Un-Go

“Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.” – Aldous Huxley

Un-Go has a vast mixture of elements to it. It is a detective show. It has both fantasy elements and some science fiction as well. Watching this mixture does leave you wondering if all these elements actually work well together or not.

The series is set in the near future in which Japan is trying to recover from a war and several terrorist attacks. Living amongst the slum ruins of Tokyo is private detective Shinjuurou Yuuki, who has the rather unflattering nickname of the “Defeated Detective”. He is good at his job, but nobody really likes him, including the police, who put their trust in the much more respected Rinroku Kaishou, head of J.J. Systems who solves all of his crimes at home.

While Yuuki may not have many friends, he does have one ace up his sleeve in the form of his boss Inga. For most of the time Inga takes the guise of a young boy, but Inga’s true form is that of a much more attractive woman. In this form Inga can force anyone to answer one question to which they must answer truthfully. In exchange, Inga consumes that person’s soul.

In terms of strengths, the artwork by the Bones studio is very well presented. The music is also very good. The plot however can be a bit confusing, but with a detective story this is what you want. You want to try your hardest to solve the case yourself, which is hard with a complicated plot, and even harder when combined with sci-fi elements, resulting in scenarios which cannot exist in our time but could in the future.

However, as this is a Kaze title, we have to discuss what has been a big problem with several of their releases, which is subtitling. On the plus side, it is a lot better than with many of their previous efforts. For starters, this time the subtitles are spelt correctly. This could be due to the fact that this title has been one that Kaze has been interested in since the beginning, as it was streamed on their Anime On Demand website when it originally went out in 2011. Also, there is the option of a dub.

There is one issue with the subtitling however. Not with errors or anything like that, but with what they choose to subtitle. In each episode, each character is introduced with an on-screen caption displaying their name and role, a bit like if you were reading the title page of a play. Obviously these are in Japanese, so most English people cannot understand what is written. In the dub, all of these are translated and subtitled accordingly. In the subtitled version though, only some of the captions are translated. Namely, they only get translated when no-one is speaking. It seems that Kaze cannot handle both the spoken dialogue and the on-screen information at the same time. However, in the original Anime On Demand stream, they did post all the translations. Why they are being picky this time around is uncertain. They could easily display the caption in a different spot on the screen.

Watching this, I am uncertain as to whether all the elements work together. Crime and sci-fi have been shown to work together in anime such as Ghost in the Shell, but the fantasy element might just make things falter. Having a character that can make people answer truthfully seems a bit too convenient.

In terms of extras, other than textless opening and closing, the only extra is a 45-minute long OVA, which is a prequel to the original story. It is a fun enough watch if you want to know more about the background of the story.