Joker Game Final Episode (12): Randomly romance!

Starting off the episode with a training exercise in a blizzard. To be fair, though, what is this guy actually suggesting? That the group turn back for the sick guy? Or give the sick guy a rest in the snow? Because both of those options don’t feel like they would help much.

“All commanding officers are dicks” cliche. Come on, man…that was at least 50% your fault for stumbling backwards.

I feel like I should immediately suspect the woma- No! Stop doing that, me!

This episode is the first time we’ve seen the other spies contributing to a single spy’s mission. I know the other spies have made appearances, taking a supporting role, but they’re even having what seems to be a round table discussion on the case. Given that the episode is titled “Double Cross”, is it supposed to indicate that one of the spies is involved? Or that the main character himself is supposed to be suspicious?

WHAT COULD IT MEAN?? (They used the “XX” in the episode title, so it’s not like it’s hard to figure out the link with “Double Cross”)

Phew, suspicions vindicated. Still, I feel like I’ve become too hyper-sensitive about this series. Like here, I’m thinking the way Yuuki said this feels purposely vague. He’s not outright saying the woman is the culprit. Maybe he’s really saying “investigate the woman and the true culprit will be revealed”.

Wait…this is the spy’s memory, right? Is this supposed to indicate that Yuriko reminds him of his mother? Seems like a romantic interest to me! This is new…

Why exactly is he so shocked here?

Woohoo! Suspicions were correct! Okay, guys…we’re back to always suspecting the female character in the episode! What? This is the last episode? Crap…

This…is totally fair. The spy recognizes that he was distracted from the mission by the appearance of Noriko and resigns his post. An overreaction? Maybe, but completely reasonable.

I can’t wait to see someone latch on to this as the only reason they dislike this series. This line is especially funny given the whole experience with the Wind Agency and their “don’t hesitate to kill” mentality.

Well, Yuuki needs to sound cool in the final moments of the episode.

Overall, I’d say I had a fun time watching this series. Sure, there have been plenty of complaints about the episodic nature of the series, but it worked for me. It’s interesting watching spies do things…what can I say? I definitely agree that the characters were hard to differentiate, though, and might have been too numerous. Also, the final episode felt like just another episode in the series. Nothing about it felt like “this is the end”. Maybe this means there will be more…maybe it’s just how the series works. But it’s definitely disappointing as an ending.

Joker Game Episode 11: Priority of the mission

I’m starting to get by the fact that every episode starts like this. Sigh…I’m sure this scene will be relevant later.

Hey, man…maybe the guy wanted some matches to light some fireworks or something. Is that a thing in this time period? Is being able to recognize tobacco resin a thing people could do in this time period?

Looks like a fake death to me. Though, to be fair, I know that he’s the main character.

Or because his muscles relaxed when he died or something…

So much darkness…if the subs weren’t there, I’d be convinced my video player had crashed or something.

Oh, I see…this must be Yuuki, which must mean the guy questioning him is the eyepatch dude we’ve been seeing.

Every time this guy says “that man”, I get a little more annoyed that he does this so the audience doesn’t learn Yuuki’s real name.

Wait…you mean Yuuki escaped by setting off a grenade in his left hand? First off, that’s all kinds of hardcore. Secondly, how the heck did he survive that while killing off several of his captors?

This man has caught a large number of spies, right? Is this something he’s used to hearing or does this case have particularly minimal evidence? This question makes it sound like all of the spies this guy has caught before weren’t really that special.

Wait, is Maki actually dead?

This man is everywhere.

“I failed again” face.

I can’t really feel much for this episode. I mean, sure a spy died (which I really didn’t expect to happen), but can you really feel for these spies? They haven’t done much to differentiate themselves as spies and I can’t even remember which episodes had this guy. Though to be fair, the fact that the big reveal of this episode was that there wasn’t really a big reveal was interesting.

I think the main takeaway from this episode is simple: Yuuki is made of steel.

Joker Game Episode 10: Yuuki the Puppet Master

Ahh…the old “sand in the eyes” trick. That’s one way to start off an episode.

Given that this is what Yuuki is always saying and that last week’s episode involved a battle between two different spy agencies, I’m guessing this line is here so we’re absolutely sure that the main character in this arc is from the D-Agency.

