Of the new anime season very little has caught my interest. There seems to be a shortage of mecha titles and science fiction, and the only thing I’ve been vaguely interested in is Kaiba. Well, that and this series. Daughter of Twenty Faces.
Daughter of Twenty of Twenty Faces (or as some call it, Heiress of The Phantom Thief, or if your a weeabo Nijū Mensō no Musume. Really this series has so many names it’s not even funny) is a series loosely based of the works detective author Rampo Edogawa. But much like another anime, Giant Robo, the similarities end with the titular character, in this case 20-Faces. He’s a thief, stealing ancient artifacts along with his team of twenty thieves.
The thing which will strike you first of all about this series is it’s not at all that worried about petty things like logic, or making sense. In the first 3 episodes you already have a cannibal who looks and acts exactly like sabertooth, desperate to steal 20-Faces treasure, as well as a plane the size of a city. The character’s strike a good balance between stylish and cartoony. Theirs the extremely manly 20-faces, always one step ahead of the enemy. There’s his apprentice, the daughter of twenty faces, only 11 years old yet already pulling of heists and kicking yakuza in the crotch. The show initially pulled me in with the prospect of being a stylish and fun series, not taking itself too seriously and bound to follow a simple formula of a Lupin the 3rd style heist-of-the-week.
And then I watched episode 6.
From then on it’s apparent this series is not afraid to take risks. I don’t want to spoil what happens in that episode, but it puts the series on a completely different course, setting up mysteries and changing characters for the better.
SABERTOOTH?!?!?
The director of this series, Nobuo Tomizawa, certainly seems to be “DA BOMB”, when it comes to this kind of series. He has the crime/mystery format down having directed many episodes of Lupin the 3rd and Detective Conan, which this show shares many similarities with. That said, there are a few downsides. Some of the plot elements are perhaps too ridiculous for belief. If the idea of Zombies from WW11 makes your head explode, this may be not for you. Also, as the evil, evil man, Daryl Surat pointed out to me, there are some Yuri elements below the surface.
The series is only on episode 14 and anime has a tendency to go craptacular towards the end. But as it is right now, Daughter of Twenty Faces has exceeded my expectations. Any show with Lupin the 3rd style antics, featuring Sabertooth and with some Yuri mixed in is probably worth a look.
