English Dub Review: Hakata Tonkostu Ramens “Teamwork”

Its an episode about exposition. Lots and lots of exposition.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Saitou has been framed for the murder of Ling’s sister, and Ling isn’t at all happy about that. He barges into the office of his former employer, the bald-headed bastard who orchestrated the frame and used Ling’s sister at the bait. With deadly efficiency, he takes out the mob boss’s goons and puts a gun to the boss’s head. After some quick taunting (He is an anime villain after all) another assassin grabs Ling from behind with intent to strangle him to death. Ling tries to fight back with a knife, but the enormous golem of a man cannot feel pain, apparently, and stabs Ling in the side. All seems lost until we see that Ling’s knife is actually also a gun, and Ling shoots the thug in the head. Just then, Banba shows up, late as usual, and takes Ling back to his place to nurse him back to health, but not before placing a listening device on the body of the giant goon Ling just iced.

Meanwhile, Saitou is at the Avengers bar, talking with Jirou at the bar about his life. Saitou tells him the reason he became an assassin was because he once hit a guy in the head really hard during a baseball game, and this apparently demonstrated his “Killer instinct” to Redrum Inc. After sharing his story, he begs Jirou to help him, to take revenge on the people who are trying to frame him. Smiling, Jirou accepts his offer.

Back at Banba’s place, Banba and Ling get to talking, and Banba offers to help Ling find his sister’s killer, in exchange for payment in “Spicy pollock Roe.” Meanwhile, the assassin duo, eyepatch man, and his female partner are driving down the road with the goon’s body in the back seat. They get a call from the psycho who killed Ling’s sister, who says that he wants more girls to “play” with. The two converse and eyepatch takes the time to tell the tale of the time he ran into the Niwaka samurai, the killer of hitmen. Surprise surprise, its how this guy lost his eye. After the Niwaka samurai butchered another hitman with an eyepatch as the witness, he then threw a knife through eyepatch’s sniper rifle scope, shattering the glass and blinding his right eye. During this, the mob boss begins trying to contact the agent of the Niwaka samurai, with intent to hire him to kill Saitou.

Banba and Ling begin working to find Ling’s sister’s killer, meeting up with Banba’s contacts. Through his contacts, mainly Banba’s tech-gifted informant Enokida, they find footage of the assassins responsible for Saitou’s framing. We already know who it is, of course; eyepatch and his partner, working for the mayor to apparently provide his son, the psychopath, with young girls to cut up. Now that they know who’s responsible, they’re hot on the trail of the mayor’s son, but before that, Banba’s got a visitor. Its the man who runs Banba’s favorite ramen cart, who is also an agent for hiring assassins. He informs Banba that he’s received a request for the Niwaka samurai to kill Ling and Banba, but Banba doesn’t seem terribly concerned and tells his friend that its no big deal.

Later, Enokida gets a shakedown from the mayor’s assassins, who demand to know where Banba is. Enokida, cool as ever, spills the beans under the pretense that they “owe him later” for the info. Following this, Banba meets Jirou at the cosmetic surgery clinic that fixed up Ling, and takes a look at the body Jirou has come by to drop off “for science.” We cut to later to in the day with Banba and Ling in disguise to intercept and kill the mayor’s son with a bogus human trafficking deal. They pass off a suitcase to a buyer, and then the episode ends with Enokida passively apologizing to Banba for giving him up. What a good friend this guy is.

Our Take:

Boy oh boy, I’m pretty amazed that a show about assassins in a city built for a proper noir story can be this boring. The writing and direction in this episode lack the style, wit or pacing to keep me interested in what’s going on, but the episode insists on having nothing but characters espousing expositional dialogue in well-lit rooms for the whole episode. Yet still, I don’t have a good idea of who these characters are or why I should care about their problems, and we’re the third episode in; I’m beginning to lose hope on that front. Its an episode as dry as a bowl of ramen with no seasoning. Bland, grating, and pointless.