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This weekend I had the joy of kidnapping ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
varadia! And certainly did not force her to watch through all of Princess Tutu with me. There was just mild encouragement! Um.
However you all know my feelings about Princess Tutu (show of my heart and story of my soul etc.) so there is no need for me to reiterate them really. Instead I am going to talk about the other show we watched, Baccano!, which I was introduced to about a week before Lynne got here and was super excited to watch through again, which should tell you how much I liked it.
Basically, Baccano! is about gangsters, immortals, a couple of gangsters who are immortals, and an EPIC TON of completely insane people who collide in often brutal and often hilarious ways. (One of the funniest scenes involves two dangerous lunatics in a fight on the roof of a train, while a third patiently stands back and waits for her turn.) The story is told anachronically; there are three main linked plotlines that affect and impact each other:
- in 1930, two bottles of elixir of immortality go through a wacky Rube Goldberg-esque series of adventures that result in a bunch of Camorra bigwigs accidentally becoming immortal
- in 1932, an girl looking for her missing asshole brother gets caught up the fallout of the conflict between two mafia families and the Most Badass Newspaper Ever!
- and in 1931, a group of wannabe immortals staging a politically-motivated kidnapping; a group of psychotic gangsters staging a train hijacking for the ransom, the violence and the lulz; a group of teenaged bootleggers staging a robbery for the money; a scheming immortal child transporting secret explosives; and a pair of wacky thieves escaping from their latest train robbery all happen by pure chance to pick the same train. Which may or may not also be haunted by a bloodthirsty monster called the Rail Chaser. AS ONE MIGHT IMAGINE, hijinks ensue!
ETA: Now ACTUALLY with picspam!
However, if you are like me, what you will find most fun are the characters. Therefore, because I can:
Isaac and Miria are SUPER SKILLED thieves, MASTERS OF CUNNING DISGUISE. They stole a museum once! - okay, so they tried, and then they stole the door to make sure no one else could get in, which is almost as good. It's okay, though, they're making up for all their misdeeds now by stealing a rich man's money, which is bound to make his descendents happy because they they can stop fighting over it! :D? :D?
Maiza is a wise and kindly alchemist who has made a couple of rather baffling life decisions. First, he decided it would be an awesome idea to get all his best friends together on an isolated boat in the middle of the ocean and summon a demon to make them immortal. When that plan did not turn out quite as well as expected, he joined the Mafia.
Firo is actually fairly well-adjusted for an immortal teenaged cammorristo. Why not? He loves his job! He's BFFs with a lot of super-cool Mafia executives! Life is awesome! His hobbies include kicking petty thugs in the FACE, chivalrously chasing after beautiful young ladies to return their missing buttons, and avoiding damage to his excellent hat.
The Gandor brothers are badass Mafia executives and presumably are going to go on being badass Mafia executives for quite a while, thanks to the whole immortality thing. Berga beats people up. Luck, by comparison, is pleasant and sociable and likes poetry, which does not mean he won't shoot you in the head. Keith is my favorite because he doesn't talk ever and no one can remember his name or why he's a main character.
Ennis is a homunculus. She can eat your face. But she would prefer not to! She is kind and earnest, except when she is being ordered to brutally kill people, and wears very snazzy suits.
Nice blew off her eye in an explosives accident a few years back. Now she keeps a spare bomb in her empty eye socket. That tells you pretty much what you need to know about Nice.
Jacuzzi Splot gets nervous about meeting new people, and then he cries and apologizes. He gets scared when he hears ghost stories, and then he cries and freaks out. He gets angry when you kill his friends, and then he cries and knocks over eighteen of your speakeasies with a machine gun.
Ladd Russo is one of this series' resident sociopaths. He'll treat this train with love. ANGRY LOVE. It's very easy to keep Ladd happy, he skips down hallways in glee at the prospect of killing things. He also has a posse of friends who think his ideas are awesome, which tells you what you need to know about them. Lua Klein is his fiancee. He wants to kill her more than anyone else in the world, so he's going to marry her and kill her when he's killed everyone else. Lua seems pretty okay with this, quite possibly because she's on massive amounts of tranquillizers! NOBODY KNOWS. Astoundingly, he is not the most insane person in the series.
Chane Laforet can't speak, because she gave up her voice to protect her father's secrets. It's okay, though. Who needs a voice when you have very sharp knives and a psychic connection to your immortal dad! She has absolutely no right to consider everyone else in the series a weirdo, but that does not stop her.
Czeslaw, known to most of the unsuspecting people he meets as "poor little Czes," is relatively sane, considering that he's a two-hundred-year-old child who spent a significant percentage of those years being tortured and killed repeatedly by someone he trusted. The 'relatively' is of course the important part. His goal in life is to kill all the other immortals before they can get to him, which possibly makes sense under the circumstances.
Rachel is an information broker, which means she's supposed to be a dispassionate observer of events. Whether she is dealing with a request for romantic advice from a sociopath or casually saving the lives of half the cast, she is a.) saner and b.) more badass than you.
Dallas Genoard's life plan:
Step 1: Kick puppies.
Step 2: ????
Step 3: Profit!
Sadly, Dallas' life tends to actually work out more like this:
Step 1: Kick puppies.
Step 2: Get beaten up by puppy's extremely powerful friends and relatives. Repeatedly.
Step 3: ???????
Eve Genoard is very sweet, believes in miracles, and is very concerned about her brother Dallas. He was always very nice to her! Having money makes her sad, and she wishes she didn't.
