmen might have to make their kills look like accidents. So we should be looking at deaths not related to disease.

Yes, but I said every YEAR. if every hitman in the area killed only one person A YEAR it would still be many many times more people that have been murdered in in this one area, than in the entire country of Japan in the same amount of time.

And a hitman's primary job is to kill people for money. That's pretty much the definition of their occupation. Some maybe outliers yes, but even the Avengers have killed at least one person on screen already, and who knows how many others. Lin has already killed several people in only a few days. And if you want to add the deaths that are judged as accidents, that would add another huge amount of murders to the total.
Anyway you look at it, this is not a sustainable world by real world standards, and it would make Fukuoka, Japan's most crime ridden city by a large margin. Japan would be coming down extra hard on this area too. They take guns and drugs super seriously.

[bakato]

Originally Posted by Irenesharda

Yes, but I said every YEAR. if every hitman in the area killed only one person A YEAR it would still be many many times more people that have been murdered in in this one area, than in the entire country of Japan in the same amount of time.

And a hitman's primary job is to kill people for money. That's pretty much the definition of their occupation. Some maybe outliers yes, but even the Avengers have killed at least one person on screen already, and who knows how many others. Lin has already killed several people in only a few days. And if you want to add the deaths that are judged as accidents, that would add another huge amount of murders to the total.
Anyway you look at it, this is not a sustainable world by real world standards, and it would make Fukuoka, Japan's most crime ridden city by a large margin. Japan would be coming down extra hard on this area too. They take guns and drugs super seriously.

I said we shouldn't just be looking at murder cases. Add in disappearances, traffic accidents. and accidents in general. Is 7000 deaths greater than the number of disappearances, death by accidents, and murder of the whole country? Also factor in that the hits may be outside of Hakata.

We've seen the avengers, Banba, and Saitoh run side gigs when they're not killing people which is often.

[Irenesharda]

Originally Posted by bakato

I said we shouldn't just be looking at murder cases. Add in disappearances, traffic accidents. and accidents in general. Is 7000 deaths greater than the number of disappearances, death by accidents, and murder of the whole country? Also factor in that the hits may be outside of Hakata.

We've seen the avengers, Banba, and Saitoh run side gigs when they're not killing people which is often.

We still don't know if Banba qualifies as a hitman. Technically he's a PI, unless they reveal him to be the Samurai (which is a huge probability. Saito is this weird anomaly of idiocy. He's a hitman in title only.

As for the Avengers, sure they do side jobs, but we've already seen them kill two people in only three episodes worth of time. That's enough to add to the total.
And would it be greater, I'd honestly probably say yes. Even if you want to say that everyone is hiding their murders as accidents, you'd have to agree at least half of these murders would look like actual murders. Even if half of all the hitmen disguised their single yearly kill as an accident, the other half that didn't would amount the murders in Fukuoka to still be more than 10x the amount in Japan as a whole.

Of the hitmen we've seen so far, only the ones under the mayor's employ are actually bothering to disguise their hits, and even those are shaky (the guy even said in the episode that no one is going to believe a drunk driving incident is the same as using explosives to blow up a car). The Avengers are torturing and decapitating people, you can't hide that as an accident. Lin just guts and shoots people, doesn't bother to clean up. The Niwaka Samurai is killing people with katanas. The majority of this small sample of hitmen don't seem to bother to hide any of their murders.

And even if they struck outside Fukuoka, it would still be a lot. The amount of murders in the entire Fukuoka prefecture in 2014 was 47. Yes, only 47, and this includes attempts. And it's much lower than that recently. I would still hold that each hitman, even while doing sidejobs, would still kill at least one person a year. If they all hide them as accidents and even if they worked outside of Hakata, and even outside of Fukuoka city, that would mean that, at least 6,700 "accidents" would be happening in only a single prefecture. That would still be ridiculous.

But in the end of course, they've established this as an alternate world where Japan is a lot more free with crime than in real life. Especially if the hitman and assassin world is so bold as to have a nationwide corporation that is thinly veiled as Murder, Inc.

[Yu Ominae]

Man, all that foreshadowing...

Spoiler for Episode 4/Volume 1 novel stuff:

is right on the dot. Some dialogue was changed, but otherwise, the episode ends at V1. Next episode will start the next volume.

