Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a psychiatric anxiety disorder most commonly characterized by a subject’s obsessive, distressing, intrusive thoughts and related compulsions (tasks or “rituals”) which attempt to neutralize the obsessions.(taken from Wikipedia).

AAAH the OCD character. A character destined to make every thing in life germ-free and aligned on a desk straight. Or is that what is happening? OCD typically tends to come in a cycle of 4.

1.Obsession:The intrusive thoughts that make everyday life unlivable normally. Thoughts like, “I can’t shake my bosses hand…what his hand touched a toilet seat, or he just masturbated and didnt wash..” Now normal people just seem to grin and bear it if they even have these thoughts at all, but not obsessives.

2.Anxiety:This is where most of an obsessives’ time is spent. Fretting over whether or not you need to wash your hands 10 or 20 times because your girlfriend pet the dog, then rested her hand on yours. The anxiety part of the cycle is inevitable, and it’s in all of us. When one of those annoying little obsessions pops up, it will gnaw at your mind until you do the next step.

3.Compulsion:The compulsion is the act of fulfilling the obsession. In other words, you accidentally touch the garbage can on the way to your car, and you obsess over how dirty it is and your mind is not at rest until you take 2 baths. At which point you have relieved the obsession and moved onto step 4.

4.Relief:D-Do I really need to explain this one?

After they have completed this cycle, OCD-ers continue on normally until it arises again…Which could happen 3 seconds later, or 30 minutes later. So we’ve got this very intrusive disorder which interrupts everything with worry and anxiety, and it’s being portrayed predominately in comedies?

Most characters portrayed in American TV show no desire to get over their OCD, and many view it as a quirky personality trait. Monica from friends has the symptoms and NBC even sold the character as obsessive, but no one ever thought anything of it. Niles from Frasier is always seen wiping things off only for comedic effect.

In Anime we get a very similar workup of the characters.

Take Soul Eater for example. People see the Death the Kid character and think “LOL OCD is funny”, and while he could have OCD he is a contradiction. He frequently worries about symmetry, and yet his hair is unsymmetrical. Whenever another character brings this up, he goes into depression for a little bit and recovers. This is not how an OCD person would act. If I were that worried about symmetry and had such a glaring contradiction, I would just shave it off, but instead the writers choose to be lazy and keep there for a cheap joke.

Take Chiri-chan from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. She is obsessed with symmetry as well, but makes sure her hair is always perfect, and until it is she fixes it. She is used for comedic effect, but at least they make her consistent.

Take Chiaki from Nodame Cantabile. When he visits Nodame’s apartment he absolutely cannot control his compulsion to clean her apartment. Again it was done for comedic effect, but here it poses an interesting dichotomy of Chiaki’s perfectionism vs. Nodame’s randomness.

So what are we to do? Shows without quirky characters seem dull, and too many seems to make the show only appeal to crazy people in the first place.

I propose that all characters be made quirkier. People in real life are weird and have quirks, and aren’t at all like tv makes them out to be. We are all a little OCD at times, and a little depressed. No one person hordes any psychological disorder to themselves…I like to think we all share.

edit:thank you for the quick comment kitsune. I originally posted this a while ago, and the first draft version was preachy and depressing. I edited it finally, and just so you know Kit, I did take your advice and go get some help.

Fairly recently I read a few articles about anime and escapism. Since I’m far from being satisfied with the current state of some of my posts, here’s some quick filler

I see what you did there!

Anime is and always will be an escape for its occidental viewers. I can only speak for America, but western cartoons are primarily aimed strictly at children. America has always had this godawful habit of denying true philosophical ideas, and any maturity (sexual or otherwise) as “difficult” or “unmanly”. So we dumb down our children and teach them that patriotism and blindly feeding off the teat of America go hand in hand. Children are never taught to actively think themselves. They are taught that TV is good and reading esoteric books are bad. Get a job and fund the american economy. Marry a woman and have as many damn kids as you want. Tithe! Pay your taxes! Vote Republican! America has become an obscene joke upon itself.

However, there is a small cadre of believers who attempt to learn and attempt to teach. It’s almost a war between those that preach enlightenment and those that shove patriotic propaganda down our throats. It is through this friction(synthesis) between knowledge(thesis) and stupidity(anti-thesis) we arrive at our escapist nature.

