Nijuu Mensou no Musume

There is a very specific reason why Daughter of 20 Faces doesn't work. However to properly explain this point, I have to spoil pretty much the entire plot. Bear with me though, because it's a damn good point.

Daugh­ter of 20 Faces is a Bones anime from spring 2008. The story is about a girl called Chieko who was freed from her hor­rible life with her evil step­mother by a band of thieves led by the cha­ris­matic 20 Faces. The band became Chieko’s sur­rog­ate fam­ily, with 20 Faces become a father fig­ure to her. He taught Chieko tricks of the trade along with many other les­sons ... about human­ity and mor­als and so on. Chieko was a pretty tal­en­ted thief in her own right even at a young age, many sug­gest­ing she would suc­ceed 20 Faces to be the new leader. She became the ‘daugh­ter of 20 faces’ so to say. That is, until shit got real in epis­ode 6. I can’t quite remem­ber the exact details, but basic­ally 20 Faces res­cued Chieko and dis­ap­peared off on a burn­ing train, pre­sum­ably to have died.

This is the Death of the Tutor, a pretty stand­ard trope in any mode of story-telling. Everything from Star Wars to Madoka Magica does this. The reason it hap­pens is to allow for fur­ther devel­op­ment of the main char­ac­ter. They learn the life les­sons from the tutor but they can’t move on while they live in the shadow of said tutor. The Death of the Tutor shocks them out of that sense of secur­ity and forces them to develop them­selves. This is exactly what hap­pens in Daugh­ter of 20 Faces. Chieko’s devel­op­ment went from tal­en­ted child under her evil step­mother to finally hav­ing the free­dom and guid­ance to train these tal­ents of her. Get­ting 20 Faces out the pic­ture forced Chieko to develop fur­ther. There was some mop­ing but she then went on to form the ‘detect­ive girls’ with some friends, start­ing down the road of a per­haps more law-abiding ver­sion of 20 Faces gang of thieves. They dis­cover a big­ger plot is going on, Chieko and co. start to uncover the mys­tery until about epis­ode 12 where the fatal happens.

20 Faces comes back.

And with that, the story dies.

Chieko reverts back to how she was before epis­ode 6. Her devel­op­ment is abor­ted. She’s back to rely­ing on 20 Faces for guid­ance, unable to tackle these prob­lems her­self. The ‘plot’ con­tin­ues, but the plot was never par­tic­u­larly good to begin with. It was a vague mys­tical sci­ence thing where water can blow up, scary sci­ent­ists plot world dom­in­a­tion and plot holes are as reg­u­lar as a panty flash in Ros­ario to Vam­pire. The real appeal of the anime lay in the devel­op­ment of Chieko’s char­ac­ter, which until now had been done bril­liantly. That ended with 20 Faces return. She wasn’t cap­able of devel­op­ing further.The author didn’t have the balls to kill off 20 Faces, but in bring­ing him back, he suc­ceeded in killing his very own story. The Death of the Tutor seems like a tired trope, but watch­ing Daugh­ter of 20 Faces brought to light how import­ant it truly is.

Since this is MAL, you're apparently meant to cover points like animation and sound even when they have nothing to do with the points you are making. So here we go:

Story: Plot is as dumb as fuck. The real story ends in episode 12
Art: Good. This is still Bones after all
Sound: Forgettable. Lots of Aya Hirano going 'Oji-san'
Character: See entire above review
Enjoyment: Ended when 20 Faces came back

The story focuses on a girl being destroyed by the world around her and the tall dark and handsome stranger who takes this 12 year old under his wing bringing her into his family of high profile thieves. This group represents her first real family and it's a short lived family because families in crime are bound to have powerful enemies. The remainder of the series is this girl fighting to hold onto the few bonds she has left, using the skills she took away from her first real "family".

I rate this anime at 5.8

The main character is truly depicted as super human, both ... personality wise and capability wise, which ruined it for me. The plot is some what sluggish, and the side characters that surround the main character all feel fake and predictable. The saving throw for this series, is the late in the series action scenes are spectacular, also the music is a massive part of this anime, super ceding any story elements to really drag the viewer in.

Daughter of Twenty Faces is a light mystery/adventure concerning a team of thieves traveling around the world and stealing precious heirlooms. The story plays out in a most romanticized manner, as the thieves have their life’s goal to “liberate” beautiful items from those who don’t deserve them, as well as having a sense of adventure and freedom to do anything they like, liberated themselves from the constrains of their society. This makes the feeling of the show to be bent too much on emotion and ideals and less on pragmatism or reality in general. So in order for someone to enjoy the anime, he or ... she must not try to rationalize too much whatever is going on in the story but rather take it easy and just enjoy the ride. Which is something I can say about all BONES anime; they always have great production values and premises and always mess up on the story development.

