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REVIEWS

• 

  wincohi

  50/100
  This is the only anime representation F-Zero fans get.

  #Let me set a scene for you. (this review will have spoilers)

   

  ---

   

  You wake up. It's been 150 years. Technology has progressed FAR beyond anything you could have imagined since the time you went to sleep. You meet a woman: Jody Summer. She tells you you're a police officer, you work for her now, and she brought you back from the dead (essentially) to fight crime.

  Do you...

  A. Accept your new task, because why not, right?
  B. Ask her, respectfully, what the FUCK is going on, keeping an open mind
  C. Politely decline and go back to being dead
  D. Immediately steal a government car you don't know how to drive to meet up with your girlfriend (from 150 years ago, who is definitely still alive and still waiting for you in exactly the same spot)

  If you chose anything but option D, I'm sorry, but you just aren't cut out to be the protagonist for this anime.

  ---

  F-Zero: Legend of Falcon (Falcon Densetsu) is a 52-episode series following our definitely very smart protagonist, Ryu Suzaku, as he assists Captain Falcon and the Mobile Task Force in fighting back against the ever-tightening grip of Dark Million, the largest crime organization in the known universe which is also, somehow, the only one. He does this by...driving fast? And by stumbling headfirst into every. Single. Plot point.

  So, let me come clean...

  I lied earlier when I said Ryu was smart—you see, none of the characters in this show are, really, and it's a miracle that they're able to communicate enough words between them to get absolutely anything done at all. Ryu himself repeatedly, willfully ignores orders and shrugs off advice, even when it is very obviously the best course of action to just LISTEN TO SOMEONE ELSE FOR ONCE. The other side characters are either constantly bickering with one another (Jack, the cocky fuccboi; Lucy, the airheaded love interest; Clank, the L33T H4CK3R; the aforementioned Jody), barely say anything at all (Falcon, the Legend; Clash, the mechanic; Robert, the doctor), or are so woefully incompetent that they might as well not be doing anything. I literally do not understand how these people can function on the same team with one another, and indeed sometimes they can't. And they do it anyway.

  Did I mention this show is 52 episodes?

  So, after a little bit of plot and a whole lot of dicking around accomplishing almost nothing, we have a couple important plot threads:

  • Ryu's arch-nemesis from 150 years ago, Zoda, has also been brought back to life and is serving Dark Million
  • Captain Falcon, a bounty hunter with unknown affiliations, begins participating in races, beating out both Dark Million and our heroes
  • Miss Killer is introduced: another Dark Million baddie who looks a lot like Ryu's presumed-dead girlfriend (more on that later)

  All three of these threads are dropped as quickly as they're introduced.

  I mentioned that this show was 52 episodes, right? That's important, because the entire middle portion of the anime is mostly our heroes dicking around and accomplishing very little. Some of these were character-focused episodes—like the one where Jack re-joins his old street gang (!?), the one where EAD (the token android who looks suspiciously like just a regular guy in a funny suit) falls in love with a human singer, or any of the episodes involving Samurai Goroh, a space pirate with an uncomplicated but sufficiently compelling moral compass—which aren't particularly interesting but still manage to serve some purpose. Then there are others, like the women-only F-Zero race in which all the girls GO ABSOLUTELY BATSHIT CRAZY AND BLOW UP THE RACE TRACK WITH MISSILES AND LASERS (they face no consequences for this) because haha funny girls are insane!

  (BTW their vehicles have weapons on them, apparently, which could be really useful for fighting crime, which is exactly the thing they're trying to do. So naturally this will never be brought up again.)

  In case I haven't done a good enough job at explaining so far, let me be clear: this anime is bonkers. Even when nothing important is happening, the show is always balls-to-the-wall ADHD madness with absolutely 0% chill. None of the characters in this show seem capable of following anything but the most basic internal logic (sometimes not even that), and this curse (or blessing?) extends into the very fabric of the plot itself.

  Everyone seems to stumble around aimlessly from plot point to plot point as they attempt to prevent Black Shadow, the very comically evil head of Dark Million, from collecting all of the Dragon Balls I mean Chaos Emeralds I MEAN "Reactor Mights," which are this series' unexplained, ultra-powerful plot device. Black Shadow always has "a plan," although it is never hinted, teased, or foreshadowed beyond simply being "a plan," as we, the audience, are led on this wild-ass roller coaster ride from race to race crying desperately for any morsel of story progression along the way.

  And this isn't...necessarily a bad thing. To be clear, the show is NOT good, but it IS incredibly funny at precisely every wrong moment. Falcon Densetsu tries really really hard to make it impossible for the audience to guess where the story is headed, mainly by dropping plot threads for 10 or 20 episodes at a time, or by foreshadowing something that seems almost TOO ridiculous to be an actual, real thing they're going to commit to (which inevitably they do anyway; yes, Miss Killer is Haruka). This along with the breakneck pacing of each individual episode results in a viewing experience wholly unlike anything I've ever seen.

   

  So, would I recommend this anime to anyone at all, ever?

  Yeah, probably. If you are easily entertained by nonsensical bullshittery (as I am) then you will probably love this show; not for its quality, but for the hilarity of its failures.

   

  5/10; I loved it.

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