The Fable

This anime is an odd one as it is worth a one-time watch for combining multiple different genres, but not exactly because the combination of them is all that great, nor because each one of them is handled all that well individually either.

First, it is a comedy, with most jokes revolving around how the protagonist is unable to adapt to a common everyday life, and some minor ones about his non-sister trolling men. The first type suffers from no other character reacting to the situation in a way that comes off as funny, but rather having some “ah, I see” with a straight face type ... of reactions.

It is refreshing to have an anime which humor doesn’t revolve around characters yelling and exaggerating over the most minor things, but unless you are a fan of deadpan comedy, I don’t think these would work on you. Comedy rarely makes me laugh, and when the jokes and delivery themselves don’t even feel like trying to make me to, what can I consider them other than mediocre?

The second type comes off as very silly and dragged on to work on me, although I will admit that I found the battle of flirts between the non-sister and that one guy somewhat amusing, and even got a chuckle out of me.

The Fable is also a slice of life type of series but the premise itself prevents it from being a properly made common life type of story, how can you have a slice of life when that life is fabricated, out of the ordinary stuff keeps happening in it, and the main character doesn’t quite nail it? It is certainly an uncommon type of series for the genre that might work for people that are not usually pleased with it, but I don’t see how fans of it would fancy this one much.

The series is also a thriller, and for the most part it succeeds at presenting the most intense circumstances with suspense, as they involve normal people on risky situations with some rather high stakes. The problem is that the show is also a rule of cool action type of one, and that clashes with the other intentions, as most problems are resolved thanks to the protagonist being awesome.

That’s its main issue as a rule of cool type of action series as well. Every properly made work of that subgenre that I’ve seen on anime or live action succeeds primarily thanks to at least one of three main factors: creativity, great spectacle and antagonists that are close to the protagonists in levels of challenge and cool factor. None of these are all that present in the Fable, or at least not with that much success.

The situations the main characters have to deal with are presented in ways meant to be cool, but are also more like thrilling than anything else, while also rather typical for its genre and approached on a pretended semi-realistic way, thus their creativity is rather low.

The spectacle is easily the weakest aspect in this anime thanks to rather mediocre production values. The directing itself is fine, especially when it comes to saving the action scenes with their so-so animation, but the visuals themselves leave a lot to be desired for a work like this. I can give a compliment to the anime for looking actually dark when it is supposed to, which is a rare thing nowadays, but the artwork is simplistic, the character designs simple and their figures go off model often, the backgrounds rather unimpressive, the animation mostly static and with so-so motions on action scenes as previously mentioned, and the special effects aren’t all that good either, and they even feature some rather mediocre CGI.

The audio on the other hand is fine. I don’t like a single song among the two openings and endings of this anime, but the background music itself isn’t bad. The sound effects do their job fine and the voice acting is ok.

Like I hinted at previously, nothing so far poses that much of a challenge to the protagonist. There are a bunch of antagonists and secondary characters with their own agency and schemes, and several opponents on each arc, in turn completely outclassed by the ones of the following arcs, making you think that maybe now the main guy will face a proper threat, but no. When the climax of an arc comes, the protagonist resolves everything by being super awesome and far superior to anyone else around him.

What the anime ends up working most as ends up being the drama, surprisingly, as there are several really serious and mostly real and plausible situations in it, suffered mostly by women, and the series never tries to mix in some comedy in during those moments.

In a general sense, the writing takes its time at presenting the different characters and scenarios and properly excusing grouping them all together. Although rather slow paced and frankly boring to watch in my opinion, once you finish each arc you come to appreciate a proper structure of a well-established build up followed by a far better payoff, making a rather decent whole.

Another good aspect is having several characters with their own agency trying to outclass each other, despite everything being resolved by the super awesome protagonist, as well as enough downtime to present the mentality of all of them. There are several scenes where the cast discuss their ideas about the values of lives and deaths, types of people, different eras with different values and ways to act, working attitudes changing over time and generations, and more stuff.

I won’t say it’s amazing or anything, especially because I watched About the Movements of the Earth after this anime, but it is the most depth and substance and look into the cast that you will find it, so I think that’s worth the mention, despite how weird and twisted some of their ideologies might be. The weakest aspect of the story is of course feeling like mini arcs with no connection with one another, and the lack of an overall ending.

As far as characterization goes, it is easy to dismiss it as being divided between typical good people, mostly women, and typical assholes gagsters and assassins, mostly men, but on a closer inspection, not all yakuzas nor all gangsters are straight up bad, and not all common people are exactly good. In fact an everyday guy is the worst of them all, because at least the criminals themselves recognized that they are scum, while that one dude acts in denial and victimization.

What’s to appreciate is how every relevant character has their backdrop story explored, and although I can’t really say that there’s development, the resolutions feel satisfactory in how everyone gets what they deserve. The good guys get some proper peace and a renewed chance at life at the end in a cathartic way, and the wrongdoers get what’s coming to them, not in a sadistic “haha take that asshole” way for the pleasure of the audience, but rather through outcomes that feel bittersweet.

