Great Pretender

A series of unfortunate events has led Makoto Edamura to adopt the life of crime—pickpocketing and scamming others for a living. However, after swindling a seemingly clueless tourist, Makoto discovers that he was the one tricked and, to make matters worse, that the police are now after him.

While making his escape, he runs into the tourist once again, who turns out to be a fellow con man named Laurent Thierry, and ends up following him to Los Angeles. In an attempt to defend his self-proclaimed title of "Japan's Greatest Swindler," Makoto challenges his rival to determine the better scammer. Accepting the competition, Laurent drops them off outside a huge mansion and claims that their target will be the biggest mafia boss on the West Coast.

As Makoto becomes increasingly involved with the cunning Laurent, his colorful associates, and the world of international high-stakes fraud, he soon realizes that he got more than what he bargained for as his self-declared skills are continually put to the test.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Thierry, Laurent Main

Suwabe, Junichi Japanese

Jones, Abigail Main

Fujiwara, Natsumi Japanese

Edamura, Makoto Main

Kobayashi, Chiaki Japanese

Moore, Cynthia Main

Sonozaki, Mie Japanese

Dorothy Supporting

Komatsu, Yuka Japanese

Kudou Supporting

Tadano, Youhei Japanese

Ozaki, Seiji Supporting

Sakuya, Shunsuke Japanese

Ibrahim, Sam Supporting

Komatsu, Fuminori Japanese

Suzaku, Akemi Supporting

Takashima, Gara Japanese

Meyer, Thomas Supporting

Hirakawa, Daisuke Japanese

Okada, Maiko Producer

Itou, Hitoshi Producer

Saitou, Masaya Producer

Kaburagi, Hiro Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Reviews

Jan 22, 2024

Zackamo

Recommended

I believe this is better defined as a comedy drama crime, following a group of con artists as they pull off various heists and scams around the world while dealing with their life issues. It's a unique and original show that impressed me with its cleverness. There are still some issues that make it imperfect but still a solid experience.
The show uses a multi-arc structure, with each arc focusing on a different heist and different characters. Its cards are given early on, but the expectations and some unexpected ones still keep it engaging. The character's morals are very questionable, though, and that's one disappointing aspect, ... not being consistent or realistic enough.
The show uses vibrant colors and watercolor backgrounds to create a vivid and realistic depiction of locations such as Los Angeles, Singapore, London, and Tokyo, making it a very colorfully gorgeous show.
The characters are not likable or ethical at first, but as they show their true colors during the arcs alongside their tragic backstories, their flaws and complexities are shown, making them relatable and sympathetic as the story progresses. Their motivations may clash and conflict with each other, but they also care for and support each other. They are charismatic and funny, with a lot of chemistry and dynamism. They are great pretenders with soul and depth.
Laurent is the mastermind of the show. He is smooth and clever, always with a plan and a backup plan. His backstory is also very interesting. He is not honest or ethical but has a good heart and is charming and charismatic. He is my favorite character.
The anime uses a lot of jazz, creating an atmosphere that matches the high-stakes tone. I also love the choice for ED music.
The dialogue is good, with memorable lines and good one-liners. It also deals with multiple languages and accents due to the present diversity. The world-building is realistic with some fantastical elements, and the different cultures are well presented.
I enjoyed the originality, and the flaws didn't ruin my overall experience. I kept trying to guess the tricks as if it were a mystery, and even if it goes too far with some absurdities, its predictability is subjective, where I can see many people getting disappointed with. The Western and Japanese influences are clear due to who worked on it, and I think all kinds of people would enjoy it. It is a lot of fun.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Mar 4, 2024

Elhwing

Mixed Feelings

Great Pretender has many things to offer, and could have been a great anime, but it fails to deliver towards the end, hence the mixed feelings review.

I'll try to explain down below every reason that might make you enjoy this anime while also disclosing the few parts that should make you lower your expectations.


Things done right :

- The art :

Although art is rather subjective, anyone will reckon that the art shown in this anime has a unique vibe, it's colorful, it's good looking, you have many different kind of places depicted ( urban places mostly, but from all around the world ... which adds even more diversity ).The same goes for character design, while some characters aren't that inspired, they all have their own style.

- The characters :

The cast of main characters is done well, and the anime's structure helps making the viewer interested in each and everyone of them.

- The story :

THE FIRST cases are well written, it's pretty thrilling to follow what's happening, there's clearly an inspiration from other famous con man movies like ocean's eleven etc... and it works pretty well with this anime format...

Things done wrong :

- The story :

Although the story at first was interesting to follow, the way they decided to wrap up the story is just... meh. It's hard to describe it without spoiling, but to put it simply, the first cases are plausible, the way the crew manages to scam some bad guys makes sense.
( Some corners are cut of course but it's tolerable for the viewer ) However, they decided to go with a "grandiose" arc to end the season, and it's way too convoluted, even more in comparison with the rest of the season. It's just purely unbelievable, and it does hurt the viewer's interest, because chances are he'll be disappointed by the events and might regret having watched this.

