This season’s schedule is so packed that the winnowing down process is going to be a bit of a nightmare. Some shows I’d like to post on I’m just able to watch, and a few I’d like to watch not even that. Raise wa Tanin ga Ii was a relatively high expectations series going in and I don’t dislike it, so I at least want to check in on it even if it’s only possible to do so briefly. So here we are.
I’m still a little off-put by how old Ishida Akira (a great seiyuu) sounds as Kirishima. I shouldn’t be but it does impact the experience. In effect, I think that voice casts the story as something of a farce. Which actually could work, and maybe that’s even on-purpose – but if not, I’d call it a misstep. Kirishima is a piece of work, that’s for sure. Puts a GPS in Yoshino’s electronic dictionary, admits it and is surprised she’s mad. Put 20 kids in the hospital as a 5th-grader in a street fight. He’s a straight-up sociopath pretty much, never mind his kinks. I’m not sure whether we’re supposed to find him likeable and/or sympathetic or not.
As for Yoshino she’s certainly tough as a two-dollar steak. Apparently she really did sell that kidney – which I would have to say qualifies as an incredibly dumb move. She kind of dishes as good as she gets where Kirishima is concerned, but then that’s exactly why she turns him on. The subplot with the daughter of the president of one of the lesser syndicates was interesting. Yoshino winds up being the one to locate the missing daughter (by pure chance), who it turns out was mixed up (along with her father) with the Filipino mafia to the tune of 500 million Yen won by cheating at baccarat. If you ask me the pair of them got off pretty easily just being exiled.
I’ll give Raise wa Tanin credit for this much, it’s not romanticizing the mob. There are a lot of people doing dumb stuff here, which it has in common with The Fable and I suspect may be a pretty common thing in the reality of this setting. As with a couple other series this season (like Tsuma, Shougakusei ni Naru) I have a kind of morbid curiosity to see where things are headed more than actual affection at this point. Totally undecided here – maybe the patron poll, who knows – but I’ll see how I feel after next week.
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