Yeah I threw in a little Hegelian dialectic..for funsies

Hobbies are the escape between this ensuing feud. We try to avoid both learning and being stupid by doing a relatively mindless thing to ourselves that helps release the stress put on us by both sides. Some fish, some become trekkies, and some watch anime. Blame it on the cartoons we watched in our youth, blame it on America idolizing Japan for its technology, something inside some of us just ignore the world we live in and get lost in whatever anime we happen to be watching. The people that fish probably had parents that idealized the outside ie camping, swimming, or exercise. The people that become trekkies probably had absentee parents and took to watching fantastic space adventures to escape from the pressures of school and the pressures of an american government successfully getting them addicted to whatever they can tax heavily.

So we escape. We avoid reality. What’s that you’re thinking? what about slice-of-life shows? No matter how neatly defined how to the letter how perfectly real any given show may be, thats all it is. A show. There’s one thing that separates the real from the realistic….how the thing being viewed is viewed. If I go outside and watch two squirrels humping I am watching and living in the real. If I download a porn with two squirrels humping no matter how realistic, no matter how good the graphics are, it is still only realistic. Not real.

So why bother escaping when you already lead a slice of life life anyways? Because real life is not interesting enough. We feel this constant pressure on us from both sides of intellect and stupidity so we feel the need to get out of our own heads for a while. We may lead a life like in Lucky Star exactly to the letter. But we as humans feel that constant struggle to escape.

This still doesn’t explain mecha series though. Perhaps due to the phallic nature of the weapons and the ships, or the regressed need to exhibit male dominance through oversized gundams.

In the future expect an actual philosophy book review since I am about to finish Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature have been thoroughly mindfucked by it. In the mean time here’s a Hume joke I’m fairly certain only Michael and Daniel will get.

Clearly he didn’t understand the necessary connection betwixt overeating and being overweight.

‘Beauttocks’ is a perfect nickname. I second it Iknight.

Well since this is my first truly mecha-related post, i suppose I should fill you in. I have always feared to tread into the depths of mechadom. I suppose early in my life I watched Gundam Wing and just didn’t like it(not true, at one point I made my mom buy me enough hair gel so that I could slick my hair back like Chang Wufei). My loathing for all things mecha ran deep into my soul. I loved Fumoffu,but had to force myself to watch the first season of Full metal Panic. The action never really appealed to me I suppose. “How much talent is required to let a mecha fight for you” is how I used to think. Cut to me at the star of my senior year(fall 2007),my loathing of mecha had almost made me miss 2 brilliant shows(Gurren Lagann and Code Geass) simply because they involved mecha and I was being contrary to my friends recommendations. I decided to get over my hatred of the mecha genre by watching all of the Gundam franchise in chronological order. So here I am through 4 OVAs and 1 regular season(I am disregarding my previously watched seasons for times sake) and I’ve come to understand the love for the art of the mecha show. Massive humanoids annihilating each other in space with phallic guns and swords. Fighting for whats right or for whats wrong, being an utter badass(Char Aznable) or being utter faggots (anyone in the Zabi family rings a bell). Mecha seems to separate the /m/en from the /b/oys.

Words normally go here, but they would ruin the picture.

Now that the past is out of the way, let’s move onto the now. I’ve just watched Eureka Seven, and am catching up in Code Geass season 2. Which is what this post is about. In the first episode of Code Geass, when Lelouch is at his old chess playing against rich adult ways. He seems to share what Daniel has already posted as a Machiavellian syndrome. while it is true that Lelouch does display the tendencies of a machiavellian megalomaniac the man he faces of against in this particular game of chess displays a much more intriguing philosophy.

Slightly-limited GAR works

In book one of Plato’s republic, therien lies a discussion in the house of the wealthy aristocrat Cephalus(yes lol Syphilis) between Socrates, Cephalus, and a belligerent Sophist named Thrasymachus. In which Thrasymachus argues that “might is right”, and that”justice is in the interest of the stronger”. Interestingly enough 1500 2300 some odd years later these same philosophies are being spouted to show just how evil the main character of an anime actually is. Sure it came from the mouth of Lelouch’s opponent, but it seems to be a way for the creators to remind the audience how in spite of a recent mindwashing “arc”, Lelouch is an evil bastard. Just last season he was saying things just like this, and later in the same episode he says very similar things.

