Baccano!

Baccano! (バッカーノ!, Italian for ruckus) is an anime by studio Brain's Base based off the light novel series of the same name by Ryohgo Narita. It is a crazy fantasy caper involving alchemists, immortals, gangsters, outlaws and an elixir of immortality, spread over several decades. The first thirteen episodes aired in Japan from July 26, 2007, to November 1, 2007 on WOWOW, a Japanese pay-per-view station, and the final three were released direct-to-DVD. Warner Bros. Television and LIVE Entertainment acquired the distribution rights for the United States, and the series aired on HBO in an English dubbed version from August 15, 2008 to November 21, 2008.

Synopsis
In the year 1711, a group of alchemists are granted an elixir of immortality, with the stipulation that they must kill each other until there can be only one. The now-immortal group unanimously decides it wasn't worth it and destroy the elixir; but one of them, Slizard Quates, starts to kill off his fellow immortals. To reduce the risk of Quates tracking them all down, the group separates and goes their separate ways. Neither of them crosses paths again till 1930, Manhattan, when Quates manages to create a new elixir of immortality. However, he loses it and it ends up going around town, taken to be a bottle of alcohol and unknowingly drunk by many residents. The drinkers of this new elixir include Isaac and Miria, an eccentric pair of thieves; the Gandor brothers, a Mafia family; and their associates in the Camorra, the Martillos (who employ some of the original immortals). Now, not only are a new group of immortals created, but the simmering criminal underworld is about to explode.

Background
The first talk of adapting Baccano! into an anime began in 2005, when Aniplex producer Shuko Yokoyama met with Baccano! editor Atsushi Wada and expressed a passionate interest in turning the light novels into an anime.

Aniplex held a focus panel for their already announced anime adaptation of Baccano! at the Tokyo Anime Fair (TAF) on March 23, 2007. Though a broadcast network had yet to be determined, the broadcast was expected to air that July. The panel members were: Baccano! author Ryohgo Narita; confirmed director Takahiro Omori; Suzuki, one of Narita's Dengeki Bunko editors; and Aniplex Chairman Masuo Ueda.

Production
Screenwriter Noboru Takagi credits Takahiro Omori with the decision to adapt four novels simultaneously, alleging that he had been inspired by 21 Grams – a 2003 film whose original linear narrative was recomposed during the editing stage. Meanwhile, Takagi's greatest influence while writing was Intolerance, a 1916 silent film which tells four parallel stories from four different periods concurrently and ties them all together at its end.

Rather than attempting to write a confused scenario from the beginning, Takagi decided to write the script directly and make adjustments along the way. It would take over a year for his script to be firmly developed up as a consequence, since he had to constantly revise previous episodes throughout the writing process. Omori has acknowledged that the unorthodox making of Baccano! must have required completely unfamiliar tasks from Brain's Base – a relatively small studio at the time of the anime's production – but he also believes that larger studio may not have allowed previous episodes to be altered when future episodes were already underway.

Location and Art
In an interview, Omori recalls that he had started work on the anime adaptation by 2005. For the sake of accuracy and atmosphere, he later took five days off between recording sessions of Hell Girl's second season in November 2006 to do location scouting in New York alongside Yokoyama, Brain's Base producer Yumi Sato, Art Director Akira Ito, and a Japanese guide. Many of the locations in the anime are based on real places the team visited; the Coraggioso, for instance, is inspired by the historic Chumley's speakeasy.

Ito, who had been recommended for the art director position by Sato, read the original novel prior to location scouting, and during scouting took over a thousand reference photographs alongside Omori (he collected pamphlets and bought old photo collections). Afterwards, he drew five image boards using high contrast and paid attention to color use–not only were color schemes different than those in Japan, he and Omori had determined that the anime should have various colors rather than be monotone 'despite the era'.

Following the image boards, Ito created over one hundred-and-sixty art settings: from the Coraggioso, the Alveare (the most spatially difficult to draw, so he was particular about making sure there were no contradictions), to the detailed settings of the Flying Pussyfoot (specifically the first-class and second-class cabins, the conductor's room, and the dining car). Omori asked him to redo them repeatedly, to "raise the ceiling and make it gorgeous," so he collected references on train cabins and western-style furniture materials in his research. For the actual art, they created "separate textures and pasted them on." He has remarked that he had plenty of creative ideas toward the organizations' offices, including having a bottle of alcohol hidden behind a frame and a hidden escape route at the Gandors' office.

Ito also contributed to the anime's art boards, choosing the shots he wanted to personally draw. As he was especially keen to draw establishing shots (e.g. 'the first shot after a scene changes' or a shot that gives the audience an immediate understanding of what kind of location they're in), his workload was significant. He was also careful to differentiate 1930 from 1931 and 1932 by making 1930's weather sunny and the latter cloudy and rainy.

Baccano!'s general background art was (with the exception of Episode 07, which Studio Homare worked on) delegated to the Korean background art company Studio Orange during the period where the anime industry was transitioning from hand-drawn to digital art. With Ito still drawing by hand and the Korean staff already painting digitally, he specifically requested that they recreate the hand-drawn texture of the artboards with their digital paintbrushes; for scenes he felt warranted it, he had them draw in the traditional way. Ito personally adjusted the staff's art as needed, paying special attention to color usage.

