The Fable

Fable, an assassin who works in organized crime, has been raised to the legendary status of a ruthless killer capable of murdering any man within six seconds. Six years after his debut, his boss fears that Fable has started to attract too much attention from the legal authorities, and he orders him to hide in Osaka for a year. Accompanied by his driver who assumes the identity of his sister, Fable is bound by a special condition: he must act as a civilian and not murder anyone lest he and his partner lose their lives.

However, the seemingly well-deserved holiday soon takes a grim turn. Takeshi Ebihara, the second-in-command of the Osaka mafia that officially protects the assassin, sees Fable's presence as a threat and wants to remove him. Constantly monitored by the yakuza and regularly put in life-or-death situations, Fable has no other choice but to outwit Takeshi's schemes if he wants to stay alive.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Satou, Akira Main

Okitsu, Kazuyuki Japanese

Satou, Youko Supporting

Sawashiro, Miyuki Japanese

Ebihara, Takeshi Supporting

Ootsuka, Akio Japanese

Jackal Tomioka Supporting

Fukushima, Jun Japanese

Shimizu, Misaki Supporting

Hanazawa, Kana Japanese

Kuroshio, Ryou Supporting

Iwasaki, Ryouta Japanese

Matsu Supporting

Mizuuchi, Kiyomitsu Japanese

Boss Supporting

Komura, Tetsuo Japanese

Saba, Hinako Supporting

Anzai, Chika Japanese

Kainuma, Etsuji Supporting

Asahina, Takumi Japanese

Onoue, Taiki Producer

Yoshio, Souta Producer

Wakabayashi, Hirokazu Producer

Shibata, Momo Producer

Reviews

Dec 1, 2024

JJMFREAP

Recommended

Right, this'll be a bit of a weird one, but I'll do my best to put into words how I feel about this show. In short though, it was a really fun anime that got better and better as it went on. Nonetheless, it has some issues. Here we go.

Let's just get some of the obvious stuff out of the way. The animation for this series was just not there. All the characters looked plain and uninspired, the posing and movement was stiff and lifeless, lots of reused scenes and no visual flare to speak of. A lot of times, characters lacked expression too, which ... is very important in a thriller. Seriously, it feels like for the most part, they did the absolute bare minimum to get the point across. So expect a lot of by the numbers shot-reverse shot dialogue sections, lots of still frames and minimal movement outside of action scenes. The studio can be damn thankful that the story is more than good enough to make this worthwhile and that the music and especially the voice acting did A LOT of heavy lifting to make this come together. Trust me, were this a lesser story, this anime would've been relegated to a dustbin right away.

Right, let's get into the good stuff though. The Fable is another awesome entry in the growing genre of "former Yakuza/hitman tries to live a normal life, but his past keeps catching up to him" alongside other series like Gokushufudou or Sakamoto Days. It's also great how, despite sounding very similar on paper, all of them have a very different approach to their story and are very distinct from one another and any other series out there. The Fable is absolutely brilliant in the way that it manages to balance comedy, action and tension. There's lots of jokes and many scenes got a good laugh out of me. Despite this, it also weaves a fantastic yakuza crime thriller in there too and both aspects only serve to enhance each other. It's a very delicate task to try and make your audience laugh, while also consistently keeping them on their toes at all times but dammit, it works! The fight scenes are also handled very uniquely, without prolonged exchanges of blows but instead were these physical games of chess, focused on very cerebral decision making between highly intelligent characters. Without gratuitous inner monologues, we get battles of wit punctuated by lighting fast John Wick-style showdowns. In a battle of professional assassins, the outcome can be decided in the blink of an eye, so every moment counts.

This brings us to another of the core strengths - the characters. It's often a slippery slope and quite hit or miss when anime try to have highly intelligent characters. However here, this is done wonderfully. Characters who are meant to be clever actually feel that way and the decisions they make are logical and creative. The outsmarting going on is very engaging and adds to the great sense of anticipation during every direct conflict. The way Fable also uses his genius in his field to handle every situation while keeping his promise not to kill anyone is thoroughly fascinating. Beyond conflict though, the characters are also all very charismatic, engaging and interesting. All of them have depth and a mixture of realistic, believable flaws, all sprinkled with just the right amount of exaggerated absurdity to make them slot right in with the overall comedic tone of the story. They absolutely steal the show and this makes this overall very dialogue heavy series never drag or feel dull and as I said earlier, the fantastic voice acting carries a lot of the weight in order to make the whole experience come together well. I mean, both Kenjiro Tsuda and Takehito Koyasu showed up, so we've checked all the boxes of making a proper yakuza thriller.

Overall, I enjoyed what I saw from this anime, but there were definitely glaring flaws. The story is excellent and unique and the characters are easily the greatest thing about it, but I can't lie, the really cheap visuals detracts greatly from the experience. The stiff and janky animation makes the emotional scenes less impactful than they should be and the dull, generic, bright colour palette used detracts from the cool neo-noir atmosphere that I feel befits this kind of story. Were this tale less exciting than it was, this anime would've been given no more than a 5 on here and it would've been swiftly forgotten about.

My final verdict is that this is still an enjoyable experience overall and still worth a watch, but I'll definitely be deferring to the superior manga for the full story. If and when this gets greenlit for a second season, I would very much rather a different more passionate studio be given the job.

TLDR: Божката пука/10

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Oct 6, 2024

Handler-_-One

Mixed Feelings

The premise of this anime looked really good and gave me hopes that this might be "IT" to watch and enjoy it fully. But although the plan looked good, it was kinda poorly executed.
The characters never really seemed to develop from what they are and that is bad news for anime that is 25 eps... i mean it would be ok for me for they to stay the same if it was 12 eps but not acceptable for 25 ep anime.
Also if you think oh its anime about a legendary pro hitman and crime and its going to have some hot action packed and stacked.... ... well think again it has only the bare minimum.
And dont even bother with the "comedy" and "suspense" genres. i mean there is almost no comedy, at least i didnt find it funny, interesting? perhaps but not funny to make you laugh, and nothing suspenseful in this anime, since we all know how things will end every time after the first thing that happens.

In general this is an anime that had great potential but squandered it and honestly i cant fully recommend it although it is not bad, its nothing special, its interesting enough to fill your time if you dont have anything to do or any better anime to watch, but i cant say its a must watch sadly.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jun 12, 2024

prodinuyasha

Not Recommended

Funny

Preliminary (9/25 eps)

I will start by saying I haven’t touched the manga so my review will be based solely on the anime.

The premise of the show seems really cool, a hitman that has to try to live a normal life with his fake "sister" for a year. The setup was done and explained nicely in the first episode and I genuinely enjoyed it. But it goes downhill from there.

The cast of characters is really bland, they don’t bring much to the table bar the main character which reminds me in a lot of ways of Kazuma Kiryu from the Yakuza games. The pace of the show is ... way too static and sluggish to forget how boring the characters are even if I tried to forget about that aspect and try to enjoy this anime.

After completing 9 episodes it feels like the story didn’t progress much, 5 minutes of action get interrupted with 10 of a very dry and slow dialogue that kills all the momentum of the show.

I don’t have a problem with slower paced animes, but this one seems like a wasted potential since I really like the general idea of the show.

The animation is… like the rest of the show, average. But then again, it’s hard to let the animation shine when most of the screentime is taken by very static dialogue scenes.

Would I recommend it? As of now, it’s a waste of time and for a 24 episode show not to pick up until the half of it (if it even picks up at that point) you have to ask yourself if it’s really worth your time.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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