It’s hard to hear clearly, but the background noise in this bar actually sounds like they’re in an English-speaking bar. But that aside, it looks like this week’s episode (or this arc?) is going to be devoted to this guy investigating the D-Agency (or is he investigating Yuuki specifically?).

Maybe I’ve been watching too much of this series, but I’m immediately suspicious of her. What’s wrong with me? I suppose the other option is she’s put here to die.

Well, the backstory certainly lines up…painting Akira as a prodigy does seem to match up with what we’ve seen of Yuuki so far. However, this investigator is learning a lot of this stuff really easily…meaning it’s either fake or the investigator will die with the knowledge, right? Yuuki seems like too much of a super-spy to let this happen.

Well, that explains why the guy at the beginning was saying Yuuki’s line.

Also, these guys fight Akira 3-on-1 with knives and Akira gets crap about fighting fairly for throwing sand in their face? Hahahahahahahaha

Hahahaha this is some online conspiracy theory-level association. Someone find the Illuminati meme!

This guy’s name…moving on.

Busted! I actually found it kinda funny that this happens right after the guy (Aaron Price?) was just talking about how a dog is more useful than a spy whose cover is blown…not sure if that was the point.

Psyche!

Definitely sounds like something Yuuki would do, but I still have a question. Why exactly is the old guy telling Price the truth now? What changed? The fact that Price came back? I mean, it means Price knows he was lying about Akira, but you don’t need to tell him everything, right?

Well, at least he has something, right? I feel like I got baited into suspecting this girl.

This series does such a cool job with Yuuki. The fact that he’s such an important character that seems to affect so many aspects of the show with very minimal screen time makes him feel more and more like a real spy.

Jeez…this series makes me wonder if anything we’ve watched so far is true.

Joker Game Episode 9: All according to plan

This minute and a half of recap (ugh…why do people do this?) screams to me that the studio is basically trying to say “Everyone, this is an actual arc rather than episodic stories!” With the introduction that plays before the OP song starts, that means we’re looking at about four minutes before the episode actually starts…which is annoying.

I’m so bad with faces…am I supposed to know this guy? Is he the guy from last week in charge of the Wind Agency? The main character for this week from the D-Agency?

Okay, never mind. I pick this guy as the D-Agency spy.

I dunno…I’m pretty suspicious of this guy, but he seems too pitiful. Is this really all an act? Everyone else in the room looks too…”rough” to be part of D-Agency.

Oh…maybe this guy really is the guy from last week’s episode.

Is this the guy that was being initiated into the Wind Agency from last week? Man, I really can’t remember faces.

Busted! Yuuki just always knows everything, does he?

You have no idea how to be the bad guy, do you? You never proclaim victory like this.

Got him! This scene was pretty cool.

Wait…you mean he was able to pour all of the liquid directly into the tube without any of it getting into his mouth? Given the size of the tube, I find that really hard to believe. Time to go experiment at home. Remember he had to do it at a rate that would make it look like he was actually drinking the liquid.

Wow…they even used the waitress to warn Shirahata? That’s actually a pretty cool twist to the episode.

This is a dramatic drive off into the dusk scene and all to end the episode, but didn’t the houseboy spy say there were two other D-Agency spies dealing with the other two Wind Agency spies? How exactly are those guys getting out?

Man, I was starting to wonder if the Wind Agency would end up being the main antagonist for the series, but it looks like they’re nowhere near the level of the D-Agency. It was still a fun episode, but those Wind Agency guys almost got beaten too hard if you ask me. So…now what? Back to episodic stories or was this the precursor for the final arc?

Joker Game Episode 8: A new challenger!

Tip #1: If you want to keep something secret, you probably don’t want to give it an important-sounding name like the “Grand Strategy”. I would go with something like Operation “Give them all kittens”. Because honestly…who wouldn’t support that?

Wow…this actually looks like a legitimate chess position. Also, assuming that the white piece in the top-right corner is a queen (it looks like a larger piece than the bishop on the top-left and it’s not short enough to be a rook, so I think it has to either be a king or queen), then black looks like he’s a couple of moves away from being mated.

Wait…what? Usually when you surrender, you knock over your king. This guy randomly knocks over the pieces on the left side of his board (his king is on the right).

See? The black king is still standing.

I have a soft spot for explanations like this…way too much Sherlock Holmes in my past.

I can’t tell who this guy is…the guy who was at the gate, the butler that followed our spy character, or some other random character.

