Joker Game

Episodes 1-2

Two episodes into Joker Game, and this political thriller is definitely done trying to bury the lede. When I only had one episode to go on during the Spring Preview Guide, I expressed concerns about the nationalist sentiment that a spy thriller set in 1930s Japan could very easily fall into. As of this second episode, those fears have been pretty well obliterated by a narrative sledgehammer of anti-imperialist ideas. It's hard to get more blatant than just using a portrait of Hirohito himself to symbolize hypocrisy and incompetence, so of course that's exactly what Joker Game decides to do.

Last week, our protagonist (who is, shall we say, a posterboy for future Honorary Aryan) hit a potentially deadly stumbling block in his haste to prove himself to his commanding officer, Colonel Mutou. For all of Sakuma's sincere drive to be the perfect soldier, he was basically doomed to demotion and humiliation from the moment he took this assignment. Colonel Mutou had already conducted a search of an American spy's house and come up with nothing, so rather than face any consequences himself, he decided to shuffle the shame off onto the naive Sakuma instead. To make matters worse for Sakuma, his new superspy "friends" find his naiveté equally lame, so they decide to leave him holding the joker in their nihilistic little game. As the final cherry on this betrayal sundae, Sakuma's own reckless sense of duty impelled him to promise everyone a consequence of hara-kiri for his failure. He sees it as the natural conclusion to a mantra he's lived and breathed for years in the academy: "Duty is weightier than a mountain, while death is lighter than a feather." But right before he's about to slice his belly open before a gaggle of sneering spies, Lt. Colonel Yuuki's voice echoes in his head, prompting a blasphemous thought to bubble to the surface of his racing mind.

Did anyone check behind this American spy's portrait of the emperor?

It's the most natural conclusion in the world that no matter how much of a Japanophile this guy claims to be, his relationship to the Showa emperor's portrait is not going to be the hands-off affair that Japanese citizens adopt from their earliest days in school. Sakuma also realizes that other MPs are no exception to this nationally accepted practice of blind reverence. That's the one part of property in the house that nobody will touch—nobody except these hollow-eyed D Agency monsters who don't seem to believe in anything at all. Sure enough, that's where they find the microfilm.

When Sakuma reports back to Colonel Mutou with news of his success, it's telling that the colonel's first reaction is to ask if Sakuma dared to touch the imperial portrait himself in their search. When Sakuma tells him that he didn't, Mutou goes from relief to a bloodthirsty demand to know if they retrieved the evidence they found and punished the spy. This time, Sakuma disappoints him by saying no, because from a practical perspective, it's easier for them to just change their own codes and allow the Americans some useless intel by letting them keep the defunct cipher. The American spy will be paid off as a double agent to ensure its delivery, and they can maintain a tense but technically peaceful relationship with the U.S. and her allies. Of course, all this was engineered by Lt. Colonel Yuuki, who is only interested in maintaining national security, not further escalating the war effort. Colonel Mutou is enraged that Yuuki gets all the credit for this golden opportunity, on top of handling it completely differently from what he sees as the nation's best interest. It's a victory for Japan's national security, but Mutou treats it as nothing short of a devastating loss. Sakuma was supposed to be his liaison so things like this wouldn't happen, dammit! It's crazy, because both Colonel Mutou's goals and methods would have destroyed Sakuma one way or the other even if he got his way, so what does he want out of the guy?

Well, that's the point. Mutou's (and Sakuma's) beliefs are in irreconcilable conflict with the reality of a much bigger world. After miraculously escaping from this potentially disastrous mission, Sakuma realizes that the system he worships would have seen him destroyed, not even for a glorious purpose much greater than himself, but just for the sake of an old screw-up's ego. Heck, even above Mutou, the emperor's own ego has betrayed his entire nation by giving a frankly amateurish western spy a painfully easy way to smuggle out state secrets. Japan's religious reverence for the emperor has been turned into a smokescreen for crass political ambitions, and the worst part of it all is that most people in an economically wounded Japan take this dogma as gospel just to get through the day. Children play games with chips featuring paintings of military leaders, read adventure books touting the accomplishments of very recent war heroes, and attend hushed viewings of the emperor's likeness in cavernous rooms. They've all been taught that storming into a poker game and celebrating their intention to win everyone else's chips through sheer superior gameplay will fix their own financial problems. When they see this myopic attitude and the potential threat behind it, everyone else at the table is happy to put aside their differences for a moment and slip Japan the joker. They might even just stick that joker onto the back of Hirohito's own portrait.

