English Dub Review: Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens “Trick Play”

Tricky? Yes. A good episode? Not so much.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Enokida, AKA the famous hacker “Black Leg”, is on the run from the pursuit of a rival hacker, Siva, his boss Chegaru, and a bloodthirsty boxer, Irasawa, who are all trying to bring his interfering hacking career to an end. Enokida’s been cut off from the internet since a tracking virus has been placed on his phone and laptop: anytime he goes online, his foes will know exactly where he is, and thus exactly where to send their psychopathic boxer, Irasawa, to kidnap him. It’s quite a pickle for Enokida, who relies on his incredibly hacking ability to get him out of these kinds of situations, but he’s not down for the count yet.

By strategically going online and offline at different times while running around the city, he’s able to elude the eye in the sky of the relentless hackers. Furthermore, by engaging with some cyber wizardry, he infects his own phone with malware to infect the website his opponents are using to post the bounty on his head, which has been directing a small army of aspiring bounty hunters after him. With a callous grin, Enokida shifts his bounty to be for the poor Saitoh instead, who finds himself the prey in this hunt instead.

Meanwhile, Enokida continues to make counter plays using his limited access; he sends a coded message to Ling and Banba that, when reading together, reveals that he wants their pickpocket friend Yamato to steal something on National Road at 11 PM. The message goes unnoticed by Siva and Chegaru, who are having trouble figuring out what Enokida’s up to. But these guys are no chumps; Siva’s a powerful hacker in his own right and uses his access to the city’s traffic and security cameras to watch Enokida’s movements through the city. This doesn’t clue him in, however, to the fact that Yamato just pickpocketed a wallet out of Enokida’s back pocket, whose contents are now in Ling and Banba’s hands.

From the perspective of Siva and Chegaru, we watch Enokida, at a late night diner, make a phone call discussing a plan with Banba to get out of town through Hakata port. They decide that this is their time to act; they cut the power to the restaurant and send Irasawa in to stealthily kidnap Enokida, which he pulls off completely unnoticed. We see Banba arrive a minute too late, Enokida’s already been taken.

Irasawa starts beating Enokida to a bloody pulp in his hideout, filming the whole affair, as psychopaths are ought to do. Siva and Chegaru are convinced that they finally got the elusive “Black Leg”, and their boss’s troubles are finally at an end. But as Chegaru goes to meet his mysterious boss the next day, who should arrive with that wicked grin on his face than Enokida, safe and sound, accompanied by a squad of undercover police agents ready to fill Chegaru with holes.

Like a chess master revealing the strategy of his play, Enokida goes into a lengthy explanation of the human shell game he just conned Chegaru and friends with. Turns out, the guy Irasawa captured wasn’t Enokida in all, but Ling in disguise. Ling and Banba received a message in the wallet Yamato pickpocketed, telling Ling to sneak into the restaurant in disguise and meet Enokida once he goes to the bathroom. Once there, Enokida swapped clothes with Ling and provided him with the wig he received the last episode to put on his head, so he looks like a spitting image of Enokida. Then Ling, disguised as Enokida, allowed himself to be captured by Irasawa, and whisked away to his hideout. Ling allowed himself to get the piss beat out of him but turned the tables on Irasawa before he delivered the killing blow, knocking over Irasawa’s camera in the process, so Chegaru couldn’t really see what was going on. Using a tracking device on Ling’s person, Enokida and Banba found Ling and the knocked out Irasawa, and then called in their buddy Jose to torture the info on his cohort’s location. With all that in hand, it was only a matter of time for Enokida to infect Chegaru’s computer, get all the necessary data, and call the police for a sting operation. Easy peezy.

Victorious, Enokida leaves the police to clean up the trash, while Banba, as the Niwaka Samurai goes to deal with Siva. He decides not to kill him, but gives him a once-over with the butt end of his katana; the little snot certainly deserves a good beating.

It’s all over, and with their business concluded, Enokida goes to see off master butler, Yagi, before he returns home to Enokida’s estranged father. Before he can leave, however, Enokida has a curiosity to fulfill. Upon hacking his father’s financial records, Enokida found that Yagi has used his dad’s credit card to pay for Enokida’s flight to Hakata, and asked how that happened if his dad really wanted to kill him. Yagi decides its time for the truth to come out and reveals that Enokida’s dad had actually not wanted to kill him at all, but just wanted to scare him into leaving town, thinking it better to let the gifted Enokida “soar on his own two wings.” Bad parenting aside, Enokida’s surprised and relieved to hear his old man is as much of a trickster as he is. Their business is done, soon the train arrives, and Yagi departs back home with a smile on his face and warmth in the heart.

Later, Enokida’s dad (Whose name is Matsuda, by the way)  talks with Yagi, only to be interrupted by a hacked message on Matsuda’s computer, wishing him a happy birthday. Though still separated, father and son are united in spirit, and Enokida celebrates his victory with a BBQ dinner with all his friends.

Our Take:

Out of all the story “arcs”, Hakata has had so far, I certainly found this one to be the most enjoyable. The “Hacker vs. Hacker” showdown, while a bit tropey, is a really fun concept, and the kind of thing that would fit right into Hakata’s underworld setting. However, a good idea is not a good execution, and ho boy does this episode suffer from a lack of follow through. While a better anime would use the power of its medium to create a visually enticing sequence to dazzle and enthrall the viewer in this cyber showdown, Hakata takes the easy route and just bogs everything down in nonstop exposition. Everything has to be explained by two people talking to each other, and very little is left to the juicy meat of what anime is, a visual medium with great potential for the style. This, combined with Hakata’s chronic inability to create and maintain tension, creates an episode that could have been great but is ultimately just downright boring.