DESCRIPTION

CAST

SPECIAL MysteryJoker Game: Kuroneko Yoru no Bouken
MANGA MysteryD no Maou
MANGA MysteryJoker Game: THE ANIMATION

REVIEWS

• 

  TheGruesomeGoblin

  30/100
  Did you know that this show was about spies?

  

  "I spy you. You're under arrest for espionage." ~An actual real line of dialogue from this show about spies.

  ---

  Introduction

  This show is an adaptation of a series of novels by Koji Yanagi. It's a show about a spy agency in the 1930's. There's no "main plot", although there's occasionally a couple of episodes that are actually linked together. More or less it's episodic, an episode about a spy on a train here, an episode about a spy on a boat there. Choosing to go for a more episodic feel is fine depending on how you do it.

  If it was just a bunch of interesting or entertaining spy missions, it would have been fine. But that's not really what it is. It really just feels like... "Okay, let's do a show about spies. There will be spies and they will be doing spy things." Invisible ink? That's a spy thing. Anti-amnesia training? That's a spy thing. Truth serum? Yeah man, throw it in. We gotta scrape the entirety of the bottom of the barrel. Actually, you know what? Let's be a little different, let's raise the stakes.

  TRUTH SERUM WASN'T ENOUGH, THERE'S ALSO AN ANTI-TRUTH SERUM AS A COUNTER. BOOYEAH, THOSE AMERICAN SPIES JUST GOT OUT SPIED. Wait, no. This is all wrong. We need interesting characters and interesting writing, not more generic spy thi--

  

  "Also, this is a real human being."

  ---

  A Lack of Interesting Characters

  

  Not pictured: two other spies, and the old spy who is of course the spymaster as he is the best spy because he is old.

  Throughout most of the anime, these guys are only rarely ever shown together. Also, we get their names like once in the first episode and like right after it's made clear that their names are spy names and therefore fake. Basically, none of their names matter, because there's no possible way you're going to actually remember or be able to tell any of these spies apart.

  There's... there's nothing there. They're all just spies and that's basically it. There were only two characters that I actually even still remember.

  First was the guy from the first two episodes who I initially believed was going to be the main character (he would become a spy and that would be the show) that in fact wasn't an actual spy but instead a military guy who had a tendency of saying how much he wanted to kill himself because that was more honorable than being a spy. But after the second episode, it goes mostly completely episodic and the guy I believed was going to be a main character shows up I think... once or twice after that.

  

  Japanese man almost goaded into commiting seppeku by American spy (anime 2016 spy pranks).

  Second of course, is the old spymaster character, Yuuki. He's only memorable because he shows up in most of the episodes because he's... well, the spymaster. Also, there's a whole episode dedicated to showing what you're supposed to believe is Yuuki's past, only for them to immediately go "Well no, that was this other guy. Maybe some details of all of that also fits Yuuki's actual past though." Wow, thanks. At least you tried to have ONE character.

  I couldn't honestly look at that picture up there and say. "Well, the guy who's in the brown suit was the spy who was the one who was in the train episode. The guy in the black suit was the one in the boat episode, and so forth." I honestly have no idea which one was which.

  ---

  All you had to do was do a show about spies.

  The only point where this show even manages to be anywhere near okay was towards the end when it was about Yuuki's past and the rivalry between "D Agency" (Yuuki's spy agency) and the spy agency that actually kills people. Oh yeah, by the way, "D Agency" never kills people. Pacifist spies sure are interesting and neat. Don't get me wrong, they didn't have to be like assassins... but have you ever heard of a little term called loose ends?

  Yet, everyone is utterly incapable of identifying or besting a single one of these pacifist spies.

  There is an episode where one of the spies goes to infiltrate a rebel group of literally like three people and one of those people is a German mole. The nonsensery of that aside, the episode literally starts with a firing squad about to open fire on an old woman tied to the tree SOLELY because she was being annoying. The spy character for that episode saves the old woman, has his head bonked which gives him amnesia, but he still remembers how to be a spy because of specialized spy training in case of amnesia, then has his head bonked again and that cures him of amnesia. You can't make this up.

  

  "Stack up enough head injuries and I'm sure it'll work out in the end. Or you'll die."

