 Have you guys seen the greatest anime series from last year? Now in 2020 we had a number of good anime series that came out with Beastars premiering on Netflix though I think that had come out earlier in Japan, I'm not 100% sure on that, along with other Netflix series like B&A, Brand New Animal, Fire 4 Season 2 which I personally enjoyed a decent chunk of. We had a lot of sequels this year. A lot. We didn't have a ton of new anime this year because you know, 2020 decided to be a shit show. We did have a couple of good shows that came out but by far the absolute best one that came out of last year was The Great Pretender. Now if you haven't seen The Great Pretender, The Great Pretender is a Netflix original anime series. I say Netflix original but I think it did air on a Japanese television network before it came to America and the rest of the world with Netflix releasing it. That is not the part I care about though, what I care about is that it was the best series that came out last year by far and I will fight anyone that says otherwise. Seriously, I binged it as soon as it came out and then I was mad at Netflix for not having the rest of it and then I binged that as soon as it came out as well. I've loved it. I've actually rewatched the show already. It is by far my favorite series of 2020. You have no clue. Now if you are unfamiliar with The Great Pretender, which if you are, how dare you go watch it right now, the main character is Makoto Edmura who tries to pull a scam on a Frenchman named Laurent and then gets caught up in one of his more fun bigger scams. The first scam being taking down an American filmmaker slash mafia leader who uses his power to be a dick. Screw that guy. Through the course of this, Edmura meets Abby and Cynthia, the two other main confidence men that he starts working with. With the four of them basically forming the main team on them being the ones that pull scams. Now there are a lot of members of this crew as in total. So much that I don't even think we get a name for literally all of them. But one of the really nice things about the show is that it manages to tell you the backstory of pretty much each of the characters without exposition dumping any of the episodes. What I mean by this is each arc deals with a certain character's backstory. The first arc deals with Edmura and his whole story of why he became a conman in the first place. I'm not going to get into a ton of spoilers about that because if you haven't seen the show you really need to. But it actually is a really nice thing and I kind of like the way it woven to the story. It makes you really feel for this guy and what he had to go through as to why he's stuck in the situation that he is in now. The second arc where they are scamming two brothers who keep rigging airline races. That does a lot into Abby's backstory and why she is the way she is and why she acts the way she does and that was a lot of fun. The third arc deals with Cynthia's. The final arc deals with Laurent and you finally find out why he is the biggest douche that he is. Actually Laurent it's really mean to call Laurent a douche really even though he is. Laurent is very good at what he does. He is very good at tricking people into getting what he wants and making it so that he is able to run and run the games how he wants them to. Basically he's able to set up the situation so they always fall in his favor. This doesn't mean he is infallible. What I mean by that is he is able to get tricked. If he doesn't know the full situation going into something he is very liable to fall out of it. In fact Edemura at the end of the show is able to trick him fairly freaking well because Edemura didn't actually reveal any of his full plan to Laurent before the scam began which made for a really interesting and epic moment especially when certain events led to the ending of the series. Again don't want to get into spoilers but I kind of hated Edemura for a minute here because he kind of antithesized who he had been up to that point but he did manage to redeem himself by doing the right thing in the end so I guess I can't be too mad at him. Here's where I'm going to get interesting because I really want more of this show because I love the concept of scam artists scamming douchebags out of their money because fuck those guys. However I don't know that I necessarily want the ending of the show to be erased and what I mean by that is the way the show ends Edemura is in a much better place than he was before certain events from his past have come back and he knows a bit more of the full situation and he feels much more content and happy with where his life is. Laurent has finally let go of his past and is now accepted that he can't really change anything about it and also feels content. Abby and Cynthia both of them in their arcs respectively also felt a little more content though they just enjoy the thrill of running the scams because let's face it that is fun. But there's an event that happens at the very end of the show and it personally makes me fear that if we do get more to the great pretender then we are going to lose a really decent chunk of development that Laurent had and it's just going to feel like a back pedal. If they continue I'm hoping they don't back pedal on a lot of the development that he had but it's still a possibility. Now I really want to get into the voice acting real quick because this is where the most interesting part for me happened. When you start the show it doesn't matter if you're listening in English or in Japanese both versions start with the same exact audio that being basically a Japanese man who knows English and a Frenchman who knows English doing the audio speaking English with their respective accents. That would have been really really cool to see however part way through the show there is a pause and depending on which version you're watching a message pops up on screen saying that the rest of the series will be done in Japanese or English respective of which you are listening to at which point you should switch to a regular cast. Now I personally would have loved it because it's a multinational cast for each of the actors especially in the American version to have been speaking in English because they are in America and speaking English for a good chunk of it to be speaking English with the accents that we had heard in the very beginning of the show. That would have been really cool especially because we could have gotten back in Japan we could have gotten like Japanese audio with like them. I just think it would have been really cool to have like a multinational cast with a bunch of different accents and dialects that we hear throughout the show. Unfortunately we don't get that and it was lost very quickly but I can't complain too much because overall I thought the English voice cast did a very very good job. I've mentioned this in my previous anime video dubs versus subs I personally prefer to watch a show in dub not for because I'm a casual or anything. I personally prefer dubs because I have ADHD and it becomes really hard for me to track what characters are saying if I have to be reading subtitles the entire time. Again would have been cool if we had seen them do something with the fact that every character is from a different nation. Laurent speaks like eight different languages it wouldn't really cool to hear him speak in each of those languages at some point throughout the show but I guess that might have been a little bit too much work for Netflix to feel it justifying doing it for the entire series. Again I personally thought it would have been really really cool. Final thoughts on the show the animation is fucking phenomenal it is brilliantly put together everything looks like it flows and it is brilliant. The opening and the entire soundtrack are some of my favorite pieces of music. I could listen to the soundtrack for hours I love instrumental music it is some of my favorite things I just enjoy listening to that kind of stuff and the jazz tracks that they use throughout the show are great. Again I would love to see more from this I want to see where the story continues if they can continue it and if it does good but if I have to give the show a rating I would rate this a I would give the show a rating of a 19 out of 20 not perfect again almost nothing is but it rolled really fucking high. I binged the entire thing I didn't know how I was gonna feel about it and I binged it literally the second I started watching the show it is so good the story is so freaking amazing I just if they continue I would love to see where it goes both the way the season ends I think it's nearly perfect as is and we don't need more from it but everyone else can you know choose and decide what they want for themselves but yeah those are my thoughts if you haven't seen the show go watch it it's on Netflix it is phenomenal and I hope that you enjoy it pretty much as much as I do. Hey guys I hope that you enjoyed that video from me talking about The Great Pretender it's a series I've wanted to talk about for a minute I just haven't been able to get a ton of thoughts in my brain organized to be able to get them out to you in any sort of normalized fashion but hey tell me what you guys thought if you've seen the show down in the comments did you like it hate it what not you know everything but that's all I have for now guys if you want to follow me on Twitter or Instagram links to both those are gonna be in the description down below as always I hope they all have a fantastic day and as always peace out guys