I needed a picture somewhere in this post just to show how much if a pussy Rollo is.

Why would the creators feel the need to maintain Lelouch’s asshole image? At first the episode felt a parallel universe. Lelouch has a brother? He’s a warm cuddly teddybear? It appears they want us to see how Lelouch could have turned out. The slightest little difference completely rewrites who we are.

MADE OF WIN

So we’ve got this whole entire subspecies that may or may not exist in our empirical human minds. They apparently exist in our world, but on this separate plane of existence altogether. Assuming they do exist what’s next? Well if you’re berkles the only clear solution is to determine our code of meta-ethics in dealing with them. Meta-ethics is a fairly recent trend in philosophy, which concerns itself with understanding the very nature of moral questions themselves. Ethics asks what is right or wrong, while meta-ethics asks what do right or wrong even mean at all. It is highly confusing, and most people could live their whole lives without ever encountering it.

I feel like this man when I pontificate so verbosely

These creatures which may or may not exist, may or may not exist to harm us, and so we must make decisions as to whether or not they are good or evil. So we can do one of two things. We can all get together and spend a lot of time deliberating over how to define evil to us and then deciding to label these creatures as good or evil(moral realism). Or we can choose to deny any sort of objectivity and think independently by applying subjective values to these theories(moral anti-realism).

Moral realism is a system that has been in effect for quite some time. Generally America is a nation traditionally run by Christians. That does not mean we are all under the rule of the Christians, that merely mean we do not constantly question everything about the current system of morals based on Christianity. Well we do, but the media is run by the religious right so it’s not portrayed nearly enough in an objective light.

Before asking whether or not the mushi must abide by the human ethical code(which they really do not) we must affirm what the human ethical code is. A method frequently used against moral realists is moral relativism. Moral relativism states that objective moral truths cannot be universally true, but objective moral truths are relative to their culture. Take the notion that in some deep in the jungle tribe might murder one another for seemingly trivial reason, but they do it to protect their honor which is more important than anything in their eyes. In the USA people would get jailed and killed for that. Thus there can be no universal moral code because each moral code is specifically relative to each culture.

So in one culture the mushi would be revered as gods, while in another they would be called demons and exterminated. I suppose that according to moral relativism they are both right and wrong.

This is one brilliant man.

Mushishi is a polarizing show. Most people loved it for its poignant description of the human description and slow moving dramatics. The others hated it for the same reasons; it had some pacing problems, and was admittedly depressing in the way it portrayed every other human besides Ginko. It encompassed a wide variety of the spectrum of human emotion; Greed(ep 6) Love for those long gone(ep 8,16,17, 22) Unrequited love/lust/schoolgirl crush(ep 20) A womans love for a child not technically her own(ep 21) Hatred and fear of the unknown(ep 24) Acceptance of fate (ep 25).

Granted some of these aren’t exactly pedestrian, but they do cover what humans can go through and it subtly depicts them at their worst, but unlike my Bokurano musings I’m not here to bitch about how fucked up humans are. I’m here to discuss the concept in Mushishi of the Mushi. Creatures too basic, too pure of life to be seen by most humans almost beg to be argued about in terms of Rationalism vs. Empiricism.

In Epistemology there are two hotly contested theories about how humans perceive knowledge in life. These are not the only epistemic theories about such things, but they are the only ones I will discuss.

Rationalism is the notion that humans have an innate sense of things going on, and that “truth is not sensory, but intellectual and deductive.” This is often heavily contrasted with Empiricism which claims that humans only have their knowledge through their senses. Locke called it the tabula rasa (clean slate), and denied the possibility of innate knowledge without sensory experience.

The existence of the mushi seems incredulous. Things that exist, but only a select few can see them? They affect some people but not all of them? It almost begs to be a story about crazy people who are insanely deluded into blaming their problems on seemingly non-existent critters.

