No matter how much pressure there is to make anime adaptations, I’d always like to send extra kudos for anime original shows creating everything from scratch. Great Pretender is the epitome of that type. Done by WITT STUDIO, which is notorious for brilliant action and movement from the past two Attack on Titan series, fight scenes are magnificent even though they are not necessarily the main dish of the show. The background art is mesmerizing, like a painting. Visually, it’s already arresting. However, its storyline is what makes the show more interesting.
The Great Pretender is glamorous crime entertainment like the Hollywood Ocean 11 movies, yet in anime. The script is written by a screenwriter Ryota Kosawa who has worked on TV shows, but this is his first anime series. Music is another big part of the show, composed by Tokyo Ghoul’s Yutaka Yamada. Songs with lyrics are rarely used, except for ED, Freddie Mercury’s “The Great Pretender.” Overall, this show doesn’t give off a typical anime vibe; that is why it’s so refreshing.
Great Pretender gives 4 episodes for each heist, tightly plotted with threads of foreshadowing, which get pulled together one by one. Also, we gradually learn more about each character, which all seems shallow at first, but in fact, profoundly complicated. It’s impressive enough to see a con game plot with no loopholes, and then they manage to make us feel closer to the grifters. Given the Cowboy Bebop vibe from the OP, character design by Eva’s Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, stories traveling all over the world with multiple languages (Sub is recommended overdub since in the beginning the protagonist switches from Japanese to English, plus others make fun of his accent all the time), I think they’ve got the potential to have more Western fans than Japanese fans.