The stage is the close of the Edo period, an age when, not unlike our own time, both natural and man-made disasters left chaos in their wake. Manjiro makes a living helping the people of the troubled capital city, but behind the scenes, he also works in secret to take back precious belongings stolen from the people by unjust political powers and conspiratorial menaces. The people call him "Get-backer Roman."
I'll get the obvious out of the way - with Monkey Punch character designs and a thieving theme, you could not unfairly describe this as Lupin the Third Lite. And the description of Roman as a 'get-backer' (now there's a series that I'd rather not remember) doesn't exactly win any points, either.
But then you get Doctor Han, who's working (solo? ..sorry) on creating zombies, sidekick Koharu who has an ATTITUDE that it's hard not to love, and Roman himself - who rides a very fine line between being annoying and entertaining without ever quite falling onto the wrong side of it.
THE GOOD: Sense of fun, decent characters, and a certain wackiness to a lot of what it does. It's all rather infectious.
THE BAD: The "Lupin Lite" tag isn't entirely undeserved. Clichéd.
Just before I started this ep, I was looking at my streaming list for the season and thinking something would have to give. Two minutes into this episode, I was pretty certain this would be headed for the drop list. It won itself a chance over the rest of the episode, though, to to earn itself a get-out-of-jail free card.
Bakumatsu Gijinden Roman is streamed by Crunchyroll (North America).
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