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| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
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| Watch | 7 | 7 | 7 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
 Ggultra2764
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[series:3278#1552] |
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While seeming like a comedy at a glance involving the exaggerated personalities of the guards and prisoners at the Nanba Prison, Nanbaka is shown to have a bit more going on with its story and characters beneath its surface as a larger plot and some dark backstories involving several of the major characters get focused on that dabble into human experimentation. This angle to the story is a little on the cliched side, but does have its potential to explore with the second half of this series since this first season ends inconclusively. As for the comedy, largely felt hit or miss with it as I did chuckle at some of the gags offered up yet felt indifferent toward others. Regardless seeing as I currently own both halves of this series, I guess I'll be dabbling into its second half next.
Last updated Tuesday, August 08 2023. Created Tuesday, August 08 2023. | ||||||||
| Unevaluated |
 Stretch
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[series:3278#628] | ||||||
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(Seven episodes watched): When I started watching this show, my first impression was that come on, this was totally ridiculous and surely stereotypical and no doubt would never make sense. But with time I realized that it wasn't supposed to make sense, it's an over-the-top wacky comedy, and is actually fairly funny. I especially like warden Hajime, who keeps these guys incarcerated through his own iron will. He's the straight man here, the only character who is pretty much what he ought to be. The characters in general seem pretty colorful. No doubt there will be little or no longterm plot, but that seemed OK since the jokes were not bad. My conclusion after watching episode one was that I could do much worse than watching Nanbaka. A good deal of the humor won't make much sense to anyone who wasn't born and raised in Japan. The lengthy competition between different cell blocks got kind of tiresome and I found myself wishing it would be finished. It seemed more and more like a gladiator fight than a good spirited competition. Nanbaka is at risk of crossing the fatal line into becoming a show written by someone who thinks that violence is funny--although, to be fair, the fighting is so ridiculous that it's hard to take it seriously. But it's also hard to laugh at it. Some sort of a longterm plot would have been a help, since the jokes are often more weird than funny. I found my interest in Nanbaka to be drying up. Once the initial humor of the bizarre premise wears off, there isn't all that much fresh stuff to replace it. I guess that early on I was laughing more at the premise than at the jokes themselves, and once I got used to it that didn't happen anymore. The reviews it got at ANN suggested that it would never get much better, I was weeks behind in fall series viewing, and as a result I decided to quit this show. Last updated Wednesday, May 02 2018. Created Wednesday, November 09 2016. | ||||||||
