Stuff I Like: Baccano It's very easy, I imagine, when dealing with me for more than five minutes, to get the impression that I'm a hate-soaked ogre who sees nothing to actually enjoy in the world around me. At least, I hope you do, otherwise my bid for Ogre in 2012 is doomed to failure.
Sometimes however, it is entirely feasible for a story or series or creative piece of art to punch through that calloused shell and penetrate deep into the heart of my awesome gland, prompting me to vomit rainbows and sunshine for protracted periods of time until everyone is so sick of hearing my positive opinion about something, tells me to shut up, and prompts me to become certian that people only want to hear from me when I'm being a cynical, cranky ass.
Today, I sat down, and after some false starts, watched
Baccano. I started watching it while working on other things. That was my mistake - the other things are
not going to get worked on, or
Baccano is not going to be understood. It has a nonlinear plot and a
huge cast - something like sixteen characters or so, all introduced in the opening,
and then there are more introduced. It's full of nice touches and moments of surprise and delight, but I just needed to touch on something else, something that is actually, somewhat out of the realm of the characters designed by the author (as they were a novel originally).
Baccano is
really fucking sexy. I mean, I'm very susceptible to some kinds of fanservice. Heaving bosoms will often just plain get me going, and provided they're nicely done, T&A are things that can get me to forgive a series of a lot of its flaws (at this point, no examples spring to mind, but I'm sure they're out there). But
Baccano actually doesn't do much in the way of arse-shots or dipping cleavage and still manages to leave me constantly aghast at just how
attractive all the various characters are.
There are something like, nine female characters, and three males, all of whom I would happily do naughty, naughty things to, and they aren't ever oversexed or really even highlighted. Their hotness is entirely incidental to the story at large and the designs range from ugly to attractive in style, and from plain to downright breathtaking, but there's never a sense that characters are hot because they're important, or are just as much, important because they're hot.
Overall, it's a really exciting, interesting piece, quite confusing to watch unless you're willing to actually pay attention, and it handles cannonball-style watching better than a lot of other anime I've seen lately. So go forth! Find a way to watch it, and enjoy. It's a really good series, with its own clear sense of style and great music to boot.