Trickster

Episode 11

What a gloriously random pre-credits sequence.

We open on a black-and-white closeup sketch of Hanasaki, whose face is then slowly colored in, a not-so-subtle hint at his impressionability. But Trickster doesn't do subtle, and color isn't the only thing filling Hanasaki's head, as Twenty Faces proceeds to declare his undying love for Akechi in song. Not just any song, mind you, but the OP. Because why not - if you cast Gackt as your villain, you might as well go all out. Of course, Twenty Faces knows just how to deliver the perfect bow to conclude his musical interlude by jumping out of a plane! Incapable of portraying emotions without any glassware on hand, Trickster's need to give us something to shatter is fulfilled by an improbable glass barrier for Twenty Faces to jump through. I'm guessing it remains up to the individual viewer to decide if these shards are to be interpreted as physical or metaphorical.

It doesn't matter. Once Hanasaki has passed this shattered barrier of no return, it's time to free fall into the dark abyss where toys go to die once their owners have outgrown them. With Twenty Faces for a soon-to-be ex-owner, this last playtime might be dangerous, but at least things never get boring. Watching these two chat and awkwardly dance through the air, physics and plot coherence be damned, I'm ready to get out the popcorn. Sadly, the rest of the episode, while equally incoherent, wasn't as hilariously entertaining.

Twenty Faces can compare Hanasaki to Akechi as often as he wants, but there will always be only one Akechi for him. Hanasaki's warranty is about to expire, and in pushing away everyone who was willing to care about him, he turned himself into a greater tool than he ever was before. Twenty Faces might have provided the boots, but Hanasaki trampled over his loved ones all by himself. Good job, hero. Nii-san would be proud.

While Hanasaki's father might have ulterior motives for cooperating with Twenty Faces' demands, Akechi is willing to jump to the rescue of his close-to-irredeemable protege in a heartbeat. Shooting his way through a few obligatory robots, he doesn't even flinch after correctly deducing Hanasaki's motive. Turning the teen's misguided revenge play into a lesson, he's still ready to call it a day and take his lost boy home.

But the lecture doesn't end there. Hanasaki's pseudo-abduction has always been the set-up for a play date between the two should-be grownups. With his role as bait now over, Hanasaki is useful for one thing only: getting Akechi in the mood to kill Twenty Faces. At least this is what I'm assuming the endgame will be about, at least as far as Twenty Faces is concerned. The unpredictable variables in this game are Kobayashi's arrival and the question of whether Akechi has been able to create a good enough network for himself to overcome this challenge and avoid reverting to his darker side. With this being a two-cour show, the mystery of Kobayashi will probably have to wait a few more weeks to be really addressed.

At this point, I'm secretly hoping for more campy hilarity to fight the boredom stemming from my inability to care about any of these poorly fleshed-out characters meandering through a possibly interesting world in a plot that's just neither here nor there.

Rating: C-

Trickster is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.