Empiricism would say that the mushi don’t exist until they affect you in some way, while rationalism would say that the mushi do exist without personally affecting you. The only question is which theory is correct in this aspect. If someone see a lower species and has no empirical proof then how do we believe it happened. Either since it didn’t happen to us, we can assume it never happened or they don’t exist (Empiricism), or we can deduce that the person that experienced it has changed a great deal and deduce that perhaps they do exist(rationalism).

Far too often do we humans forget that we exist as a holon of the larger system the earth. We become egotistical and never think of this plane of existence without humans to define it. Whether the mushi exist or not they pose a fundamental philosophical question about the existence of anything.

I am a Texan and a green lantern nerd

Blassreiter:

It was awful I will not be watching or blogging it. The cgi was cheap, the story was lackluster, the characters were bland.

Kaiba:

I though it was a solid first episode. The animation was a little out there even for someone who adored kemonozume, but still good action. It put off a real Heavy Metal vibe with its whole not explaining shit to the audience and leading them through weird places. The episode slowed down a lot in the middle so much that when watching it at a friends house the friend fell asleep at around 9 pm. plus with its moderate pop-philosophy I just might blog this

Golgo 13:

It’s die hard in anime form! I loved it I’m a huge cheesy action fan with a character thats pretty much unbeatable.

Kure-nai:

I liked it. The first few episodes were solid entertainment, but that little girl is an entire hell of annoying bitchyness. I’ll keep watching, but if the reign of the kouhin bitch continues I just might drop it.

Toshokan Sensou:

It was good if a little more kiddy than I expected. The concept was neat, but I guess I built it up in my mind as this astounding tour de force of awesome free-radical pro freedom of information type thing, the actual episode was a tad disappointing. I mean I expected a social commentary on japanese freedom of expression but got a slightly annoying girl calling her commander chibi instead.

Mnemosyne:

Yeah I know this was out last season, but I just picked it up. It’s ok I guess, the story is definitely lacking. The animation and action are great, and parts of it are basically porn, but the whole angel vs. immortal thing feels forced and lackluster at the same time. It’s almost as if the story is an excuse to put out a bitchin’ OVA about naked immortal women killing each other.

The daughter of 20 faces:

It was a decent first episode, but it had some pacing problems. It felt like Lupin the III but drawn in the style of Big O, but it was not nearly as awesome as either. Most likely will not watch anymore.

Soul eater:

Great high definition animation, but just another D. Gray-man. Very shonen, will keep watching, but never to be blogged.

So watching Eureka Seven and reading through Bateszi and Animanachronism’s stuff, I find myself digging for deeper connections in everyday mundane tasks. It was tough for a while, because lately all I’ve been doing is saging newfags on /b/, and watching George Lopez from 9pm till 4am. So I torrented Eureka Seven to watch to ease me back into anime.

It finishes torrenting and I start to watch, its got great music and pretty pictures, but that’s pretty much it. Until all of a sudden the show depicts an old woman of a certain determinist faith, and she just so happens to be labeled as a terrorist by the government for no logical reason other than “she’s different”.(America for the LOSE!)So what does Gekko-state do?They capture her and go to collect the reward money, and then they go back on the deal steal the money and take to woman to her homeland.When there she spouts some pop-theology to Renton and his mind is blown.

This interests me only because the creators of the show spend these episodes crafting a light anime, when all of a sudden theres ethnic cleansing, and war flashbacks, and old tea lady stating that everything is predetermined. Thats like walking into church and slapping everyone there with a copy of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

I have nothing serious to say other than WTF? I mean its so poppy and happy then its vietnam then its poppy again.

The Cat Returns is to me the seminal work of the Ghibli stereotypical strong-female lead. The main character is usually headstrong, and at the same time insecure about the events going on around her, and though this isn’t a Miyazaki joint, it still epitomizes the strong female at all times.

Studio Ghibli is an institution of excellence. They’ve made films simple and wonderful enough for children to love them, and they’ve made films which have made some adults scratching their heads. I’m sure there are classes in film schools dedicated to deciphering the magic behind these staples of animated film. Am I gushing yet?