  There was another episode where a house is bombed, and the guy who ordered it in the first place has someone investigate it. His own crime that he himself committed. "You better not kill me, fellow. You know the thing where I make a bluff about some letter that I can't prove actually exists? If you kill me, that'll get sent to the authorities with due haste! Also, I hope this chap with this gun to my back doesn't end up shooting you instead for you are the bad guy of this situation! Oh ho! He did exactly what I predicted! Called it, you foolish buffoon!"

  Also, there's a dead child in the mix with the explosion because dead children = tragedy. Also, the dead child dressed like a girl and was a waitress/sex worker (???), and the guy who killed the bad guy did so because he loved him/her. That's... what even was that episode about again???

  

  There's nothing much to say about the boat episode (the guy would have survived if he had just ignored the crossword puzzle) or the train episode (spy dude kept a pigeon in his shirt for an entire seven hour train ride). The episode with the truth serum as well as the anti-truth serum was probably the closest to doing spies. Spy guy is captured by American spies and being interrogated and has to escape from this building all spylike. Oh yeah, this show's about spies!

  Also, this is just a general thing but don't end your show on a line from the first episode. Please. "Oh hey, that was from the first episode. They didn't have anything else better to end on?"

  ---

  Conclusion

  Did you know that this show was about spies? Completely uninteresting spies lacking any sort of personality or depth doing spy things, but spies nonetheless! Invisible ink! Truth serum! These are spy things!

  Most episodes are either generic or boring, others are downright baffling (the amnesia episode, the a building got bombed episode), but the episodes that are more about Yuuki (the old one) are almost pretty okay in comparison.

  But to be honest, did there really need to be 8-10 different spy characters anyways? There could have just been a couple and maybe they could have actually given them personalities but instead, every episode has to be a new (yet completely interchangeable with the others) spy. To be fair though, this is an adaptation of a novel series and blah blah blah.

  A score of 3 out of 10. Not the worst thing I've watched, but wouldn't recommend actually watching it. It's more towards the boring end of the spectrum. Although, I had a laugh in keeping track of all of the spy clichés as I watched it.

  BONUS: I give the Joker Game specials about a cat that foils a bunch of guys' attempt to bring down the "D Agency" a 4 out of 10. Because even though it was very brief, it had all of the different spy guys actually together and interacting with each other. It actually almost fooled me into thinking "Oh yeah, these guys are actual characters." Also, I'm fine with the thought that without this stray cat, this spy agency would have literally been taken down, being my final thought on this series.

  
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• 

  Scheveningen

  40/100
  A botched adaptation of mystery short stories that wastes its premise and misleads the viewer on its structure

  Despite a premise with a lot of potential, Joker Game not only does little with its WWII setting but fails at something as basic as establishing to the viewer what its narrative structure will be. It lacks clarity in signalling what the promise of the show is, whether it is going to be some form of grand strategy narrative with the spies as pieces, if it is going to be a dive into the nature of spy craft, or if it is just a mystery thriller with a WWII veneer. The last one I only managed to establish as a possibility after I went out of my way to see what kind of source material it had. The problem is that Joker Game never really fulfils any of these very well and ends up as an attempt at style over substance that does not quite land. The tone is the only thing that is established fairly well in that it is going to be fairly gritty and dark, if still highly stylized. Essentially the only thing it rules out immediately is that it is a spy film in the vein of the earlier James Bond films but nothing more, leaving everything about it impossibly vague.

  The first story that was adapted gives us an outside look into the spy organization from the perspective of the standard military. It is a reasonable introduction that creates an aura of mystique around spycraft since we are learning about everything in the midst of a counter-espionage operation. But outside of this, the show does not really communicate anything about the aims, structure or contents of the story is wishes to tell going forward. It does not even make it clear if this is a perspective we will be continuing with for the series or if this is merely meant to be a vignette to set the tone with most of the characters being discarded once it is over. What compounds this issue is that the opening narration that is supposed to frame the entire series portrays the agency to be the centre piece of the narrative that all stories will connect with or stem from.

