You know, I am beginning to wonder just how do those lessons go at the D-Agency. Is it something like “Ok, class. Today I will teach you how to summon dolphins with a whistle. After that we will go over the magic rituals of Aleister Crowley and finally have a refresher on the finer points of Capoeira.”? Because it’s just becoming utterly absurd with how many talents these agents have. The first episode gave the impression that these men would primarily be remaining undercover for the rest of their lives so for what possible reason would you give them such a ridiculously extensive curriculum? Well for today’s episode I feel that Joker game is really starting to waste my time as this feels very much like a rehash of the last episode. Except instead of a train, we have a boat. Instead of a informant we have someone trying to sneak into the country. And instead of letting the murderer get away this time he gives them over to the authorities. Other than that we have essentially watched the same story beats of the last episode. The only major difference here is that it looks as though the D-agency spy plans to take care of the woman’s daughter and dog. Perhaps he plans to take her back to japan with him and she will end up treating the D-agents as surrogate father figures and learn spy talents from them. Frankly that sounds far more interesting than our current story. The things that caught my interest were related to the enigma machine and the motive for the MI6 agent is that he purposefully sacrificed a ship by leaking intel in order to use it to help decode the enigma code. Which is worthless because the machine is set up in such a manner that even if you could use that to decode the message it would only be worthwhile till the end of the day. Once the day ends, Germany changes the machines settings and anything you decoded is completely moot. That’s what made the machine such a monster in the first place as the effort required to decode the machines settings would take more time than a day. At most this man’s plan would give them a little headstart on decoding but unless he plans to sell out a ship every single day that plan is just not cost effective. It would be broken by a man called Alan Turing(Though I hear a mathematician called Gordon Welchman helped out) who essentially had to design a machine of what could be considered part the basis of the modern computer programing to figure it out. However I am not a historian so don’t take my word on that.
I may be going off tangent more than usual but if this show plans to repeat itself then I certainly see no reason to do the same. But as it continues I notice the writing is getting lazier and more nonsensical. For example, It’s revealed that the murderer shouted to her dog in the beginning because the dog was getting close to the british spy she was deemed to kill. The reason why she panicked about this is because she keeps a photo of her husband and the man in the dog’s collar…wait what?! Why? For what reason would you put a photo in a dog’s collar and what made you think the man would find it if the dog came up to him? Personally I would consider it a much bigger problem that you drew attention to yourself because the man should know who you are! He attended your husband’s funeral and talked to you directly! You didn’t wear any disguise or even bother to put down a false name. And you are worried about the dog giving you away? If I was the man I would be wondering why the wife of a British solider I doomed to death just so happened to be on my escape ship. You could argue that maybe he doesn’t remember her because it happened a long time ago but based on the little girls age it’s a few months at best! Of course mister super spy happens to figure out she’s the one that did it because the victim mentioned Cerberus, Cerberus is a hound that guards the underworld, this woman has a dog…of course! Well he happened to know the name of the woman’s husband and looked up her name in the ship manifest but still. Lets not forget the two MI6 spies discussing top secret information at the top of their lungs that’s related to the widow’s husband. Real smart guys. Our episode ends with the murderess leaving her child in the hands of the man she has had a maximum of two conversations with and knows absolutely nothing about. The end result here is the same as all the other episodes up to this point, the D-agents show everyone how amazing they are though the power of knowing the shows script. If I wasn’t blogging this show I would consider this the dropping point as if Joker Game does have some greater story in the future I say it’s come too little too late. It gave the impression at the beginning that it would be presenting something of more class but has only settled for a poor power fantasy. I have lost all patience for it to become anything but.
~AidanAK47~
It has devolved into another nationalistic, Japan#1! bore where the opposing countries are always bumbling idiots. If the viewer can figure it out right away you can be damn sure an agent of any country would!
I still enjoy the show, but I think it would greatly benefit from a failed spying attempt. I heard rumors that the end will be rather negative though, so maybe it will happen anyway. Aside from that it has the problem almost all mystery or crime anime have: the deductive reasoning that’s usually either pure luck – like seeing a hint (like a name/word/person) at the right time or remembering some minor detail once read – or just an assumption based on hints that were way too vague to come up with a correct guess in reality. I think the only recent series that didn’t do this was BokuDake, which was why I accepted the conclusion there even though it was pretty clear since episode 3 or something.
Doesn’t mean I don’t like Joker Game – I think it has the most exciting scenes aside from Kabaneri this season, although ep 07 was a calm one.
The whole plot point with the woman was awful as you said. Since they gave the assassin a code name, it seemed to me it would be a well established killer but as far as the story went, it was only her first revenge driven and grief stricken plot! Shallow.
And somehow these loyal, well trained dogs have all been perfect gentlemen so far. The characters aren’t even different from each other apart from their hairstyle.
The reason I’m watching is because it has a voice actor cast like an otome game and without the rainbow coloured harem members. Great! I find it interesting while watching but finish appalled by the script so maybe the directing and/or bgm is good, haven’t paid enough attention yet.