Trickster

Episode 5

Trickster has certain merits. It's pretty. It has style. It knows what it's doing in the editing and sound design departments. From the exaggerated squeaking of Inoue's sneakers under the bleeding sunset to the roaring torrents cutting short the flashback's lamenting strings, episode 5 is off to a promising start. When Inoue suggests that Katsuda might not want to remain a member of the boy detectives, we cut to Akechi telling the dirty cop not to talk too big a game – also a warning from the show to overachiever Inoue. The torrents filling the sealed chamber Inoue is trapped in turn into Katsuda's tap water, and a melancholic piano piece mourns Katsuda walking away from his friend in a dramatic silhouette. It's all very pretty, very dramatic, and sadly predictable.

Striving for too much by delivering one broken flower pot too many, Trickster ends up overplaying its visual metaphors. With little room for silence, the excellent soundtrack cannot work its magic as well as it should. All nice things are bound to wear out if consumed in excess. Trickster has struggled with this problem from the beginning, and even the aspects the show displays great competence at end up feeling formulaic rather than personal. It's simply trying too hard.

On the narrative side, I prefer to dig up and discuss wasted opportunities rather than refuse their existence in the first place. However, there is a certain risk of wishful projection when we look at this series' characters and what they leave to be desired. I was wondering about the nature and extent of Inoue's disability. In a world where shut-ins can communicate via talking owls, the lack of functional artificial limbs always felt odd, especially since what Kobayashi destroyed in the first episode looked like a pretty advanced prosthesis. As it turns out, Inoue's problem is at least partly psychosomatic. Even when equipped with shiny new hardware, his emotional stress doesn't allow his software to adjust to his new reality. I also have to adjust my assessment of his character from last week's review. Inoue is not about doing the right thing. Pre-accident, his character has been defined by excellence on every front, and when he fails his own perfection assessment, he'd rather give up and throw himself into something else than getting things done at 90%.

When Katsuda amicably calls his friend "greedy", he is right. While Katsuda was involved in the accident, he can hardly be blamed for its outcome after being pushed aside, advocating reason over recklessness. Since Trickster is frequently immune to subtlety, Inoue has to literally throw him into the garbage. Katsuda didn't leave team Akechi because he felt guilty, he left because he couldn't stand seeing Inoue hide behind sacrificial self-righteousness instead of dealing with his loss of control and perfection. Considering the person Inoue saved wasn't even an innocent bystander or hostage gives his heroic sacrifice a nice ironic nuance. (However, the scene's impossible blocking takes the situation from deliberately ironic territory into outright ridiculousness.)

That fateful day, Mr. Overachiever didn't just lose his leg, and while he generally shows better aptitude at the brainy stuff than his action hero shtick (why would you leave that gun lying there within reach of the perp?!), he still needs to learn how to accept a helping hand at face value. So the series rubs in that image about twice as often as necessary, sacrificing emotional impact in the process. Still, Inoue's story is interesting, offering room for lots of lovely conflicted emotions, and I can't help asking myself why the series would choose to resolve all of this little arc's dramatic potential within two episodes. Why not let it grow for a while, not as a major theme, but festering in the background until Inoue's issues reached a boiling point, then cash in on the drama twice as much? With a little bit of extra time, maybe Katsuda's declaration of becoming the next Nakamura to Inoue's Akechi would have rung less hollow, creating a truly sweet moment between the two of them.

Considering how the police have been portrayed until now, understanding Katsuda's desire to become a cop requires just as much disbelief as the flashback's impossible line of fire. Near-future law enforcement doesn't need Twenty Faces' games to illustrate their uselessness. Undermining people's trust in authorities is a classic sociopath stepping stone, but given Twenty Faces' interactions with Akechi, he feels more like a child poking insects with a stick than someone fueled by motive and a bigger agenda. Bored and jealous because Akechi has moved on to play with new toys he's not allowed to mess with, he's little more than a troll, someone even Hanasaki thinks of as childish. (And that's saying something!) Comically diving into hip-deep water to make his escape doesn't help his credibility. Hopefully, Twenty Faces' motives will become a bit more coherent and tangible with coming episodes, now that he's seen the potential of Akechi's newest toy, Kobayashi.

Oh, Kobayashi. I was ready to cut you some slack this week. If only your writers wouldn't make it so difficult to warm up to you by turning you into a joke. Once again straying into wishful projection territory, Kobayashi might have sensed Inoue's fear of uselessness to be his real disability. Where others (not counting Katsuda) would tiptoe around their injured friend, Kobayashi has no such consideration, leading to a genuinely funny truncation of the usual "you go alone, I stay behind" routine. Leaving no room for Inoue to get all sacrificial, Kobayashi knows he cannot help him on his own and simply follows Inoue's instructions to get out. Sadly, Trickster shoots itself in the foot when Kobayashi's further contribution consists of falling asleep and tumbling into the water just in time to blow up Twenty Faces' goons, turning budding respect for his faint characterization into sheer frustration. This isn't like the tongue-in-cheek deciphering of Morse code from blinking or Inoue's photographic memory only existing whenever the plot requires it. This is just plain silly randomness.

I'm not sure I need to see a similar origin story for Noro or Hanasaki, as I was mostly looking forward to Akechi vs. Twenty Faces mind games, but episode 5 leaves me questioning how much potential there is in their rivalry. As a criminal mastermind, Twenty Faces leaves a lot to be desired.

Rating: C

Trickster is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.