- The message :

It's very tightly linked with the last point, but because of how messed up the end is, it's also sending some weird message. Once again, it's pretty frustrating because this part was also done right the first cases, but it's completely missed in the last one. Not only does it send a really mixed message regarding the bad guys' criminal activities, but it's also screwing up the relationships between some characters, it's really hard to understand what happened during the writing process for this anime.


All in all, mixed feelings does sum it up pretty well. Great Pretender is a great anime from episode 1 to 14 and deserves a 9/10 for this part, but the episodes 15 to 23 make the story fall completely flat and probably deserves a 6 or 5/10. I'd still say that it was an interesting watch, but if I'm being objective, this is an anime where the story has a bigger importance than in other genres such as romcoms or shonen where we can be more generous if the writing quality decreases a bit in some arcs. Therefore, I can't rate it higher than 7 considering how hard they messed up the second half of the season, and if you want to give this show a try, you might be better off not watching it beyond episode 14.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Jun 24, 2021

SancheRamos

Not Recommended

Well-written

The Great Pretending that this anime is a well written story about con artists making well-crafted schemes and not a giant mess full of nonsensical plot twists and protagonism.

The Great Pretender was in fact a good anime in the beginning and it quickly became one of my favorites. The first season is worthy of a 10, with great schemes and character development put together in three interesting cases. This anime was very creative and stood out of the ordinary with fresh new ideas and characters with well constructed personalities. And it even chose a Freddie Mercury song for the outro! What could possibly go wrong?

Season ... 2 happened, giving us a very risky storyline that could go both ways: 1 - Give the anime an epiphany and improve a lot with a great story that may have been unexpected when you started watching but had been slowly building up to this point, or 2 - Putting it as a giant bait and resolve it in an edgy, disappointing way of ruining the show.

This arc was supposed to be Laurent's story as we finally get to know his flashback and why he is the way he is, and it all makes sense. With all that has happened in his childhood and after losing Dorothy, he basically gave up his soul to become a smart, unbeatable scammer who takes down gangsters, monarchs and rich bastards. All of that so he could avenge Dorothy in the future. This is why he is so selfish, arrogant and careless for the people he likes, he gave up on his human emotions with the trauma he suffered long ago.

This adds well to Laurent and Makoto’s duality that makes them as perfect antagonist and protagonist. They work together, but Makoto is constantly trying to outsmart him and failing, and always falling into his schemes, over and over again. Laurent likes the boy, but because of his past he is not attached nor shows any sign of true friendship towards him, seeing him more as a tool for his schemes. And Makoto eventually gets tired of it.

Makoto’s development is different from the rest. He starts as a low-level scammer who is actually a good guy, and he has a good heart, as we see in his interactions with his mom, Salazar, Abby and Cynthia. He has good ideals and wants to come out clean to live a normal life, something that Laurent’s team has taken from him a lot of times.

This is why Makoto is an interesting character in season 2. He has always been easily manipulated by the people around him, mainly by Laurent and recently his own father, and now that he works for Suzako, who besides being a TERRIBLE person who sells children, manipulates him really well and he is with someone who actually shows any care for him and treats him like family. And after all he’s been through, he had all the development to hate Laurent and to be what this season teased a lot of times, a villain who would outsmart him.

Laurent may be somewhat of a good guy in the series but he is an antihero, as he screws over murderers, gangsters and people who are actually terrible, having unusual means for that. And by that I mean using Abby, Cynthia and Makoto as tools just so his plans can work. As an example, he knows Abby is suicidal and takes advantage of it to put her in risky situations that may result in her death, because she doesn’t care about her life. And we also have Makoto, whom he plays a lot with.

Makoto went through a lot during the series. He was a petty thief in Japan who had to flee the country because of Laurent, who also got him involved with narcotraffic, then he got tricked for the first time for trying to do what his moral compass said and denounce the international scammers to the FBI. After that, he tried to come out clean, spent some time in prison and tried to live an honest life as a mechanic, but Laurent won’t let that happen, he will set up a fake mentor for Makoto to look up to and believe that he is rebuilding his life, just so he could be completely broken when the truth is revealed afterwards and accept working for him again.

Even so he tried to do the “honest part” of the work by just being a mechanic, but ended up playing a major role in the scammers’ plan against the brothers and almost died for it. Once again he tries to come out clean, but Laurent sets up another plan and makes Makoto get into it. After that, one more time Makoto tries to live a normal life but, surprise surprise, Laurent manipulated everything so he could accidentaly join the Yakuza and become a tool to Laurent's plan to avenge his wife.