Is this scene supposed to make this guy look important or something? It just makes him look dumb to me. Who lends a guy 5 years worth of salary and expects him to pay it back easily? That’s a dumb investment if you ask me.

I’m going to sound like such a nerd here, but it’s more typical for the chess board to be set up such that the white queen is on a white space and where a white space is at the bottom-right corner (here the white space is at the bottom-left corner). The positions of the pieces are correct, but the board needs to be rotated. That being said, conventions may have been different in this time, so meh…

…that’s racist? (also, is “black” supposed to be a euphemism for “M” here?)

There’s something “off” about the spy this week…

This guy turns on the lights, asks whether anyone is here, and then decides that there is no intruder? Seriously, who would answer that?

This is also ridiculous. The butler showing up should not be enough to quell your suspicions. Why didn’t the butler answer when you asked whether anyone was in the room?

Poor guy.

Well, that explains why this guy seemed “off” to me. He’s applying to be part of this Wind Agency…presumably another group of spies. Are they working against the D-Agency? I’m down for some spy wars!

Fight fight fight fight!

I can’t really pass too much judgment on this episode because it felt like it was setting up for something…hopefully, we’re in for something cool as we get closer to the final episodes of the series.

Joker Game Episode 7: A disappointing lack of Benedict Cumberbatch

Nooooooooooooo!!! Not sure what to feel about this yet! Well, I don’t see a swastika, so I guess this isn’t Germany.

We’re intentionally hiding this guy’s face with the camera perspective, so he’s clearly important!

He’s doing a crossword puzzle in pen? He’s clearly a smart guy! You might as well hand the guy a Rubik’s Cube.

THE HERO HAS ARRIVED!

Dolphins summoned by the power of whistling! Now I want to try this…someone get me a ticket on a cruise tour!

I’m guessing this old guy is going to be able to solve the line that our main character asked the worker earlier. What was it? Something ending in “A”?

Well, this is World War II and they just said “Enigma”. That can only mean one thing…this is The Imitation Game again! Woohoo!

See? Maybe this episode is a precursor to the movie and this Japanese spy steals the Enigma machine that gets used by Alan Turing to break the code. Still, that’s just wishful thinking. It’s Japan, so why would they help the Allies?

Wow, this guy got found out really quickly. He just gives himself away because of a crossword puzzle. Worst spy ever. But hey…anything to make these Japanese spies look good, right?

Also, should I find it weird that this episode relies on the assumption that a cryptographer would like crossword puzzles? Heck…how did the guy know the random worker who gave him the answer “Poseidon” wasn’t the spy?

His bionic eyes have facial recognition capabilities linked with Interpol’s database!

This is going to be followed by a monologue at the end of the episode where the Japanese spy says “I planned for this possibility” like all of the other episodes, isn’t it?

Dude…you’re a spy, right? Why would you drink this?

See? Anyway, given that there have been only so many characters introduced so far and the fact that the Japanese spy seems surprised, I’m going to guess that the poison was put there by the woman we saw earlier (she’s probably Cerberus).

I knew the dog was the hero all along!

The culprit! Also, this guy’s plastic surgery must have been horrible if he wasn’t even able to hide himself from the only two people looking for him on this ship.

Oh…that’s what the scene at the beginning of the episode meant. It was her husband’s ship. Got it.

I much prefer bittersweet endings like this. He doesn’t save the woman by making her a spy but rather chooses to take care of the child to give her peace of mind.

I think I’m starting to get the hang of these episodes…

Joker Game Episode 6: Trains

Starting things off with a random side note: I recognize these as Chinese characters and know that the typical Romanization is “Xin Jing”, so I looked it up. Apparently Hsin King is actually the city of Changchun, but it was renamed to Hsin King when the Japanese took over…fun history fact?

I guess this week’s episode is the Kabaneri crossover episode?

This kid asks what the reading kid is reading even though he can clearly see the title of the book and the reading kid responds with just the title of the book…

“Wash Room” appears at the top right here even though the sign says “Drawing Room”.

It then disappears and reappears again as “Wash Room” for this second set of characters where the sign actually says “Wash Room”. Come on, man…get it together. If the show does the translation for you, you could at least get the subtitle right.

Noooooo! Not that guy!

So he’s up against a group of anti-spies that somehow got the information he was trying to get from the informant? Sounds like a decent setup for an episode.

