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Joker Game
Episode 3

by Jacob Chapman,

How would you rate episode 3 of
Joker Game ?
Community score: 4.1

In its second episode, Joker Game answered one of the two biggest questions on our minds. (Is this show going to be super-nationalist? Nope, not at all!) In its third episode, the second question gets answered. How are we going to learn about this many different super-spies in only twelve episodes?

Well, it looks like we'll be meeting one joker a week for the forseeable future, making this an episodic series of games rather than a cohesive serial. (Sorry, sakuma.! Maybe we'll come back to you briefly before the very end.) This week stars Hatano, one of the two or three baby-faced jokers in D-Agency. (Yeah, half of those be-suited fellas look like one another. Guess that means they'd make good spies!) The year is suddenly 1940, flashing forward a whole three years from the previous episode. (So that means we're jumping headlong into World War II even quicker than anticipated. Well, that's gonna be uncomfortable!) The adorably deadly Hatano finds himself in France with his memory muddied, as Germans and Frenchmen surround him on both sides, and he tries to figure out who to trust without giving himself away.

If you were hoping for meaningful humanizing insight into Hatano's character on the same level as we got for sakuma. last week, prepare yourself for disappointment. But if you wanted more well-reasoned yet unsubtle observations on the foolish misfortunes of war, episode 3 is down to deliver! We learn almost nothing about Hatano the whole time he's making his French connections, except that he's a damn brilliant spy. As a demonstration in making the unassuming Hatano look really cool and amazing at his job, it's a tight and engrossing twenty minutes. First he's suspected by the French Resistance, then trusted by them, then splintered between tragic traitors within the rebellion's very ranks. He still makes a couple mistakes that leave him lucky to escape to Japan unharmed, but for the most part, it's just a little dude in a sweet suit being awesome at espionage, enjoyable on its own merits as a popcorn-chomping short story.

The episode's political commentary is a little more potent, driving home that even if Hatano's impeccable training can get him through potential betrayal from his own injured brain, there's nothing he can do to prepare himself for betrayal by the system that employs him. When he first wakes up, Hatano has no way of knowing which side, if either, is his ally or enemy. He gambles on siding with the French in this conflict mostly for his own survival, but he finds a friend in the last remaining resistance fighter after the dust clears, Alain Lernier. Once he gets his memory cleared up, Hatano is relieved to remember that he was sent to France in a neutral espionage capacity, so he hasn't betrayed his mission through the mildly explosive actions he took to survive post-amnesia. That's when he takes Alain's hand as an equal and smiles with confidence that he's doing the right thing by his own nation.

It's only after he reports back to Colonel Yuuki that Hatano learns Japan has officially allied with Germany, making the friend he just found through an awkward yet successful mission only another enemy in the grand scheme beyond his actions. It's a simple but effective twist, and even though I still don't know anything about Hatano as a person, I felt genuinely bad for him when he flashed back to that handshake with clear disappointment. Even when he performs his job perfectly, poor Hatano's life is not his own, and if he's ever sent back into France by his country again, he won't be able to share a brewski with someone like Alain.

Considering how convoluted and super-historical Joker Game could have gotten with its premise, I'm relieved that the show has decided to keep things so simple week to week. It's a spy adventure that anyone with a taste for the genre can enjoy and understand, wearing its anti-war themes on its sleeve without letting them detract from the scheme-driven fun of the action in a classy period setting. Considering that the D Agency boys already threw away their lives and identities to become spies, maybe it's asking too much to expect more character development week to week, but I'm still holding out hope that we'll get to know more about Hatano and his bros as their adventures continue.

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.


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