Absent heroes, absent core
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): Well whoever titled this episode “Absentee” has a pretty solid sense of irony because it’s a pretty accurate description of it in more ways than one. Most obviously because our two leads are nowhere to be seen throughout it, and also because without them it’s hard to really feel invested in most of what’s going on since they’re the primary core of the show at the moment. What we end up with instead are a series of connected events with the side characters, and while that doesn’t make for an outright horrible episode, it’s definitely not one of it’s stronger ones.
So this is a continuation of the Twilight Hunters’ raid on Ergalstulum and it’s a pretty action heavy episode. Though when it comes to this show’s production issues that now pretty much translates to: “oh no it’s an action heavy episode”. Thankfully this one is at least a lot more on model than the last instance and the action scenes are at least decently directed. The main thing going on here is Delico and one of the other members of the Monroe Family named Yang, searching through town for Erica in order to put a stop to her and along the way they pick up a Twilight named Heather who’s also searching for her, but instead looking for revenge since her sister was murdered. That’s…nice I guess. We haven’t spent nearly enough time with Delico to feel invested in his situation so I don’t really feel it’s worth the amount of time spent on it, though I suppose this issue can be partially attributed to the fact that this adaption’s only covering a small part of a series that seems to have a larger goal in mind. Perhaps it’ll pay off eventually on that end, but for right now it just sort of exists.
Beyond that, the other major events of this episode kind of happen in bits and pieces so rather than trying to explain them in detail since there’s not a whole lot there, I’ll just bullet-point them:
- Thanks to Loretta, Alex regains all her memories of her brother Emilio who’s currently busy bombing the town. I suspect they’ll be in for an unhappy family reunion next week (this is past the manga material I’ve actually read/bought so not sure what’ll actually go down next
- The Paulkee Guild gets attacked by one of the hunters and it turns out the boss of the guild and one of her subordinates who we met a while back are a lesbian couple which is kind of interesting. However, the boss doesn’t really seem to care much about being attacked and goes back to sleep while her men fight the hunter so I guess that’s it for her in this show.
- Doug manages to relay what’s happening to one of the Cristiano family members before dying from the injuries he got last week. At least I think. I’d certainly hope he’s not actually dead because it’s a pretty poor sendoff otherwise.
With all that touched on, the episode wraps up with Connie apparently being kidnapped by another one of the Hunters. It works as a decent cliffhanger though with only one episode left, it’s very unlikely that much will end up being resolved. Right now more than anything else, this adaptation is becoming a victim of its short length since it’s building up things that it’ll obviously never get to, but even if there’s no real resolution, I’m at least hoping that our two leads will get something big to do for the finale.
In Summary: This week’s Gangsta doesn’t really have much in the way of viable investment thanks to our two leads being completely absent from it. There’s nothing all that wrong with the side characters, but we haven’t learned about or spent nearly enough time with them for an episode focused on them alone to feel substantial. Combine that with the fact that next week’s episode is the last one, and it’s looking very unlikely the anime will end on a satisfactory note for anyone not looking to read the manga afterwards. I’m just hoping it at least manages to go out in a blaze of glory.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Funimation, Hulu
