20 Faces, One Disappointment

Well, the new season has delivered us a bunch of new shows, most of which I admit I haven’t bothered to watch. I have made it a point to catch all three of the fanservice shows thus far, so at least I can talk about those. I also watched what I thought was going to be the most intriguing: Daughter of Twenty Faces. It turned out to be the most disappointing, so I’ll take a break from the fanservice to look at it.

The early translations of the plot were a little confused over whether the girl was the thief, or whether she was running off with the thief (turns out to be the latter). The first would stretch credulity more than a bit, but it might be fun. The second might be more logical, but risked being boring in concept. Still, it had a chance to be reasonably entertaining. What I expected to get was something like the 60’s crime capers, or Lupin crossed with It Takes a Thief. Suave good-guy/bad-guy as the protagonist, over-matched police, seemingly airtight security, and inventive tricks that leave the viewer amazed at how badly hoodwinked the good guys were. The show was indeed set in the 1960’s, and “The Thief Known as 20 Faces” even had a gimmick: he would always warn the owner what he was coming to steal, and when. And then he’d steal it, no matter what the security. Cool, right?

Wrong. The show lost me within one minute of the opening, as I looked at the enormous security around a wealthy guy’s mansion. Twenty Faces was coming to steal a jeweled music box, and they couldn’t have packed another police officer on the lawn without everyone else exhaling to make room. First thing that occurs to me: “Why not sneak the music box out during a shift change, so it’s not even there?” Of course, the obvious counter-ploy is to hijack it after it leaves, so I was willing to give the show a pass. Maybe they thought of that, or he’d done it in a previous theft, so they didn’t dare.

Close in to the room where the owner is under heavy guard — of course he’s got the box right there on the table in front of him, easy to grab. Stupid.

Then the hidden smoke bombs go off. Check, you know what’s coming next, right? One of the cops is really Twenty Faces in disguise. He grabs the box….

…and at that exact moment, his dirigible arrives, drops a hook to catch a pair of pre-positioned ropes, and lifts off the entire roof.

The viewer is left to guess exactly when he stole the bullets out of the guns of every policeman in the room.

From there, exactly how he levitates into the air and walks off, untouched by any of the bullets (fired by guards outside the house), is not explained, but frankly, I don’t care by this point; the show has already telegraphed that the writers are not up to telling a caper story. Inventive tricks are one thing. Impossible tricks are another. Smoke bombs, maybe. Cutting through the walls so that the roof will lift right off, not to mention emplacing the chains — and just how did he know that the guy would hole up in that room ahead of time?

Bad enough that the show makes the victim dumb so the thief can succeed. But a pop-top roof is just cheating. Unfortunately, this show wasn’t through.

After some exposition and following the Japanese policeman in charge of the worldwide effort to catch Twenty Faces, we cut to Our Heroine, who is watching the news reports of his exploits. Chizuko is a bright 11 year old who loves detective stories, but she’s extremely withdrawn, almost autistic. Chizuko also quietly throws the occasional tantrum, refusing to eat the wonderful food provided for her by Mommy and Daddy; even going so far as to spill it on the table and walk off. She refuses to eat or drink anything prepared by her mother, but wolfs down a meal the butler said he went out to buy.

Finally, she collapses. The doctor is mystified — and after he leaves Chizuko starts explaining in a monotone that because she’s helped “Mommy” cook since she was a little girl, she knows they’re poisoning her. All the stories she’s been reading give her no answers to how to escape her prison and survive. Mommy and Daddy, you see, are really Auntie and Uncle, and it’s to be assumed that they’re trying to kill her for the family fortune. Of course, they’re shocked, shocked(!) to hear this from their dear daught–, er, niece, for whom they want only the best, because she will one day inherit the company, blah, blah, blah….

until the butler drops his disguise and reveals the bottle of poison that Mommy’s been using. Yes, he’s really Twenty Faces, and he offers to let Chizuko come with him. She accepts, of course, and oh by the way, he’s also stealing some famous ruby of theirs.

Off they go to have adventures (and nearly get killed when some really bad guy shows up). Whoop-te-do. This is the scene that sealed it for me: they’re pausing to have a heartfelt discussion as they hang below his dirigible. It was then I realized what Chizuko is: she’s not just the protagonist. She’s the author-insert, the damsel in durance vile, whisked away by Prince Charming to a life of Adventure and (presumably much later; she is only 11) Romance. The ED seems to hint that when she grows up, she becomes a lady detective, running her own Charlie’s Angels-like agency.

Thanks, but I’ll pass. I read one of those trashy dime-store romance novels once, just to see if it was as bad and formulaic as I thought, and it was. I have no desire to repeat the experience.