Or, instead of reading all this, you can just go watch the intro on youtube, which introduces most of the main characters!
varadia! And certainly did not force her to watch through all of Princess Tutu with me. There was just mild encouragement! Um.However you all know my feelings about Princess Tutu (show of my heart and story of my soul etc.) so there is no need for me to reiterate them really. Instead I am going to talk about the other show we watched, Baccano!, which I was introduced to about a week before Lynne got here and was super excited to watch through again, which should tell you how much I liked it.
Basically, Baccano! is about gangsters, immortals, a couple of gangsters who are immortals, and an EPIC TON of completely insane people who collide in often brutal and often hilarious ways. (One of the funniest scenes involves two dangerous lunatics in a fight on the roof of a train, while a third patiently stands back and waits for her turn.) The story is told anachronically; there are three main linked plotlines that affect and impact each other:
- in 1930, two bottles of elixir of immortality go through a wacky Rube Goldberg-esque series of adventures that result in a bunch of Camorra bigwigs accidentally becoming immortal
- in 1932, an girl looking for her missing asshole brother gets caught up the fallout of the conflict between two mafia families and the Most Badass Newspaper Ever!
- and in 1931, a group of wannabe immortals staging a politically-motivated kidnapping; a group of psychotic gangsters staging a train hijacking for the ransom, the violence and the lulz; a group of teenaged bootleggers staging a robbery for the money; a scheming immortal child transporting secret explosives; and a pair of wacky thieves escaping from their latest train robbery all happen by pure chance to pick the same train. Which may or may not also be haunted by a bloodthirsty monster called the Rail Chaser. AS ONE MIGHT IMAGINE, hijinks ensue!
ETA: Now ACTUALLY with picspam!
However, if you are like me, what you will find most fun are the characters. Therefore, because I can:
Isaac and Miria are SUPER SKILLED thieves, MASTERS OF CUNNING DISGUISE. They stole a museum once! - okay, so they tried, and then they stole the door to make sure no one else could get in, which is almost as good. It's okay, though, they're making up for all their misdeeds now by stealing a rich man's money, which is bound to make his descendents happy because they they can stop fighting over it! :D? :D?
Maiza is a wise and kindly alchemist who has made a couple of rather baffling life decisions. First, he decided it would be an awesome idea to get all his best friends together on an isolated boat in the middle of the ocean and summon a demon to make them immortal. When that plan did not turn out quite as well as expected, he joined the Mafia.
Firo is actually fairly well-adjusted for an immortal teenaged cammorristo. Why not? He loves his job! He's BFFs with a lot of super-cool Mafia executives! Life is awesome! His hobbies include kicking petty thugs in the FACE, chivalrously chasing after beautiful young ladies to return their missing buttons, and avoiding damage to his excellent hat.
The Gandor brothers are badass Mafia executives and presumably are going to go on being badass Mafia executives for quite a while, thanks to the whole immortality thing. Berga beats people up. Luck, by comparison, is pleasant and sociable and likes poetry, which does not mean he won't shoot you in the head. Keith is my favorite because he doesn't talk ever and no one can remember his name or why he's a main character.
Ennis is a homunculus. She can eat your face. But she would prefer not to! She is kind and earnest, except when she is being ordered to brutally kill people, and wears very snazzy suits.
Nice blew off her eye in an explosives accident a few years back. Now she keeps a spare bomb in her empty eye socket. That tells you pretty much what you need to know about Nice.
Jacuzzi Splot gets nervous about meeting new people, and then he cries and apologizes. He gets scared when he hears ghost stories, and then he cries and freaks out. He gets angry when you kill his friends, and then he cries and knocks over eighteen of your speakeasies with a machine gun.
Ladd Russo is one of this series' resident sociopaths. He'll treat this train with love. ANGRY LOVE. It's very easy to keep Ladd happy, he skips down hallways in glee at the prospect of killing things. He also has a posse of friends who think his ideas are awesome, which tells you what you need to know about them. Lua Klein is his fiancee. He wants to kill her more than anyone else in the world, so he's going to marry her and kill her when he's killed everyone else. Lua seems pretty okay with this, quite possibly because she's on massive amounts of tranquillizers! NOBODY KNOWS. Astoundingly, he is not the most insane person in the series.
Chane Laforet can't speak, because she gave up her voice to protect her father's secrets. It's okay, though. Who needs a voice when you have very sharp knives and a psychic connection to your immortal dad! She has absolutely no right to consider everyone else in the series a weirdo, but that does not stop her.
Czeslaw, known to most of the unsuspecting people he meets as "poor little Czes," is relatively sane, considering that he's a two-hundred-year-old child who spent a significant percentage of those years being tortured and killed repeatedly by someone he trusted. The 'relatively' is of course the important part. His goal in life is to kill all the other immortals before they can get to him, which possibly makes sense under the circumstances.
Rachel is an information broker, which means she's supposed to be a dispassionate observer of events. Whether she is dealing with a request for romantic advice from a sociopath or casually saving the lives of half the cast, she is a.) saner and b.) more badass than you.
Dallas Genoard's life plan:
Step 1: Kick puppies.
Step 2: ????
Step 3: Profit!
Sadly, Dallas' life tends to actually work out more like this:
Step 1: Kick puppies.
Step 2: Get beaten up by puppy's extremely powerful friends and relatives. Repeatedly.
Step 3: ???????
Eve Genoard is very sweet, believes in miracles, and is very concerned about her brother Dallas. He was always very nice to her! Having money makes her sad, and she wishes she didn't.
Or, instead of reading all this, you can just go watch the intro on youtube, which introduces most of the main characters!