Audience reviews
20 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
Elhwing
Great Pretender has many things to offer, and could have been a great anime, but it fails to deliver towards the end, hence the mixed feelings review.
I'll try to explain down below every reason that might make you enjoy this anime while also disclosing the few parts that should make you lower your expectations.
Things done right :
- The art :
Although art is rather subjective, anyone will reckon that the art shown in this anime has a unique vibe, it's colorful, it's good looking, you have many different kind of places depicted ( urban places mostly, but from all around the world which adds even more diversity ).The same goes for character design, while some characters aren't that inspired, they all have their own style.
- The characters :
The cast of main characters is done w…
Read at the sourceOpanJam45
Great pretender is a 10/10 show with the worst ending known to man. You watch this show and become enraptured with the cunning schemes, the characters and their backstories, the immaculate art, and just the overall thrill of what feels like Oceans 11 the anime. Then the ending throws a concrete brick at your f*cking head like you're a homeless man in a 2014 youtube prank video. I've never felt so disrespected by an ending. Honestly it's genius how they could make an ending this d*gshit. Watch everything up to the boat scene and then stop after that and pretend that's the ending. The final scam victim truly was the viewers.
Read at the sourceInvidiaSan
The Great Pretending that this anime is a well written story about con artists making well-crafted schemes and not a giant mess full of nonsensical plot twists and protagonism.
The Great Pretender was in fact a good anime in the beginning and it quickly became one of my favorites. The first season is worthy of a 10, with great schemes and character development put together in three interesting cases. This anime was very creative and stood out of the ordinary with fresh new ideas and characters with well constructed personalities. And it even chose a Freddie Mercury song for the outro! What could possibly go wrong?
Season 2 happened, giving us a very risky storyline that could go both ways: 1 - Give the anime an epiphany and improve a lot with a great story that may have been unexpected w…
Read at the sourceThechaoscat
I truly loved the motivation for edamame's journey most of the show is really good. But the constant fakeouts with edamame just being okay with everything that happens to him its ruins it. Every other character gains or fixes a problem for them not edamame. He only got more questions and learns to truly trust no one. Relationships you think will happen never develop further. The final case is too complicated even for a heist show so many variables that is was more dumb luck. Edamame just gets played a fool and never retaliates or shows he's good at anything other than being the pawn. But the show calls him a genius but gets played a fool the whole show.
Read at the sourceSharerShadow
Great Pretender has a decent soundtrack, and the art is quite pleasing, but these things don't matter when the story is poor. The emotional/dramatic scenes were well done, but I couldn't take it seriously knowing how absurd the plot was. If you don't get too hung up on how well the plot is written, you might enjoy it, but it was dreadful for me.
Great Pretender is about a journey of international swindlers conning people that they deem evil. But the ones that are being conned aren't the "evil" individuals, but YOU, the viewer. The scriptwriters are trying to con you into thinking that there weren't any enormous plot holes and that the show was good.
Great Pretender wasn't able to fool me, so that's why I'll be exposing this deceitful scriptwriting to protect others from this scheme.…
Read at the sourceEvaFotia
Great Pretender was an anime i was excited to watch due to Wit Studio and the general hype around it. After waiting a few months due to work, i finished the anime and boy was i disappointed. The anime is essentially a "i predicted this prediction to happen" and everything goes all according to Laurent's plan. I am aware it's an anime but the general "villains" of the anime are essentially robots taking orders from Laurent as they do everything according to plan. It doesn't exactly help that they throw away the whole plot of the anime at the final episode where Edamura magically has contacts of all the past villains and they're all essentially good guys now despite the artist dude ruining the life of Cynthia's boyfriend.
Edamura's character basically never grows as he stays as the angry ki…
Read at the sourceStreecer
People often like to dramatize how they feel about any given show for the sake of being theatrical, but I'm telling the truth when I say that the Great Pretender is one the best, and most dissapointing anime I've seen.
It's visually stunning, with a great soundtrack and an appealing premise. And for the first half of the series everything is smooth sailing. It's nothing mind blowing, but the presentation and banter between the cast keeps things light and fast paced. Each arc focuses on one of the main characters and their backstory in an intelligent and well put together way.
