One of the things I wished for joker game to show me was that the spies of D-agency were not superhuman demi-gods who can handle anything. This episode nearly accomplishes that as one of the spies of D-agency is found out and captured. However it falters in that the spy was purposefully sold out and a ridiculously convoluted escape plan was ready for him. Even the highest most professional people don’t use plans that depend on a massive amount of pure coincidence and luck. Let me get the plan straight, you trained recruits to resist amnesia and truth scrum and decide to purposefully sell out an agent. Then instead of giving him a clear plan of escape, you give him the novel robinson crusoe and hope that he just so happens to make a connection between a single character in the novel and a symbol drawn on a door. A door which he can only find if he makes a mistake and follows the maps he was allowed to see. Thus when the soldiers come to check on him a sleeper agent will falsely report that he didn’t find him. For an agency that laughed off the idea of killing someone to hide your tracks because it’s too risky, why is it that your alternative is even riskier? There are dozens of things that could of went wrong here. What if they didn’t get him to send false info back to Japan? What if they asked him different questions during interrogation? What if he didn’t follow the maps because as he said before, they were likely a trap? What if he didn’t spot the symbol? What if he didn’t know what it meant? What if someone rubbed the symbol off? What if they did a second sweep of the area and the sleeper agent was assigned to a different part of the building? For super amazing spies this plan sure seems like it wasn’t thought out. Thus the biggest problem of the show remains, the D-agency is far too overpowered and all knowing. That truly diminished what effect this episode could have had as I never truly believed that he was abandoned and it just became a matter of how he would escape. So I didn’t have much attachment to the events on screen as I didn’t believe their was any real risk.
The design of the villain of the week was most outrageous this time around as we have a man with a head of Megamind interrogating our spy. Since last episode our villains have been getting more comic book villain styled while our heroes appearances make them difficult to tell apart. In fact personality wise is their any difference between our heroes? All of them seem to be around the same skill level and don’t really have any defining character traits. They for the most part are interchangeable and while that is a useful feature for a spy to have, it makes our protagonists seem unremarkable. The solider from the first episode had more character than all of them combined as at least he had perspective on his job and values. The spies don’t seem to hold any feelings regarding their job or have any personal aspirations. Which again makes for good spies but utterly dull characters. If the goal of this episodic format is to show the differences between the spies and their methods then it’s failing greatly for what one spy can do I can see any of the others do exactly the same. I can’t even remember their names or match the faces so it might as well be the same main character for all these short stories. Normally in a episodic show the first episodes sets up a group of dynamic characters and gives them a vague goal to strive towards. Cowboy bebop, hand in a bounty and get money. Samurai Champloo, find the samurai that smells of sunflowers. Mushishi, investigate mushi incidents. The strength of such a series is the ability to place a character in any situation imaginable, be it realistic or not. However here there are no consistent characters, nor is there a defined goal. Which makes these last episodes feel rather pointless. There’s no interesting characters, the spies goal is only revealed in the final minutes of an episode and whatever situation is easily resolved by episodes end. So I must ask, why should I care? I don’t think Joker Game is a bad show but if this is going to continue then I must be given a reason to care about what’s happening on screen. I need investment and you gave me that in the first two episodes but since you removed the two characters I do give a damn about I have found my interest slipping. I pray this is all leading up to something, perhaps that story promised in the synopsis, but it’s possible that once Joker game finally does decide to kick into gear that I will have lost all interest in it.
~AidanAK47~
Not that the show’s characters/scenarios haven’t been ridiculous and unrealistic, but I think you’ve missed some key points on this one:
1) He can’t resist truth serum, which is why they didn’t directly explain the situation to him or the fact that there was a man on the inside already because he then wouldn’t be able to reveal it. While I would agree that the Robinson Crusoe novel is a stretch, having the inside man would theoretically make a big difference in a wide range of scenarios.
2) They clearly explain why the spy was sold out. There’s a suspected double agent but it couldn’t be proven, so Yuuki leaks info on this spy intentionally to the suspected double agent so that when the spy is caught, it proves the suspicion.
1) I feel they would have needed to ask a very specific question in order to find out about the sleeper agent. But they were trained to resist truth serum as shown by the screenshot above with the boss injecting him while explaining about splitting their consciousness into multiple levels and putting information on different levels. Which now that I think about it sounds utterly impossible.
2) That was something I was going to include in the post but while talking about it, I forget to add it on to the end. My mistake.
I totally agree with most of your criticisms, but think if those criticisms (unrealistic) were applied to any other show like Kabaneri, etc., it would be easy to tear them apart similarly. Perhaps it’s more fair to be harsher on this show though because it frames itself as trying to be more reality-based.
I am frustrated because I wanted more out of the show too, but appreciate the ambition. Keep up the good work.