Baccano is about...something complicated. There's three different mob factions, a pair of eccentric thieves, an explosive crazy crew, a political faction, a newspaper reporter, a sociopathic train conductor, and these guys who don't die. and they're all on an express train from Chicago to New York. Shit goes down there's shooting, stabbing, train-top fight sequences, lots of running around, the whole show is just chaotic mess. It's amazing.
The story-telling is fantastic. Not story-telling in that cinema-snob sense, I mean the way people tell stories, jumbled around going back to feel details as they come up with all the thread slowly weaving together into cohesive tapestry (the word tapestry gets over-used for this sort of thing but the weaving metaphor is solid and rug doesn't sounds as good). The animation is fluid in fight scenes and detailed in character moments and does a great job of capturing the prohibition era setting.
The characters are all unique, well-drawn and engaging although the big standouts for me a Isaac and Miria thieves ditzy enough to steal gold from the earth itself (yeah, mining) and not notice they haven't aged a day for seventy years. And Jacuzzi Splot (don't worry a lot of the names are stupid, you get used to it) a man who can stand onscreen crying like a baby (IT'S A NERVOUS CONDITION!!!!!!!), wailing like a little girl and still be the biggest badass in the whole show (which includes a slasher movie villain, an assassin, and a Joker-esque mob hitman). The acting on the dub is astoundingly good, a group of relative newcomers to the texas dub scene doing new york, chicago, and eastern european accent work that not only rings true but is vivid and expressive.
and to cap it all of it has a great big band jazz soundtrack.
you can watch it all here, for free, without breaking any laws right
here