Except the last arc. Which is a complete trainwreck narratively, morally and themetically. Aside from the deceptive way that the story is edited to come out with a twist that makes you scratch your head, everything…
Read at the sourceSpiceseller115
I loved the Show it was suspenseful fun, and is great for a binge watch or a slow burn. One of the only bad things that I can say about the show is that one or 2 of the episodes feels repetitive. But after that it keeps its momentum. The characters were cool, and a the main character is a so enjoyable to see him scheme fail, and succeed. if you like shows like kakeguri, kaiji, or other suspense filled shows this will quickly become an all time favorite. The art is amazing every establishing shot, or just a still from an episode is good enough to be a wall paper background.
Read at the sourcemistersunday
Picture your dream job. If you’re a smart ass like me you might say that you don’t dream of labor to begin with. That's not a bad response, unfortunately most of us will have to work at some point in our lives regardless of what our feelings towards labor are. So I’ll ask again, try to set aside your smart assery and picture your dream job (or the one you dislike the least if that’s easier). Got it? Alright well I’m going to assume that ‘con artist’ isn’t on your mind right now (if it is then I guess this anime will be right up your alley lmao). The thing is, scamming people isn’t as black & white as one might imagine. The moral landscape of scammers is dubious no doubt, but dubious nonetheless. Great Pretender takes us on a journey, illustrating what life as an extravagant scammer might l…
Read at the sourceZestiria
Story-9
Great Pretender is a show about scamming and stopping bad people, while watching this show, i get to see some fun and cool ways to fool people. In the early episode, me and probably a bunch of other people got fooled thinking that Chynthia killed Abby and the others. When that happens, i thought that Edamura will somehow change into a god at scamming learning of his mistake then. But i got fooled, i then think that this Con Man group is actually really good and i would see more of this fun comedy. At the ending, before this anime finishes, i thought that Edamura would betray again but i was fooled twice. Also, the part explaining the history of how the Con Man was created was really great
Art/Animation-9
The Animation is really cool, the animation itself is like a painting that…
Read at the sourceOrbitswell
This show is so frustrating because its fine if not better in almost every way, i like the characters, the writing the art style, and the premise. but this show has one fatal flaw and this flaw is something i now call a great pretender moment. A great pretender moment is when we get this insane character moment or crazy action something insane happens delving into our characters minds and then the show just takes a massive shit all over it saying oh you thought that was new or important or even real well fuck you its not too bad because it was all just part of their grand scheme their grand plan. I cant ever recommend this show all just because of that one massive flaw.
Read at the sourceHenriqueNeves
I haven't seen any comments about Great Pretender yet, but I can already foresee the many free praise for his art, which consists of a palette of colors quite different from the usual, but which does not suit the unity of the rest of the work at all.
The truth is, I liked Great Pretender. It has a very dynamic and hurried plot, and this is very well combined with this agile cinematography at almost every moment. I think that the innovation of anime comes from this vitality of movements in animation, and that goes well with this narrative that is more down to earth and unpredictable at the same time.
What prevents anime from boosting this feeling of dynamism to the rest of the other elements that I praised earlier, is this choice of an ultra stylized and unnecessary art. The truth is that…
Read at the sourceLilToadie
I have never felt so compelled to write a review about an anime until I watched the end of Great Pretender.
To sum it up, I loved this show until the last arc. I genuinely thought that it would go down as one of my favorites of all time. The art is fantastic--every scene looks like it could be a convincing computer wallpaper, the animation is super fluid, the music and sound design is exceptional. And, until that last arc, the character development and plot seemed just as good. I felt attached to the main cast, invested in their backstories and growth as they worked together in elaborate con jobs. The dialogue and pacing was great as well--it struck a delicate balance between funny moments and handling serious topics very well. There seemed to be strong foundations for a fantastic ending…
Read at the sourceKC26
Well this is definitely a great revenge story(kind off).
It's one of those where you just can't get to hate even a single character.
It's really nice at deceiving you. Tho that thing backfires at a point since it gets repetitive on that note. Well even with that, it manages to trick you into thinking the obvious as expected but delivers the unexpected in the end. The twists are really nice, especially at the end of the final arc.
Glad is wasn't rushed. Slow and steady plot progress and nice character development to each character.
Gets realistic at times, which I am a fan of personally.
