Jan 19, 2022
In my eyes, Gallery Fake is not perfect, but it appealed strongly to my personal tastes. It balances a fine line between interesting (borderline educational) information about the art world, characters with mature goals and emotions, and good clean fun. Sometimes that line is completely out of balance, but the show is never boring and always charming. I would call it a much more down-to-earth, less adventure-driven Lupin III, but only to compare and contrast the genre similarities and differences.
I thought the insight into the world of fine art would be my biggest draw, but it was actually the main characters that kept me
...
coming back for more until I was binging the final episodes. Fujita to me was like a Sherlock Holmes character with a dash of James Bond, with Sara's spirited but youthful energy making the duo wholesome /in general/. I will give a warning that there are more than a handful of episodes in which Fujita's behaviour towards Sara is piggish, cruel, and/or callous. I can't turn a blind eye to it as it was upsetting to me on a personal level, and sometimes even infuriating due to the whiplash in Fujita's behaviour between episodes. However, I can try to give the series my good faith as this was a common trope at the time the show was made and the episodes are probably not in chronological order, as most of them are a self-contained story with little to no reference to previous episodes. For all the viewers know, communication being excellent between Sara and Fujita could have happened later chronologically from when things were difficult to watch. At the times when things were good, I loved watching the cozy found family dynamic the two of them have with each other - it's clear that both deeply care about each other, just in their own way.
I have to also give props to all the opening and ending themes of the anime - they are varied in nature, and I loved watching until the very end of each episode in order to get my music fix. Pushim's "Anything For You", the third ending theme, is still stuck in my head right now as I type this paragraph... and I finished the series over a month ago!
There are only two things which prevented this series from being a masterpiece in my eyes. The first of these is due to the aforementioned self-contained story in most episodes. This leads to some characters appearing only once and then disappearing, never to be heard of again - including one very important character in the later part of the series, whose continued existence could have caused a lot of interesting drama for the main characters. I really think that that plot thread could have at least been concluded with a quick exposition or at least a throwaway line or two in the following episodes if there was no intent on having the character stick around. The second is that there is a varying quality in the writing of episodes, but I will say that most to me are at a comfortable mid-tier.
Overall: if you are a fan of the seinen genre, I definitely recommend Gallery Fake.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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