Joker Game

Episode 10

After the high of last week's tense two-parter, Joker Game brings us back down to earth with a simple, heartwarming story about the impact that the D-Agency had on a British spy named Aaron Price.

Oh, and we also got Colonel Yuuki's entire childhood backstory—just "through the looking glass," so to speak. As always in this show, the truth turns out to be more twisty than it appears on the surface.

Price, an abnormally gentle and pleasant fellow for his chosen profession, has been collecting a list of informants, accomplices, and other persons of interest in Japan for a whole decade before he gets to the thorny problem of tracking down Colonel Yuuki. He can't seem to find anyone under that name in any Military Prep School records, but the closest lead he can manage is an expelled name, "Akira Arisaki," that can be read the same way as the colonel's new alias. So when Price asks an old Arisaki family servant about Akira, he finds himself tumbling down the rabbit hole of a fascinating history.

Akira was the illegitimate son of Viscount Arisaki, a proud mustachioed man who brought the raggedy starving boy home one day not long after his wife's death. Akira's parentage was never revealed in detail, but whether he was the result of some affair with a geisha or maybe even just an unrelated urchin the viscount adopted on a whim, no one really seemed to mind. The viscount raised his new son with every creature comfort he could offer, in exchange for rigorous levels of education and physical training that Akira seemed to welcome with a determined grimace. However, the viscount also seemed determined not to pass his noble title onto the boy, forcing Akira to pursue other avenues for success. He was expelled from the Military Prep School for conduct that the headmaster deemed too "cowardly." When cornered by three bullies on campus, Akira beat the stuffing out of the first two like a good little soldier, but threw dirt in the third one's face and kicked him in the nuts when the kid whipped out a knife. Apparently, nut-kicking is a far more serious offense than attempting to stab your classmate.

Joking aside, this is another laughably unsubtle but distinctly powerful jab at the defective dogma behind imperalist-era Japan. Machismo and pride are valued above diplomacy and ingenuity to such a ludicrous extent that lil' Yuuki would have been rewarded more for being stabbed than successfully ending the fight without anyone getting seriously hurt, which got him expelled from the program instead. The layers of reckless brainwashing deepen when Akira/Yuuki is asked why he didn't pull his own knife when the last boy came at him swinging a blade. "They teach us to stop fearing death when we fight together," he responds. If he'd pulled his own knife, the panicked classmate would have just plowed right into it so he could land his own strikes and impress his fallen buddies. Mutually assured destruction is seen as more honorable than escaping to fight another day, even as early as a pointless conflict in military school. After establishing his own career as a volunteer soldier in World War I and meeting a few famous British codemasters, Akira/Yuuki became known as the Duke among his comrades. Price puts two and two together, connecting the D in D-Agency with Duke, then thanks the old butler for the information.

But the audience barely has time to digest Yuuki's impressive backstory before Price's home is invaded by a squad of soldiers! He's caught red-handed with espionage materials and dragged off to be interrogated. It doesn't take Price long to cough up everything he knows, desperate to protect his wife even if the odds of his own survival are slim. But then the MPs just let him go...come to think of it, these MPs look awfully familiar...hey, those are all just D-Agency boys!

Baffled by his unconditional release, Price begs the Arisaki servant to tell him more about Akira, but the full truth only leaves the enemy spy even more confused. Akira Arisaki has been in a coma for 20 years! It's true that he was a volunteer soldier in World War I, but he was immobilized overseas during a German gas bombardment and remained unconscious ever since. After he was denied treatment as a veteran back home for being a volunteer soldier outside of the imperial army (once again, unsubtle but powerful), one of Akira's mysterious fellow comrades offered the bereaved butler another option. He would pay for Akira to be taken care of for the rest of his days, on the condition that his history be fabricated. So while Akira Arisaki was indeed a real person completely different from Colonel Yuuki, his backstory as told to Price (and the audience) was some inscrutable blend of Yuuki's childhood and his own that even the butler has gotten too old to untangle in his own head. Regardless of whose life is whose, Price's investigation of Akira (and therefore Yuuki) was like ringing a dinner bell to the D-Agency. They spared his life both out of principle and because they snatched all the intel he'd been able to gather, rendering him harmless; it was contained in the wedding ring Price kept twirling on his finger as he considered his options.

Ultimately, Price's story is surprisingly meaningful, but not because of Yuuki's part in it, which remains mysterious as always because we can't be sure what parts of the story are his and what parts belong to someone who can't answer for themselves anyway. (This episode contains numerous references to Alice in Wonderland, where Alice often laments that she can hardly understand the illogically shifting world around her when she herself is not the same person as she was the day before.) No, Price's story unexpectedly warmed the cockles of my heart because the episode did such a good job of endearing us to his tender relationship with his wife. Her cheery expression as she serves him watermelon and sincere efforts to learn Japanese bring a little warmth into a frequently stern show, and the episode could have been completely negligible without this welcome reminder of the human cost of war that the D-Agency tries to mitigate. Price may be going off MI6's payroll, but at least he still has the love of his life by his side, wherever that new life may take them.

Of course, now that we've brought Britain's SIS back into the equation, I wonder if that Roald Dahl villain-face Mr. Marks will make a reappearance as we roll our focus back on Yuuki once again. I certainly hope so! This was a nice little diversion, but I'm eager for Joker Game's first season to go out with a bang.

Rating: B+

Joker Game is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Jake has been an anime fan since childhood, and likes to chat about cartoons, pop culture, and visual novel dev on Twitter.