Except for that it has some unique writing as well. Based on con artists, it covers a lot of areas that are prone to fraud. Like art museum, human trafficking, betting, etc.
Music is top notch. So is…
Read at the sourceDjinnKyo
Be warned that the review will have spoilers!!
Unfortunely, Great Pretender has to be one of the most disappointing things i've watched this year. It was pretty nice until halfway the last heist, but after Abby and Cynthia ''died'', it all became just a rollercoaster of nonsense and fake emotions that throwed away everything it tried to build. To be organized, let's go with the usual:
Story: For a heist anime, the heists were pretty mediocre. There was no moment of ''hey, that is in fact really smart'' or any tension on the heists whatsoever, to the point were sometimes it just felt like artificial stupidity of the targets. The first and last heists felt totally unearned and simply ''ex-machined'', whilst the second and third were the most interesting. Despite that, the story's quality…
Read at the sourcemicrobiome
After 7 years of being on this site, this is the first anime I've watched while airing that I've felt so passionate about writing a review.
Great Pretender is a good show. Dare I say, a great show. As someone who enjoys the idea of heist in media (note: I say this because I admit I enjoy the thrill of heist in media but don't actively watch/read it), it was refreshing to find this in a newer anime.
I entered the show completely blind; I watched the PV and got some slight gist of what was going to happen, but I didn't realize how enthralled I would be in all the twists and turns of the plot. And boy, does this anime take you on some turns. As someone who keeps theories to a minimum while watching, I could say I was genuinely surprised at some of the big reveals of the anime especially wh…
Read at the sourceiitora
The Great Pretender was fucking incredible. Without getting into spoiler territory, all I can really say is... it's one of the smartest anime out there. I know I sound like a goddamned Rick and Morty fan when I say that, but believe me. Everything about is top notch. The animation is incredible, the characters are realistic and relatable, and most importantly, the heists are incredibly well thought out. It's definitely worth your time.
Tl;dr: WIT does amazing things when they're freed from the Attack on Titan mines.
The first half is currently available on Netflix (worldwide, i believe!); However, the final half is unfortunately locked to Japanese Netflix only for now. You can easily find the final half on torrent sites... but even then I would suggest watching the first half now and leav…
Read at the sourceCipher3030
Man, in all of my years watching anime, I've never watched such a good show that left me with such a bad taste in my mouth. Before I get into the meat and potatoes of my review, let me first say that I will try to avoid spoilers for those of you who aren't watching the sub online off of Netflix, since the final arc isn't available on US Netflix yet. Furthermore, a lot of my harsher scores in the story, character, and enjoyment areas are heavily influenced by the final arc, and especially the ending, so if you don't want to be jaded before the final arc officially releases, just stop reading here.
Story: 4
The story follows the exploits of Makoto "Edamame" Edamura, a two-bit scam artist who took advantage of old people in Japan until he meets Laurent, the first person to con him. After joi…
Read at the sourcesuoivne
Great Pretender was exceptionally disappointing. What I thought to be watching was a modern Lupin, it ended becoming the classic 'predictable but not fun' kind of story. I wanted to like it and say originals aren't always bad... I couldn't.
Nothing in this godforsaken anime makes sense. Every 'plan' is meant to show that our main cast is good at this, but everyone besides them are plain stupid so of course they're gonna succeed without breaking a sweat, or are they? Well, we're meant to believe that they're trying really hard but the 'challenges' are never found. All of the outcomes are painfully predictable and you can see who is who and/or what she or he is up to based on their personalities alone. The supposedly villains are just there, often times without any reason and in the end the…
Read at the sourceSingleH
What we have here is an expression of love for art. It’s a treat in every sense of the phrase, being sweet to the taste beyond expectation and a dietary rarity worth your appreciation and indulgence. As time goes on, television ad rates plummet, and production committees get stingier and stingier with their limited funding and man power, impossibly ambitious original anime become more and more financially harrowing to fund and logistically nightmarish to create. Yet somehow, here we have it, the beauty to behold: Great Pretender.
How much of what I’m about to tell you which you find completely obvious is entirely dependent on how blind, deaf, and senseless you happen to be, because if you ask even such a staunch critic as myself, this is the hardest masterwork to overlook and the single m…
Read at the source