Ho ho magic!

Stuff about trains…I feel like there’s a clue in this information that will be used later in the episode, but I’m too lazy to pay attention to it.

Using bored and curious kids to find the culprit? I like this guy already.

The people on the train aren’t immediately suspicious of the guy with the hat and the trench coat? I guess they need to watch more movies…

Why does this guy immediately reach for the card after the kids left the train car? Does he notice the card from the beginning and just wait for them to leave before he inspects it? Or did he coincidentally put down his newspaper after they left?

This is actually really cool. He had the kids drop the card by the guy with the newspaper (not sure if it was the conductor in disguise or the accomplice) because he realized it would make the conductor drop his guard. Why would he suspect the conductor if he had used the kids to scout a passenger as the culprit?

The culprit! I suppose this makes sense, since it was a bit random for her to be part of the intel on the victim.

Whoa…he’s been holding on to a live pigeon this whole time? That seems a bit unlikely, don’t you think?

Betrayal everywhere!

Hmm…another decent episode, I’d say. I liked this spy. Keep it coming?

Joker Game Episode 5: Capture

Ugh…people and their signs. I had to look at the sign twice before I realized that they were trying to use the swirl at the end of the “S” to be the “o” that “Photo” was missing. Meanwhile, I’m sitting there wondering what the “phot” the sign said. Heck…I was willing to assume that it was purposely spelled incorrectly for some reason.

Wasted?

Lucky for me, I’m not familiar with the story of Robinson Crusoe, so I won’t have to search for all of the references to the story in this episode. That being said, I’m going to make the obvious guess from this opening narration. Similar to Robinson Crusoe’s story of surviving alone on an island, this spy (who is about to be arrested) is probably going to have to do something similar to survive in captivity, stranded from his allies.

GUILTY!

Maybe you should have asked what was going on first if you wanted to seem more innocent.

Zooming in on this map means it’s going to be important later. I’m assuming this is a schematic of the prison which will be used for the daring escape. That being said, I would assume the most pertinent information would be too small to see from that distance…

GASP!

This only becomes interesting if the spy’s trained to resist the truth serum. Otherwise, it’s like “what am I watching?”

I mean…I’m still running under the assumption that the end of this episode (or this arc) will have some big reveal that Yuuki exposed this spy on purpose to help the mission or something. Now I’m just trying to whittle down the numerous reasons why he would do it.

Woohoo! This guy’s smart enough not to let the main character do whatever he wants until it’s confirmed that he is on their side.

This soldier, on the other hand, probably isn’t as smart.

Casually giving away that he saw the map.

Given the perspective of the camera and the way he looks at it, I’m assuming this grate will also be important in the daring escape.

The map is a lie! Nice touch.

An ally! Wow…this plan seems pretty complicated.

Wait…did that soldier just walk to the end of a corridor of doors, open one, say there was no one there, and then walk back without checking any other doors? I’m going to assume this is a time skip because that’s incredibly suspicious.

First off, resisting the truth serum was expected given the “I planned for memory loss” thing from the other episode. This part is pretty cool, though…it sounds like D-Agency spies always include some kind of mistake in their transmissions because they expect the person on the other side to be smart enough to always ascertain the true message.

We all knew this was coming.

You see? This is the kind of episode that’s cool in a series about spies. The only complaint I have so far is that I really can’t tell if every episode is introducing a new spy. Everything gets tied back to Yuuki, so it almost feels like each spy is a faceless automaton acting out his will. It’s hard for me to grasp each spy’s strengths.

Joker Game Episode 4: Well, this is awkward…

Oh hey…I’ve been there. If you had shown me this picture without the big Chinese characters labeling the city, I would have guessed this was a Western city.

Wow…Chinese people smiled a lot back in the day.

Also, the beginning of the “background noise” for the street actually sounds like a Chinese person talking. That being said, the rest of it is just mumbling, so I can’t really give it too many points. E for effort?

So…this week’s arc is a murder mystery in China? I’m down with that.

That other guy got killed, but you can totally handle this! Also, I’d personally be suspicious if my superior said something like this to me.

Oops…

This guy must live alone. If he lived with his family, he should be panicking at the possibility that someone else was there when the home exploded.