The setting of the show is an alternative world, pretty close to our own but with its own history and countries. Although the thieves are traveling all over the globe, based on clothes and building architecture to the most part it will feel like it takes place somewhere between late 19th and middle 20th century central Europe. This rather exotic and uncommon setting helps the audience to emerge better in the feeling of adventure it emits. I personally found it to be something between Sherlock Holmes and Oliver Twist in the way it tries to depict its imagery. The overall production values are also very good, with consistency throughout the show, usually lively motions, basic choreographies in battle, and far more than a change of clothes to depict when the characters are growing older. Even the CGI feels like it fits perfectly with the 2D animation. As for the soundtrack, it is full of fitting easy going tunes and not extremely emotional J-pop or rock. They also fit with the overall feeling of the series, which is not aiming to make your heart go wild but to subtly portrait the characters and the setting.

Although the band or romantic thieves is big, only the main two members of them are focused a lot and matter in the longrun. One is their leader, the Man of Twenty Faces, and the other is the girl he took under his wings in one of his missions, Chiko or the Daughter of Twenty faces. Their nicknames are based on the fact nobody outside the team knows how they look like in reality and they keep disguising themselves in each mission to make it even harder to have a helpful photo on their wanted poster. Truth is, Chiko is the only one who becomes memorable for her radical change from a weak girl to a dynamic woman (plus because she is voiced by Hirano, the voice actress of Haruhi). Other than that, they are both depicted as highly intelligent, extremely cunning, amazing at disguises and acrobatics. They give off an aura of security and superiority for acting and feeling completely above anyone else.

The truth is though that they are just a bit smarter than the rest, plus the entire world of the series appears to be run by idiots. Although we can excuse it somehow by thinking this is happening in a previous century where most people were ignorant and gullible, you are still made to think that everybody can be fooled with tricks which are child’s play or completely see-through with modern standards. You just have to accept the fact the heroes can put on a wig and a mask and become completely identical to the friends and allies of their opponents. And no, they don’t even do it in a fancy hi-tech way like in the Mission Impossible series. They also have access to super powerful technology, super awesome spy gadgets, super cool disguise kits, and can move around the world in fancy cars or cool zeppelins completely unnoticed. Hell, they can easily destroy everything and buy new ones if they are ever discovered, so it’s like they have endless money and can easily replace anything they waste. So in a way they win most of the time because their opponents are idiots or don’t have equipment from the future. Makes it kinda cheap and anti-climactic to see them constantly winning with childish tricks, full of immature bravado and impractical uses of technology. It is even dumber when the villains constantly make the ridiculous James Bond mistake of trying to imprison the heroes just to explain their plan to them before killing them instead of just killing them. Or they leave the room and assume they will be killed by someone else, something which of course never happens. But as I said you are supposed to like the atmosphere and the characters and not the story and its plausibility. It’s just that in the longrun it makes most of the cast to feel neglected or stupid and thus they are thrown aside for being completely uninteresting to bother remembering.

Speaking of the story, it never manages to be too exciting or memorable in terms of plot. The first part is episodic missions where Chiko slowly learns various tricks to use in their adventures. The second part is about an opposing team of also skilled villains trying to accomplish some devious scheme regarding the war that ended some years ago. Progressively the series becomes less mysterious (because Chiko is learning fast the basics of thievery) and far more action (because she now knows lots of tricks and so do the new enemies). In this regard, the initial feeling of excitement and adventure gives its place to something close to a dull fighting shounen. Although the story becomes more on-going, at the same time it feels like it moves way too fast without much payback in terms of action or character coloring. Especially the finale which is pretty much a snorefest.

Although this anime is in overall very uncommon in the way it tells its story and not following the usual anime clichés too much, down to it lacks the most vital element of any series: Excitement! It doesn’t have much of it and when it attempts to do so all you get is dumb villains, shallow ideology, and dull fighting shounen. Chiko and Man are cool but they are simply not enough to keep you interested in watching for more than a few episodes without something great to look forward to. So nice try but not great in overall.

SUGGESTION LIST
Big O
Pumpkin Scissors
Kino’s Journey
Lupin the 3rd
Alison and Lilia

And now for some excused scorings.
ART SECTION: 7/10
General Artwork 2/2 (interesting setting)
Character Figures 1/2 (nothing amazing but consistent)
Backgrounds 2/2 (detailed and with good CGI)
Animation 1/2 (good but dull)
Visual Effects 1/2 (good but dull)

SOUND SECTION: 7/10
Voice Acting 2/3 (good but rather cheesy on ideology)
Music Themes 3/4 (fitting but not memorable)
Sound Effects 2/3 (ok I guess)

STORY SECTION: 5/10
Premise 1/2 (cheesy)
Pacing 1/2 (slow)
Complexity 1/2 (too much focus on Chiko)
Plausibility 1/2 (mentally challenged but there)
Conclusion 1/2 (cheesy)

CHARACTER SECTION: 7/10
Presence 2/2 (bold)
Personality 2/2 (rather cheesy but well founded)
Backdrop 1/2 (generic and simplistic but it’s there)
Development 1/2 (mostly for Chiko but it’s there)
Catharsis 1/2 (generic and simplistic but it’s there)

VALUE SECTION: 4/10
Historical Value 0/3 (none)
Rewatchability 1/3 (small since most episodes are dull)
Memorability 3/4 (generally memorable but could have been much better)

ENJOYMENT SECTION: 3/10
Interesting for awhile but the lack of excitement and capable idiots kills it in the longrun.

VERDICT: 5.5/10