Picking up where we left off…and with even more problems
What They Say:
In the crooked city of Ergastulum, “Handymen” Nick and Worick are the guys to call on for dealing with trouble. During one of their jobs, they get mixed up with a prostitute named Alex, who’s pimp is next on their target list. However little do they know that their fates are about to become intertwined…
The Review:
Content (warning as portions of this review may contain spoilers):
After a week’s break and a recap episode, Gangsta’s finally ready to pick back up from where it left off. Though sadly it didn’t leave off under the best circumstances, so some problems persist. Until now most of the show’s biggest problems were mainly tied to how the adaption was handled or it’s various production issues and while the latter’s still there, this time around though, the bulk of the issues are tied to the source material.
To make a long story short this episode is largely disjointed and full of fluff. So much so that the amount that actually matters amounts to at most maybe 6 or 7 minutes. We learn a couple of new things here about how Dr. Theo is the only doctor in town who looks out for Twilights which is why Nic’s so submissive to him and that the gun shop girl Connie is apparently married to one of the Cristiano Family’s top officers, Marco. Both are kind of nice to know, but neither really means much of anything for right now. The same can kind of be said when Worick tells Delico the truth about his sister Erica, and how they both were under the impression she’d died during a Twilight hunt back in the day. In the grander scheme of things this stuff is probably important, but for the purposes of this 12 episode adaption, it’s not likely to lead to any real payoff so the amount of focus given to them feels pretty unnecessary.
Thanks to that, by the time we actually do get to the couple of really major things in this episode, they feel a lot more jumbled than they should, The first is Alex’s decision to proactively learn more about Twilights despite all the warnings she’s been given about getting to deep into things. It does in a sense tie into some of the earlier stuff above, and especially so when she makes sure Loretta will continue to support Twilights in spite of the assassination attempt, but it mostly just feels like part of the episode rather than anything stand out. Although it does fare somewhat better than the other big thing in the episode.
Corsica’s group of Twilight Hunters also happen to begin their attack midway through the episode and it’s kind of…underwhelming. Both partially due to the episode’s overall lack of focus and the animation being sub-par. It’s not as bad as episode 9’s fiasco but it’s fairly ugly, and made all the worse by the fact the hunters themselves are given so little dialogue here it’s hard to keep track of exactly what it is they’re even doing. The main gist seems to be that they’re out to target the Paulkee Guild and weaken the overall level of influence Twilights have in the city, but the show doesn’t do a particularly good job of framing it. That’ll likely be the focus for next week, although I can only hope it’s a bit more organized than this was.
In Summary:
Gangsta returns from it’s time off with a pretty jumbled episode. A lot of time is spend on fluffy little details that don’t really mean much to what the anime’s currently covering, and the material that actually is important ends up getting drowned by it in the process. Next week looks to be battle heavy as the Twilight Hunters continue their raid on the city, but given how the last action oriented episode fared, I’m more than a little worried it may run into the same problems.
Grade: C+
Streamed By: Funimation, Hulu