At that point I would have become paranoid with Laurent, and this is Makoto’s case as well. Many times he tried to be an honest person, just so Laurent could break his moral compass and show that there is no escape from him. After years with this guy and three schemes, he is told that his only purpose was to train for this big scheme of avenging Dorothy. And because of the father he hates, who also happens to be Laurent’s best friend.

In his last attempt of being a good person, Makoto tries to free the children that Suzaku is trafficking, just so his father could betray him. Then he has to watch two of his friends die in front of him, kill his own father and be left alone for MONTHS, without any information from Laurent nor knowing the truth about Abby and Cynthia. And Laurent planned for it to be that way, it all made sense in his head as he clearly underestimated Makoto. He believed that he would never turn against him, and even if he did, he would not manage to outsmart him.

Don't get me wrong, they may have forced the opposit but Suzaku is a TERRIBLE PERSON, she SELLS CHILDREN. And by choosing to stay on her side, helping her and liking her, he is choosing the dark side. And it makes sense that he does so. Because Laurent showed him that there was no escape from the life of crime, lied to him and played him like a toy, over and over again. And, because of him, Makoto is living the way he is. He has all the reasons to HATE Laurent and has the perfect construction of a protagonist turned into a villain. And this leads to the final scene.

The scene where Makoto betrays Laurent. He follows his plan of defeating both companies and stealing their money, and then brings up an armed group to surrender them and protect Suzaku. And what could the french scammer do? He didn’t think about this at all, he was trying to avenge the love of his life, the only thing he cared more than schemes and heists. He was hallucinating with Dorothy on his chair, Dorothy talking to him, and even bursted into anger in the end by attempting to kill Liu to avenge her death. His only trace of humanity was also his fatal flaw, and Makoto took the chance to finally outsmart him.

Then he has his own Kira moment, he laughs and give us a speech that sums the entire series perfectly. Con artists are supposed to be lone wolves and independent, but when the hard times come, they will sacrifice everything for the group. Oz let himself be imprisoned, abandoned his son and wife and let her die alone just so he could help Laurent avenge Dorothy. And he is honest about the scammers, even though they’re in the right here, as you know, he is working for a woman who sells children. He finally confronts his dad, Laurent and the group and shows that their actions towards him had a consequence. Just so, in his arrogance, he makes a mistake and dies.

I wish that was the ending.

What happens next is a bunch of nonsense that shows that this is not a single story. Rather, a lot of different stories squished into one.

They wanted to do Makoto’s bastardization and revolt, but also wanted to make a happy ending where the protagonists can all be friends and make a possibility of a third season.

They make all of this be a plan, and it makes no sense. Makoto showing his true feelings and hiring an additional group to throw off one of his allies makes no sense. Their reactions and the unnecessary acting of all that makes no sense. Makoto’s character construction of becoming a villain and Laurent messing up his biggest plan because of his decay into madness and the trauma of losing Dorothy, all thrown into the trash.

The second season had other problems like Oz’s introduction and quickly redemption with his son that ends in a betrayal that is very predictable for how fast the entire thing is. Another one was the recycling of the first arc’s fakeout deaths of two main characters who turned out to be alive and working together with the person who killed them.

And also Makoto’s second meeting with the father he supposedly killed, not acting surprised or shocked, that tied up in a 2-episode flashback sequence without explaining anything of what was happening in the current time. And don’t forget that Makoto, who spent months imprisoning and training child slaves, doesn’t get that mentioned at all afterwards, as they force us that he has never done anything fucked up like a villain would do.

Talking about Oz, I gotta mention that he is the absolut worst character of this series.

He neglected his family for decades, didn't care about his wife dying in a hospital bed, didn't care to go after his son, hid the truth from him, and that's just him on the "good side". He worked for the chinese mafia for YEARS, dealing with human traffic and helping Liu and Suzaku SELL CHILDREN, and it's a huge thing to justify by saying that somehow this was part of the Avenging Dorothy Master Plan. All of that just to make Makoto's final confrontation with him a complete JOKE and make him instantly forgive him afterwards.

But, yeah, for me the thing that ruined this great anime was The Great Fanservice at the end and the discarding of what could have made this anime really stand out. And also they bringing up the first three villains, Cassano (narcotrafficker, murderer, rapist), Ibrahim (scammer, pedophile, murderer, crippled Lewis) and Coleman (scammer, thief, manipulator, ruined Cynthia's boyfriend's entire life) as friendly and living happy, wealthy lives, just to ruin the first 3 arcs. And also Dorothy being alive this whole time, just to shit even more on this season's story and to take out the sense of Laurent's motivations.

By the way did I mention that they bring up human traffic, romanticize the person who does it and this whole plot is totally overshadowed by the revenge one and literally NOTHING happens to the traffickers afterwards?

The first season was good and I recommend it, but the second one was a huge awful mess. It's like a pizza cutter. Too edge, no point.

Between this and Yesterday I think I won't watch anymore animes whose titles are references to great songs by legendary musicians. They tend to turn out terribly.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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