  Only halfway through the series does it become clear there is no real throughline for the stories. The show's opening exposition monologue implicitly sells this idea that Japan's spy agency will affect the course of the war in some way and that this lens on the strategic level will be used to give coherence and context to the various stories presented to the viewer. Most of the time, we are never told why agents are in the scenarios they are in or how the information they gain or deny to the enemy affects anything in the larger picture. This in itself is not necessarily an issue if the show was established as only thematically connected short stories set during WWII that were meant to mostly stand alone. The problem comes from the failure to communicate this premise of the show accurately, and worst of all, it is only possible to figure this out with external research on the original source material. What we are left with is the agency taking a backseat since there are only a few episodes where any of the spies are working as a group. Even then, most stories focus on an individual spy and all of them suffer from a lack of any memorable characterisation since most do not explore them in any detail. The few characters that do get some depth rarely, if ever, appear again making all their development or insight we get into them moot. The only real recurring character is Yuuki, but that only really fmatters in for his own extended story, Double Joker, since his role as head of the agency barely factors in as anything more than a loose framing device in most other episodes.

  On the other hand, the issue with this show as a mystery-thriller is that the mysteries are largely unsolvable from the viewer's perspective and are more so spy action-dramas than something you would find in Agatha Christie or Sherlock Holmes. Simply put, the mysteries rely on information withheld from the viewer which can be dramatic but often ends up feeling cheap and obtuse with how often it is used to resolve things. Some of them are interesting and well-constructed enough to be somewhat enjoyable, such as the Asia Express and Double Joker. They were structured well with a clear objective for our point of view character, some knowledge of what is at stake, and a healthy amount of intrigue at how they will resolve the situation. However, most of the time, there is a complete lack of information given to the viewer, and occasionally, there is even a complete lack of context, the worst examples of which are Miscalculation and Robinson. Much of the intrigue is generated by having an excessive number of unknowns or even a complete lack of context instead of titbits of important information that the viewer can piece together to glean something meaningful to the narrative. For the large part, it means watching events unfold in an arbitrary manner with the viewer having to resort to genre-savviness to even remotely guess where things are headed instead of the text providing any natural clues or indicators. This would not be too detrimental if the viewer could still fall back on being entertained by compelling characters, but the show's failure to remotely develop anyone makes this saving grace impossible. The lack of a central narrative leaves viewers with no idea of who the various spies are before any of the stories occur, making it difficult to empathise with them or anticipate what they would do. What we do get is incredibly one-note and generic that, at times, it is even hard to keep track of who is who, much less remember their names or if they have appeared in a story before.

  Joker Game was, in part, particularly disappointing as someone interested in historical fiction since it never seems to embrace its setting. Much of their WWII-era setting is just window dressing or flavouring to the stories instead of being about anything central to it. There are some scenarios and stories derived from actual events, like HMS Liverpool stopping to board the Asama Maru and creating a diplomatic incident, but they are still barely relevant beyond a setting to tell a story. Much of the series be changed to the Cold War and most of it would remain intact with only minor alterations to the aesthetics and location. This also means they largely sidestep any controversy or issues regarding historical fiction of that period, especially given Japan's role in the war. While this is understandable, it begs the question of why the setting, which is sold as being central to the premise, is important at all. At the very least, it does not devolve into some ultra-nationalist fantasy or drivel, but that is mostly due to the whole series being so devoid of context that it never gets the chance to parade these spy stories as anything more than disjointed snippets. As a result, the show feels like it has nothing important or interesting to say as a piece of historical fiction since it never utilizes its setting.

  If it is not about the premise, the narrative or the characters, then what is left?

  Ultimately, Joker Game is a show that is run into the ground most of all by its very blatant failure to indicate what its most basic story structure is to the viewer. The whole spy agency premise is kept vague enough that it is tantalizing to viewers and keeps them hoping that it will somehow all tie together. It seems unlikely that the original short story collection had this problem and that this dishonest framing device is a function of a botched adaptation, either by playing it up too much or by inventing it in the first place. The episodes that are well done are strictly in the sense that they are self-contained short thrillers with a WWII flavour rather than anything really outstanding as a collective work or mystery. Most others come off as mystery for the sake of it since its resolution is obtuse to the viewer. It is easy to see how this would work as short fiction since it seems the main draw of these stories is to experience the internal workings of these characters as they go through the problem. That has always been the strength of writing as a medium, getting into the mind of the character, as opposed to the strength of animation in showing so much more of the world. It is then remarkable that the adaption seems to miss so much of this, choosing to highlight the suave, mysterious nature of most characters instead of giving the viewer more insight into their thoughts. With that said, Joker Game is a disappointing, if not dishonest, adaptation of what seems to be perfectly serviceable short stories that is hard to give more that a 4 out of 10. Only its few entertaining episodes prevent the entire series from being an entirely botched affair that would push it even lower.

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