No one ever cares about the “help”…

It’s amazing how many Japanese people are here in China. Weren’t Japan and China on opposite sides during the second world war? Last week’s episode ended with Japan joining Germany, right? Someone who knows more history…help me out here.

Isn’t this how the first guy died? I suppose this guy has no way of knowing that…

Uhh…this might be nitpicky, but I’m pretty sure Coke wasn’t in China at the time of World War II.

Ugh…so he just saw someone he knows and we’re not going to be shown who it is because this is a setup for a dramatic reveal later. However, since this is an episodic series, there are only so many people it could be since not many people have been introduced. More than likely, it’s the suspicious commander from before…the only other people it could be are the detective and the reporter, neither of whom make sense. It couldn’t be Kusanagi, because he wouldn’t have been surprised to see him.

GASP! This commander’s face is actually the look of shock that’s on my face right now.

She was taking your stuff? Yeah, she definitely deserved to die.

*facepalm* This character annoys me…

Also, I know it would have been too obvious if they had shown us the same tattoo as the unidentified victim on one of the other boys in the night club, but it would have been nice for that to have been tied in to the mystery. It seems like such a meaningless thing.

This situation looks very hopeless for the soldier, so he needs a crazy way out. Given that they’re purposely not showing us the face of the guy holding the gun behind him, I’m going to guess that we’ve either seen him before or he’s the D-Agency spy. There has to be a reason that he doesn’t shoot our “main character”.

…or that…there’s that…

Oh, he was the spy. Have we seen him before?

I dunno about this episode, guys. It felt really boring in the first half and the second half was basically devoted to letting the commander rant. I get that the point of the spy in this episode was to subtly manipulate things in the background, but I guess the intent was lost on me as I was watching…

 

Joker Game Episode 3: Amnesia

So this guy clearly has amnesia, but the beginning scenes of this episode make it pretty unclear, suggesting that he’s faking it. It seems like his instincts as a spy are making him fake some of it, but he doesn’t recall much more than names so far.

There’s a high probability that this is a fake story meant to confuse the amnesiac, so I’m proceeding with caution. Anyway, given the circumstances, I would guess that one of the soldiers hits him in the head with the butt of a rifle and causes the memory loss…because that’s how head wounds work!

Yeah, that Japanese sounds just like French with a Parisian dialect.

He knows a bunch of languages, changed his appearance, and mumbled numbers while unconscious? Clearly, he’s a linguistics student trying to pretend to be a math genius. Nothing suspicious here!

The accent mark over the “e” lets you know that these guys are really French!

So they have a gun that doesn’t work and they keep it hidden in a book because…what? They hope the soldiers will find it and foolishly try to use it against them? This gun feels like it’s only in this scene to show off that our amnesiac knows how to take apart a gun.

Is that really a French saying? No wonder everyone makes fun of French surrenders…

Oh…that was easy.

Yeah, dude…you look pretty cool, but weren’t you just asking the resistance fighters for weapons? Why toss aside the German gun?

He caused a dust explosion with flour in the air and excess oxygen? I’m no chemist, so I had to Google this and it seems to check out (seriously, just search for “flour dust explosion” on Youtube). The only thing I’m doubtful of is the fact that he was able to trigger the explosion with the lights turning on, but I feel like I shouldn’t test that theory in my apartment…

You just had to give the woman a gun, did you? I’m joking…given how knowledgeable Shimano has been up to now, I’m guessing he’ll have a safety measure for this (for example, maybe the gun wasn’t actually fixed).

Well, I was wary of Jean, so his betrayal isn’t too surprising.

Ahh yes…the age-old trick of fixing amnesia caused by a blow to the head with another blow to the head. As a neuroscientist, I’m crying inside.

Cool, he covers one eye before entering the dark church to get it used to the dark and then switches to that eye when he walks in. It seems weird and potentially useless in this situation, but I’m guessing he does it in case the church is compromised and he needs to quickly react to an enemy ambush.

I’m willing to buy that Yuuki taught the spies how to subconsciously remember the mission objectives, but I don’t buy that the memory loss in this mission was “planned”.

I’m a little sad that the actual Joker Game isn’t tied into the series more. It’s possible that it will be a factor in the future episodes, but so far, the series just introduced it as a metaphor for the spy game and kinda forgot about it. I get that we’re supposed to treat each episode’s mission as another Joker Game, but I miss the cards…

Anyway, new spy next week?