Baccano!

## Baccano! *Baccano!* is one of the most original and kinetic anime of its era — a period crime thriller that dismantles linear narrative to deliver a story that feels more alive precisely because it refuses to tell itself in order. In 1711, a group of alchemists aboard a ship summon a demon and are granted the gift of immortality — along with a formula to make an elixir that can do the same. When one of them begins killing the others to absorb their immortality, the survivors scatter across centuries. By 1930, several of them have entangled themselves in America's criminal underworld. The story explodes across three timelines: the 1930 New York crime war between the Gandor and Martillo families; the 1931 hijacking of the transcontinental express Flying Pussyfoot, where a mysterious killer in white and a terrorist in black clash among hundreds of passengers; and a 1932 coda connecting the threads. The cast is enormous and deliberately overwhelming — thieves, hitmen, alchemists, a homunculus, a pair of bumbling robbers who become unlikely heroes — and the series jumps between them with gleeful abandon. What makes *Baccano!* remarkable is not its plot mechanics but its exuberance: the sheer joy of a story that trusts its audience to keep up and rewards them with set pieces of rare invention.