His brush with death (or at very least career-destroying humiliation) causes Sakuma to lose faith in this fallibly human national religion. Now he's decided that he doesn't want to die for someone else's mistakes, but Japan's current system has little room for anyone but loyal pawns in the military police. At least when Lt. Colonel Yuuki lies to him, the old codger's not also lying to himself, so now Sakuma's at a crossroads, trusting Yuuki to know the reality of a complicated situation, but not yet trusting him to protect Sakuma's current interests. So Sakuma doesn't see the emperor's mandate or methods as gospel anymore, but he still seems to believe Japan's pursuit of control over Asia is the right course of action. He's caught between worlds, literally standing under the last cherry blossom tree on the roadside as Yuuki limps past him on one side and a row of soldiers march past him on the other. More than anything else, Sakuma just seems interested in Yuuki's past. Did he join the military with different dreams? What made him want to start the D Agency now? For his part, Yuuki just seems interested in surviving the war and dying in a relatively peaceful Japan, with not much left to live for. (We haven't spent any time with the other spies yet, so it's anyone's guess what these younger-Yuukis might think of their literal dead-end jobs.)

It's safe to say at this point that whatever his political views, author Koji Yanagi is no friend to Japan's most right-leaning historical revisionists, and Joker Game is already offering viewers a world with rich and varied perspectives, even if the way they express those views is not remotely subtle. Joker Game's current angle seems to be less that Showa-era nationalism was "bad" and more that it was "stupid." It's less interested in the moral wrongs Japan committed against other nations (right now at least), and more interested in the tragedy of how Japan crippled itself by worshiping a false idol out of either desperation or some rose-colored view of the past. As an American viewer, this angle on history won't impact me as intimately as a Japanese viewer, but intimacy is not Joker Game's forte by any stretch of the imagination anyway. The aforementioned cherry blossom scene is amazingly on-the-nose to Sakuma's predicament, and Yuuki's defeat of Mutou incorporates plenty of other symbols of how rigid cultural assumptions can blind you to the reality of a bigger world, like the "harmless" act of spilling confidential information in the "safety" of a geisha house. Joker Game delivers its message with the assumption that you're already in full agreement and just want to see some sordid history blown up with larger-than-life intrigue and chaos.

And you know what, that's pretty great too! Subtlety isn't everything. Even the most mature audiences can use a little explosive exaggeration in their political popcorn. You can attract more flies with honey, and you can hold people's attention better if you're not afraid to be a little ridiculous when delivering a heavy message, so long as those blockbuster liberties don't go so far that they undercut your message's believability. Joker Game's historical setting actually works in its favor here; since we already know which side will win the war abroad, we also know that Yuuki's philosophy will win out over Sakuma's, which means Sakuma has to change how he sees the system around him to survive. All that remains is whether Sakuma will shift over to Yuuki's way of thinking or find his own path instead. Poor old Yuuki seems pretty nihilistic and hollow, so I'm hoping Sakuma can find a middle ground of having faith and pride in the country he loves without adhering to the cruel imperialistic dogma that will only leave the nation devastated in a matter of years (1945).

Joker Game can be a thoughtful treatise on how governmental indoctrination swallows its own tail and brings down its own gods, and it can also be a fun cat-and-mouse game with over-the-top visual metaphors. I'm already excited for more thrills and adventure with just a smidge of commentative bite to them.

Rating: A-

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.