Hakata tonkocu ramens

I enjoyed the beginning of this season quite a lot. There is a great setting and several interesting characters. I really enjoyed the first two episodes especially, and at one point, I expected everything to turn into a revenge-type narrative worthy of John Wick. Unfortunately, that did not happen, and I experienced my first disappointment, which was compounded by finding out that this anime series would consist of several stand-alone episodes instead of one continuous coherent narrative and also that it would revolve a lot around the game of baseball. Sure, using baseball to draw parallels between friendship and other things around it could be cool. However, in this show, it just did not fit with the concept of assassins somehow. Likewise, I was expecting a gritty, gory, and astounding spectacle, and instead, it was more of a buddy action crime drama anime series where some of the sequences were pretty good, and others not so much. I was also quite annoyed by how Lin kept getting into trouble, and then his companion Banba had to get him out of it. It was such a weird parallel to rescuing a damsel in distress. Overall, it was not that bad; it was just not what I wanted it to be. Also, even for what it was, it still was not as good as it could have been. Otherwise, it could have been something like my favorite movie, The Last Boy Scout. Still, it is a pretty likable and, at times, an interesting piece of work. 6.4/10. (2018.03.30)