In the middle of all of that is the protagonist, who is the only one getting some slight change by becoming more humanized thanks to his newfound everyday life and companions. Too bad he is really serious and dry and rather boring to follow from beginning to end for me to consider him developed or interesting. Honestly is it mostly the same with everyone else, but least they are proactive, while he is mostly reactive and uninterested by mostly everything.

Like I said, I wouldn’t say this anime is exactly great, and I certainly didn’t enjoy it, and it has issues both on each one of its genres and as a whole in my opinion, but the combination of all of them and its odd approach to them, with some quality content and satisfactory conclusions here and there, make it a worthy one time watch for me, especially if you are looking for something somewhat different and retro feeling.

Read the manga instead. The animation presented in this adaptation is unfortunately nearly nonexistent. This adaptation simply didn't get the budget and/or care/love it deserved. It is such a shame because the manga is truly a hidden gem with an extremely unique take on a slice-of-life meets comedy and action genre. The characters are written to feel like real people unlike the annoying anime tropes that we're all used to at this point. The humor is subtle but really hits home and the story pulls you in and gets you extremely invested in what's gonna happen next. The manga is around 240 chapters of pure ... gold. I promise you it's worth the read and you'll probably end up binging it in 3-7 days like I did.

With all this in mind, the only reason you should watch this anime in my opinion is if you've already read the manga and want to see the story animated and voice acted no matter how lazily it's done because the source material is just that good.

Many people have been telling me how this is an underrated gem. It has a good score in MAL, a little above 8 out of 10. Does this anime live up to that?

§ Overview

An unnamed assassin, who has gained the notorious nickname 'The Fable,' is legendary. He can kill someone quickly and efficiently.

Suddenly, his boss decides to have him stop killing people for one year. He and his partner are given false names under the pretense that they are siblings. Together, they try to live an ordinary life. That, however, doesn't go smooth as planned as they attract trouble pretty quick.


§ Notes
...

1. It has the same mature tone as Golgo 13. I don't know who will win. Both are stoic. Clearly, both are on the autism spectrum.


2. The voice acting of The Fable, who was given the alias Satou Akira, as well as his 'sister' Youko are superb. Satou may be monotone, but his way of talking gives rise to funny situations delivered in a dry way.

Also, Youko has a quirky personality. She pretends to be drunk but beats the guys who want to hook up with her in the drinking game. Her voice acting is distinctive.


3. The art style is said to be ugly, and they are not entirely wrong. It's just that it fits the tone of the show.

The design of male characters are distinctive enough. I have an issue with the design of the female characters. They are said to be beautiful, but they don't really look so. Worse, they resemble each other too much. If male character design is satisfactory, the female character design flunks so hard.


4. There's a natural lid on how exciting this is. We are shown Satou's full capabilities as an assassin in Episode 1. But after that, we are only shown a shadow because most of the plot involves him trying to live an ordinary life, including having a job.

Whenever he needs to help other people, he is handicapped as he is not supposed to kill people. It's interesting why he is able to function well despite his handicap and how he became that capable. But at the end of the day, it could have been better.


5. With its slow pace, not everyone will like it. The action scenes are nice to watch because they are few. If you only want constant action, this is not for you.


§ Conclusion

It's a very good anime with mediocre execution. It's a gem if you watch it patiently and don't get mad at how dull the main character is and how slow the pacing may be.

This anime was certainly a rollercoaster ride - if my score was a reflection of how my journey went over the last six months it would be as follows:
How it began: 3
By the time it ended: 7

Let’s start with the bad: voice acting was unconventional, sleepy and sluggish. The first few episodes were so unbearable I thought the protagonist was mentally challenged (despite the premise of him being a legendary assassin), or that I had set the playback speed at 0.5x by accident. The animation felt cheap and the jokes were corny. I couldn’t drop the show fast enough.

However part of me felt that something ... ain’t right - like eating sushi for the first time at a third rated restaurant but deep down you know the same dish can potentially taste so much better at an authentic Japanese joint. Even though yakuza plotlines are a dime a dozen, a story can’t be that awful if there are two live action movies made for it right? Following that train of thought, fast forward a few weeks after dropping the anime I proceeded to watch the live action movies - boy so glad I did. None of the aforementioned issues were present in the live action movies. The casting for Akira, Yoko, and Misaki in the live action was perfect. The comedy was on point. If you’ve never read the manga like myself, highly recommend watching the live action first BEFORE diving into the anime - it’s a game changer.

Went back to watch the anime after the live action experience and everything became instantly better. Albeit still not a fan of the sluggish voice acting but it became tolerable because the story started to pick up. The Fable ended up being the casual slice of life yakuza show that I didn’t know I needed.

Oh, and Kuro-chan is the MVP.

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.