[Haak]

I guess this is the main reason why I don't think Lin and Banba have any real chemistry together. Their partnership is way too unequal. Lin is always coming up short in comparison to the infuriatingly perfect Banba.

Here's hoping the next arc will feature Lin helping Banba but I might not even be bothered to watch it.

Also how on earth do these guys reckon that getting a confession out of the Mayor's son will incriminate him when he's tied to a chair in a dark place and clearly pissing him scared? If I saw something like that without any context then I'd automatically be on his side.

[Irenesharda]

That was a great ending to the first arc. We find out exactly why the series is called Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens, with the entire cast of Hitmen and their associates being on a baseball team together.

I'm so glad that bastard of son got what he deserved, and Lin got some catharsis after all that pent up pain.
I'm interested in seeing what everyone is up to next. The ninja kid seems cool. I think Lin and Banba have a nice friendly chemistry, especially after we find out the conformation of the worst kept secret in the series of Banba being the Niwaka Samurai. I think we all saw that one coming episodes ago...

Banba is like the older brother that Lin never had since he's always had to be the older responsible one for his family. And Lin is that younger sibling that Banba looks out after. We'll probably find out more why Banba felt this need to help Lin so much. I'll be interested to see how this all plays out.
Also, loved seeing Banba cutting up guys, and It was hilarious seeing Jiro hairstyling a severed head.

[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by Haak

I guess this is the main reason why I don't think Lin and Banba have any real chemistry together. Their partnership is way too unequal. Lin is always coming up short in comparison to the infuriatingly perfect Banba.

Oh, yeah, come to think - didn't Baseball Kid turn out to be more useful than Lin?

[SeijiSensei]

I really liked the scene where the mayor's son got taken down with a baseball. Then we have the ending which recalled episode 23 of Samurai Champloo ("Baseball Blues"). Wonder if we'll actually see them play a game next episode? If so, how many of them will survive the experience?

This is actually a pretty fun series if you don't take it too seriously. I did feel bad about Lin's sister though, so it's not always a good time but surprisingly interesting.

[Irenesharda]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

Oh, yeah, come to think - didn't Baseball Kid turn out to be more useful than Lin?

That depends on what you mean by "useful". Lin is much more of main character in the series compared to Saito. However, Saito has had so much crap dumped on him since the first episode and has been pretty much completely useless, that they needed to give him at least one chance to shine.
If not, I would honestly be asking why he's even in the group as he's proven to be a failure in their line of work.

Lin is the heart of this series. He's the one you are mostly emotionally connected with. Banba is set up more as a foil for him. He's obvious older and while he acts a little ridiculously, he obviously has more strength, skill, and experience. That's not a bad thing.

To me, it's not fair to say they are not equal. They wouldn't be now that we know what Banba is capable of. However, that doesn't in anyway make Lin useless. He's had quite a few moments to shine and he has a nice connection with the rest of the characters.
He's weirdly, the audience avatar. While he's been in this world and knows many of ins and outs. He's being taught by the pros about how to become a team player and that everything's better when you have allies to watch your back and resources to help you out with. Banba serves more like the older brother to Lin, on his own he would actually be pretty boring, with him interacting with all the other characters, and especially Lin, he serves more as a great ingredient to a stew. Not the main ingredient, but still a necessary one.

[Yu Ominae]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

I hope Lin pays a professional to make him suffer.

Spoiler for EP 4 stuff:

Turns out it did happen. Though IIRC, Lin didn't contact him. Banba tagged Jiro along for the kidnap op.

[Anh_Minh]

Yeah. Shame the gang leader got off so easy, though.

[LG-MAX 2.o]

I never thought I would see an anime where the heroine is a transvestite, this is an event of the changes of time.

[Nivek von Beldo]

Pretty Nice end of chapter, so how much novels are? if we finish up one with 4 chapter means we're not running at all, pretty nice.

Yeah the title drop was nice

[Nivek von Beldo]

That Trap is an awful baseball player, better he remains as hitmen and trap by the time beign...seriously not even myself was that amateur and my aim is nonexistent...

So now all are looking for Saito(red rum) and the niwaka samurai and we've a new Hitmen(Saruchii/submarine ninja) in the mix

Saito need to learn more as hitmen, even as self defence...