One of my favorite anime series is Baccano!, the overlooked cousin of the more popular Durarara!! (the author clearly loves his exclamation points). I was introduced to it by dumb luck. Simulcasting was not yet a big thing, and I was just digging through online anime catalogs to find something that looked interesting, and an anime set in the 1930s with gangsters was right up my alley.
It ended by being one of the few anime series in my adult life where after I finished it I immediately turned around and rewatched it; though I did switch dub languages from Japanese to English for my second viewing. And in this particular case I prefer the English dub because 1) they attempt appropriate regional accents for the time period, and 2) for a story set in the United States featuring a cast that is primarily white, it's really weird hearing Japanese honorifics.
What enchanted me about Baccano is how the story unfolds. You have three different storylines taking place in three different years, but the way the scenes were laid out, outside of chronological order, is simply brilliant because you learn things at the point when they matter most even if the situation was actually set up the previous year.
I was a bit disappointed when I started reading and discovered the anime was primarily drawn from the first four books of the novel series (which are short since they're light novels, roughly the equivalent of YA in the US, but heavily serialized). The novels are set by year, so you don't quite have the same jumps in the anime, but it quickly became apparent to me that author Ryohgo Narita likes chaos.
Reading Baccano! is like watching someone set up five lines of dominos that are on a collision course with each other. He jumps POVs a lot and characters are constantly moving. What happens in one scene might not make sense initially, but then he'll revisit it later from a different POV and suddenly it'll mean something. He also takes advantage of those jumps to play with readers' expectations. We know someone's coming, so when the doorbell rings we expect it's them, but it's not. And it isn't the second time either. It is the third time, but then who's ringing the doorbell the fourth time? Isn't everyone here already?
And this is a long winded way to say I've finished reading The Slash arc. The anime covered up to Vol 4 (and the OAVs that make up episodes 13-15 are Vol 14, which is not in English yet) and Vol 5 was strange for being a stand alone volume set in 2001, so it really couldn't have been added to the anime in any sensible fashion, especially since the majority of the 1930s characters aren't even in it.
Vol 6 and 7 comprise The Slash though, and it's too bad Baccano didn't get a second season because this would have been a fun addition, and it follows up right where the anime and OAVs left off. Jacuzzi's gang has set up shop in New York, Eve has finally dredged her brother out of the river, and Claire and Chané are an item. We also get introduced to our latest misanthropes, Tick and Maria, who previously made animated appearances, but were limited to a single scene each.
Most of the characters in Baccano! are a bit messed up, which isn't unexpected for a series that focuses on gangsters and immortal alchemists, but I've never met a more heartwarming duo of torture expert and assassin. I don't know that I could call either Tick or Maria sane, but when Maria begins to doubt the usefulness of her katana, Tick is the most supporting ray of sunshine he can possibly be. And Tick, who doubts the existence of anything he can't physically cut, finally finds a human bond in Maria.
There's definitely a lot of cutting in The Slash; with scissors, with katanas, with spears, and less conventional weapons too. We finally see what Huey Laforet's plans are, given we see very little of him in the anime, and the demon responsible for giving out the immortality elixir is formally revealed as part of the preexisting cast. Heck, even the senator who has a bit role in the anime turns out to be a person quite knowledgeable about many of these ostensibly secret events.
This wraps up the year 1933 for the Baccano series and it moves to 1934 with an arc set on Alcatraz next. Huey is already imprisoned there and we know that Ladd Russo from The Grand Punk Railroad arc is being transferred there, so things are sure to be interesting.
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