Through the above methods, Ito was able to recreate the organic, rough textures that Omori desired for the show; however, the Flying Pussyfoot interior had textures (first hand-drawn and scanned) digitally pasted onto the walls, paintings, and vases.

For the 1930s colors, Ito referenced The Sting and Once Upon a Time in America when coloring the organizations' offices. The red-walled hideout of Szilard Quates' followers was based on The Godfather. The only color he deliberately eschewed was blue, as he had relied on it for art in previous works and promised he would not do the same for Baccano!. As a result, the 2001 scene's blue tones and art give it a distinctly different atmosphere from the 1930s scenes.

Ito worked exclusively on Baccano! throughout all eighteen months of production, a total immersion into a single project which he credits as helping him to 'come out of his own shell.'

Casting
Aniplex & Brain's Base: According to Yokoyama, Baccano! 's lack of a singular main character meant that the casting process was an even one that had no particular consideration for a leading role. Half of the cast had been decided by the time of Baccano! 's first audio play (originally broadcast in 2005; released in disc format 2006), and the only two roles that were auditioned were Ennis and Miria Harvent. For the rest of the cast, the staff seemed to have particular images in mind: in the case of Ladd Russo, his voice actor Keiji Fujiwara was suggested because he dubbed the character Sawyer on Lost–an American television drama that Baccano! 's staff was hooked on at the time.

LIVE Entertainment & Skylark Sound Studios: After LIVE Enertainment acquired the rights for the United States alongside Warner Bros., they comissioned Skylark Sound Studios in Burbank, California to dub the series into English. The CEO of LIVE, Garrett Fredrickson, recounts that the casting for the show was a fairly difficult one, the challenge Baccano! posed was not just that its main cast was large, but that it required a variety of period and non-American accents and involved older adult men – none of which was common to the anime voice acting industry.

ADR director Charlie Adler decided to tackle this challenge by hiring various veteran and other professional voice actors to voice the characters, among this cast included Mark Hamill, Grey DeLisle, Jeff Bennett, Fred Tatasciore, and Gregg Berger. A few celebrity actors were also hired to voice in the series, including Hank Azaria as Issac Dian, Tina Fey as Miria Harvent, Anna Paquin, who was also in the HBO original series True Blood, as Ennis, and Jessica Alba as Chané Laforet. In total, the casting for the dub lasted approximately three months.

Reception
The anime adaptation of Baccano! has received positive reviews. Several critics from various websites have praised the series for its plot, characters, animation, musical score and its voice acting, especially the English dubbed version. For example, THEM Anime Reviews gave the entire series a score of 5 out of 5 stars, with reviewer Bradley Meek stating that the show was "a joy to watch" and despite the fact that "the series ends on an epilogue that feels a bit flat", it left him with "the best possible feeling: a mixture of contentment and a hunger to see more". He also praised the series for its animation which looked "great throughout, especially for a TV series" before summarizing the series as a "beautiful, confounding mess of chaos and delight".

Baccano! has received significant praise from Anime News Network reviewers. Theron Martin described the anime as "sometimes humorous, occasionally brutal, and nearly always fun". He claimed that the anime's "complex plotting and voluminous casting, combined with strong dubbing, animation, and musical score, make this a must-see series for fans of American mobster stories," and concluding that "this could be one of the year's best series." In his review, Carl Kimlinger claimed Baccano! to be "one of the best, and certainly the most cleverly written series in recent years" and described it as "lethally fun" before giving the series an 'A' rating for both the subbed and dubbed versions.

Davey C. Jones of Active Anime praised the anime, stating that, "Like Pulp Fiction changed the way we saw movies, Baccano will be the story that will change the way we see anime," concluding that "this all over the map anime is one unique and crazy ride from start to its never ending finale" and that "Baccano offers something truly unique in anime."

Daryl Surat and Mike Toole of Anime World Order Podcast consider Baccano! to be their "pick for best series of 2007 (or 2009 depending on how you want to count it)." Bryce Coulter of Mania Entertainment gave the complete series a 'B' rating, stating that it is "a drastic and welcome departure from your typical anime formula and that's what makes it so intriguing," and concluding that it has a "little bit of comedy, drama, action, and romance all swirled up into one giant ruckus of fun!"

Home media
Eight DVD compilations were released by Aniplex, each containing two episodes, with the first released on October 24, 2007, and the eighth on May 28, 2008. A Blu-ray Baccano! limited edition boxset was released on January 26, 2011, by Aniplex.

Warner Home Video released the entire series on DVD and Blu-Ray in the United States on March 17, 2009. In Australia and New Zealand, the series is licensed by Madman Entertainment, who released the series over four DVDs between June 24, 2009, and October 21, 2009. A boxset was released on March 17, 2010. Baccano! is licensed in the United Kingdom by Manga Entertainment and was released as a complete boxset on October 11, 2010.