Category: Joker Game

I was going to make this a full announcement but seeing as most of it is already known I might as well include it here. I now have full admin rights to the site which means that I now pretty much run the place officially. I managed to get in contact with psgels with the help of a certain passerby and explained the situation. On matters of whether psgels is coming back or otherwise I am afraid I have no comment on the matter. EIther way I have done some minor things such as fixing the headers and adding some user account. I don’t plan on making any major changes other than maybe updating that shoutbox to a more useful version.(If I can find out where it is in the control panel. WordPress is a finicky thing.) Our second bit of news has already been announced by our new writer below. We now have a third writer on board by the name of Helghast. So what that basically means is more anime coverage for you guys. On matters of taking on any more new writers I am hesitant and would prefer to see how things go for a season or two. If we wish to take on new writers then we shall put up a post specifically asking for them and if that does happen I want to make it clear that you should know exactly what you are getting into. I don’t care for disappearing acts at this point. Right then, moving on.

Joker game is turning out to be more episodic than I expected as it looks like we will be following a series of small stories about the team rather than a continuous narrative. Though the escalation of World War II looks to be an ongoing background theme. Today’s story was a decent one though I heavily dislike the use of one of the oldest trope of fiction. Namely the Easy Amnesia trope. Our super spy loses his memory from a bonk on the head and then regains his memory from another bonk on the head. I am no expert but I can at least confirm that you do not regain memories by bashing your head a second time nor is it this easy to gain amnesia in the first place. Otherwise boxers would be a forgetful lot. I am a bit disappointed that Joker game is resorting to using this as a means to make this episode more interesting, especially when their are better alternatives.(Like maybe him faking amnesia) Well our amnesic japanese spy is in a Germany occupied France with three individuals who are with the French rebellion. The Germans are right on their tail with leaves mister Japanese Jason Bourne to make use of his particular set of skills to get everyone out of the predicament. Our new characters aren’t given much development as they really only feature in this episode but at least there was enough here to care about what was going on. Though the episode was essentially a wait for our secert agent to regain his memories and let us know just why he’s here and going through all this in the first place.

Another ridiculously far fetched plot point is that apparently spy school teaches you to embed your mission objectives into your subjective unconscious, just in case you happen to lose your memory on a mission. Hold the phone on that one Joker Game. I am willing to accept the elite spartan spy training school but that doesn’t mean you can use it to excuse everything. I would have just as easy accepted that he recalled his mission objectives due to it being the last thing on his mind before losing his memory. To say that he did it on purpose is pushing suspension of disbelief. It’s strange that they put this far fetched detail in when the end of this episode has a rather clever detail. Before entering the church our spy had one eye closed and he switched to his other eye once he entered. I thought it was a strange detail until I looked it up through reddit and found out that it’s a method of keeping your eye adjusted to the dark. Whats even more surprising is that this is the reason that pirates wore eyepatches. Not because they had some sort of strange habit of losing eyes. I also learned that real life pirates are significantly more boring than fictional ones. I still have a problem with the presentation which looks to be a byproduct of the original novel. It seems to assume the viewer cannot figure out anything themselves and decides to spell out as much as possible. I feel the story suffers as a result of this and if it’s going to continue then it could prove to grow rather irritating. The series still remains good and I am not exactly opposed to the episodic format. Though I would label this episode as just alright and I hope that these super spies don’t end up being overpowered.

~AidanAK47~

Joker Game is still proving to be an interesting thriller though this episode started off a bit rough. There was over four minutes of flashing back to the previous episode and even the opening of this episode. In a way it was used to show just how Sakuma came to his conclusion which revealed the man to be an American spy but it felt a bit excessive. That said I love how this all played out and just how the American managed to fool the Japanese military on the first search of his house. It truly is a mark of genius to place the microfilm behind the imperial portrait as based on the mentality of Japanese soldiers of the time, they would never dare desecrate the portrait and leave it untouched in a search. At the moment Sakuma was about to cut his own stomach open, he remembered the lessons of the spy agency and managed to figure out the trick. It’s a great moment to see the smug look of the American disappear into pure panic as one of the members of the D agency revealed his hiding place. And with that all’s well that ends well correct?

Wrong. For there was more to this raid than our soldier was privy to. The second raid on the Americains home was all a ploy to disguise his superior’s failure to find anything in the first raid. He intended to make Sakuma a scapegoat in order to keep his reputation clean. He never intended him to find anything. Through some elaborate investigation Sakuma manages to find out this as well as details about the boss of the D agency and his intentions of taking advantage of this matter. He does so well that the boss even offers to train him as a member of the D agency. What we have is a series of schemes in tandem. The American spy was trying to steal intel, a superior officer was trying to cover up his mistake and the boss of the D agency trailing the superior in order to find an exploit to blackmail him into investing more into the D agency. In the beginning Sakuma berated the D agency for making use of underhanded methods and here he now understands that the military is not above such measures. HIs final resolution is interesting in that he has not embraced the D Agency’s philosophy but rather he wishes he can die with honor rather than be used as a tool for someone else’s agenda. To me those things are the same but to a nationalist member of the society of the time it may not be the case.

At the moment while I do love Joker Game, I find it’s being a little too straightforward in it’s storytelling. I feel we could have a greater layer of nuance in its production as this small doesn’t leave much room for moral complexity. Everything is laid out and explained so even a child could understand the plot. In some regards that’s a good thing as simplicity doesn’t mean it’s bad but considering it’s a fairly mature story I would think it would be good to leave things up to interpretation. I for one would have liked to speculate more on just why the Boss walks with a cane despite his legs being perfectly fine. I would have likened it to a psychological tactic in order to make people underestimate him but instead it is spelled out to be a distraction from the bosses real disability. His left prosthetic hand. On that note I am surprised he can get a prosthetic hand of such quality which can fool people into thinking it’s real. I am not certain on the plan of disguising a disability with another disability other than preventing him from being identified by word of mouth. Despite my gripes there is an air of style around this piece; it has an atmosphere that clarifies the word cool. There is a certain suaveness in how the characters carry themselves and the smug knowing smiles that exemplify a kind of hidden badassery. Even if this doesn’t appear to be a particularly deep story, at least it’s going to be an entertaining one.

~AidanAK47~