English Dub Season Review: Ikebukuro West Gate Park Season One
Overview (Spoilers Below):
Set in a neighborhood in Tokyo called Ikebukuro, Ikebukuro West Gate Park chronicles the misadventures of Makoto Majima. Makoto is ostensibly a writer, but more often than not he becomes involved in the darker happenings throughout Ikebukuro, including helping out Takashi Ando.
Takashi runs the G Boys, a street gang that runs the area, protecting its members and providing services and amenities to the general population in town. They may be good hearted, but not everything they do is completely legal, and the group finds themselves in hot water most episodes. And when a new charismatic cult-like leader named Kyoichi Ozaki arrives with a fresh faced gang of his own called the Red Angels, a fight ensues for the future of Ikebukuro.
Our Take:
Based on a series of novels from two decades ago and change, Ikebukuro West Gate Park can’t help but feel a little dated. It originally aired back in Fall 2020, but that’s not the only reason. It’s a story about one guy who has to navigate his way in a world ruled by street gangs and charismatic kingpins, and while that’s always a timeless kind of tale to tell, the series stumbles in the execution. It’s not a bad show, but it ends up as an average crime thriller that probably won’t be sticking around in viewers minds for very long.
The central plot revolves around the gang war that has threatened to blow up from nearly the beginning of the show. It’s basically a four episode arc that’s split in two parts, one in the middle of the season and one at the end. It’s kind of an interesting way to split up the story, but it kind of killed the momentum for me when it’s sandwiched between the show’s one-off mystery episodes, which are very hit or miss. One minute we’re exploring the depths of street warfare and the next we’re off to see a sob story about a single mother raising her child alone. None of the plot lines were egregiously bad on their own, but together they make a hodgepodge that never really forms into a cohesive series.
The characters themselves are all solid, but fairly one note for the most part. No one better embodies this than the lead man Makoto Majima. As the lead hero, the other characters constantly extol his virtues to the audience. But it seems less like he’s a great detective and more like he always happens to be in the right place at the right time. I wish we got more background info about him as well—he seems so well connected when it comes to being friendly with everyone from gang members to police officers around town, so I’d be curious about how all these connections got started. Maybe it’s better explained in the original novels, but here it’s just kind of a question mark. The other characters don’t get any more background, from the little girl who Makoto rescues from a life of crime to the mafia members who call the area home.
The English dub from Funimation stars Griffin Puatu from Tokyo Revengers and Beastars as Makoto Majima, and he definitely provides a solid performance that helps anchor the series. Howard Wang and Billy Kametz do good work as rival gang leaders as well. Directed by Tomoaki Koshida at Doga Kobo studio, the show looks competently put together for the most part. While the animation is never stunningly executed, the overall look is strong enough and the character designs fit together well.
Ikebukuro West Gate Park isn’t going to go down in history as one of anime’s best crime thrillers. It’s not very clever, not very scary, and honestly not very thrilling for a lot of its runtime. There are a few bright spots throughout the season, and some of the conflict between the G-Boys and the Red Angels is genuinely interesting, but overall, I think I’m glad to let Makoto and his mates stay in Ikebukuro.
