Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Coyote Ragtime Show – episode 2

July 30, 2006 on 10:53 pm | In Coyote Ragtime Show | 1 Comment

“Little Girl of the Bar Pirate”

Boobs save the day in this episode that reveals that Mister and his merry band are actually the heroes. The first episode was an elaborate ruse!

Mister and his accomplices, Bishop and Katana, return to Mister’s bar to pick up their young charge, Franca.
Angelica’s investigations indicate that Mister was set to be released a mere ten days after his escape.
At the same time, the people with whom Madame Marciano works wonder why she is in such a rush that she feels the need to stage a coup d’etat.

Coyote Ragtime is great fun, particularly as the team of Mister, Katana and Bishop are formed by an “old guard” team: Ohtsuka Akio, Seki Tomokazu and Horiuchi Kenyuu all plug in and rock out after so many years in the industry and each of them in several of my favourite shows. Sure, that indicates a bias, but I was surprised that Bishop and Katana were ever going to be characters; I thought that they were mere disposable drones in existence only so that they could spring Mister. Not so!
Mister is one of those lovable rogues who cements his lovability with that ancient technique known as the “double smile”. You think he’s done smiling, then he comes back for one more flash of the teeth compounded with just the mere hint of a laugh! He’s a “coyote”, you see, which is clearly future speak for “lovable rogue”. Now that we don’t have to deal with Angelica as the focus (and Angelica seems content to talk only of tits), the series can open itself up some.

In that regard we have Franca, a girl with a high and mighty persecution complex. It’s in the great playbooks of anime history: hardened yet lovable rogue (in this case, a “coyote”) adopts child of an important man after he dies. That lovable rogue may or may not be directly or indirectly responsible for the death of the father, but will aim to do the right thing by the child left behind.
That’s exactly what we’ve got in Franca, who believes that she is only being kept for the fact that she has the key to her father’s treasure. Madame Marciano might know what that treasure is, but Mister certainly does not. In fact, his pursuit of the treasure isn’t even for treasure’s sake but for Franca’s. The sooner that she comes to realise that the affection that the team feels for her is genuine, the sooner she can attain happiness.
All of the happiness that does not come automatically with running a saloon where the people get into fights for the sake of fighting, anyway.

Even Madame Marciano’s 12 Sisters get some time to be something more than a gimmick: watching them go about doing their things while having telepathic conversations (or whatever you’d call it – private channel chat?) is pretty cool and this episode doesn’t make the mistake of trying to involve all of them in the action. TJ Han told me that they’re “too hot to be bad” and at first I didn’t believe him but I’m starting to have fun with them. Outside of an explosive first episode where all stops are taken out, they settle into normalcy and something even approaching cleverness. The plot used to stop the Sisters from achieving their goal actually used several excellent stand-bys of storytelling, and for that I commend the staff.

Coyote Ragtime Show even rewards its viewers for paying a little bit of attention: the saloon that Mister owns features a bunny girl waitress; one of the customers wears a leather jacket that reads “Harem Devidson” and features a topless woman; and, most important of all, the bartender is a monkey. A monkey, of all things!
Also of note is the fact that it features a billboard with the president of Iraq, for whatever reason. Clearly it was his time to shine! If George W. Bush could be in the Yakitate!! Japan manga, then why not President Talabani in Coyote Ragtime Show? (thanks for the tip, Mohammad)

I haven’t seen this sort of SF since Outlaw Star. It’s been a drought in my diet and, despite the fact that this show hasn’t yet proven itself as anything approaching intellectual, Coyote Ragtime Show seems to be the rain. Even if it fails on me, I can always consult my DVD collection.