The Ghibli formula appears simple enough. Take a seemingly normal, average girl and put her in extraordinary situations. From Spirited Away to My Neighbor Totoro, Ghibli has a habit of mixing the down-trodden bored with her boring life heroine, with the fantastical stories that seem straight out of childrens storybooks. Sometimes they stray from the formula(princess mononoke, and Pom Poko are the obvious choices), but they never stray from their time-honored tradition of honoring nature. A lot of Ghibli films are about nature vs. civilization. Humans deviate from their human path into the path of nature, and sometimes nature gets fuckin’ pissed(Princess Mononoke, and Pom Poko are the obvious choices). This however shows a playful flirty side to nature that is almost cheesy in its ways to capture man(or in this case a woman).

The Cat Returns is about Haru. An exceedingly average girl who only wastes her days away pining after the cute guy in school and constantly being late. It’s worth noting that Haru reminded me of Makoto from The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. She over-exaggerates and isn’t a very likeable character until her and a friend are walking along and see a cat carrying a box wrapped up with a nice bow. The cat walks along and crosses the street, but drops its box halfway across. Coincidentally a massive truck is headed its way, and the driver doesn’t even notice the cat apparently. So Haru grabs her field-hockey stick and runs to save the cat. She scoops him up, and barely avoids the truck herself. After she regains her composure a bit the cat stands on his hind legs, and thanks her while wiping the dirt off of his fur. He tells her he will repay her for this and come back for her later. This sets of an extraordinary chain of events that leads Haru to the Cat Kingdom to be married to the cat she saved, who is coincidentally the prince of the whole kingdom. Along the way she meets up with the cat figurine Baron Humpbert von Gikkingen who you may recognize from the previous Ghibli work Whispers of the Heart, and Muta (also from WOTH if memory serves correctly). They vow to help her avoid being married to the cat prince Lune.

Prince Lune and Haru

To me this film is the perfect portrait of what the Ghibli woman is. Haru isn’t terribly smart, nor is she very agile. She has her share of problems, but when she is confronted with this whole new set of problems, she picks herself up and continues on. At on point she almost gives in, she almost just stops fighting. Then the Baron shows up and she is reminded of what she was and who she could be again.

Without divulging anymore let me say that the ending is a tad expected, and almost trite, but the message is still powerful. In the beginning when the Baron and Haru first meet, the Baron tells Haru that she must always know who she is, and that after that everything else becomes easier. Sounds a bit like an after-school special doesn’t it? Still, it was necessary for her to hear those words. I think its necessary for everyone to hear those words. Too often does society try dictate who we are, and who we want to be. To me being happy is making decisions that make me happy. I try not to live by a strict moral code. Discovering who I am and what makes me happy before I die is the only thing I want out of life.

For being so perfect, and reminding me what stories are capable of this movie gets a 97/100. Its also now one of my favorites and on MAL its my number 4.

In this installment I will not cover too much philosophy because I am so plum-tuckered out from helping a friend write an existential literature paper for her English class, that Sarte can shove it.

The current state of the world is tragic. Murder, rape, war, hate, are all commonplace to earth. The true definition of hope is the chance to accept or deny the human condition and turn it around for all of us. The things that make life tolerable, are the opposites of what makes it unbearable. Love is, to those that have experienced it, the ultimate experience and occasionally worth dying for. Rejection is another facet to the human condition, that perhaps even more people have felt than love. Until we can build androids, or fully mechanize our bodies(the ghost in the shell review comes next guys), we are stuck observing and experiencing what makes us human. There’s your fuckin philosophy helping for the day, let’s get onto the review!

Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is about Itoshiki Nozomu, who is a teacher that, “has been left in despair” for various reasons including; japanese culture, politics, and even a massive conspiracy involving credit theft at turnstiles. In the first episode all his despair has gotten to him, and he tries to take his life. All of a sudden an overly positive student who goes by Kafuka Fuura begins to attempt to save his life while blatantly over-looking his reasons for the suicide in the first place. Her optimistic demeanor and high-pitched voice pose the perfect opposite for Itoshiki’s (relatively) low voice and his bleak choice in kimonos. This could’ve been a great pairing if the animators had chosen to take more time to let these character’s play off of each other, alas in SZS style nothing can be discussed at too great a length before we switch gears.

Eventually it is revealed that Itoshiki is Kafuka’s teacher at an all girls school, and in stereotypical anime fashion, he is the teacher of the “bad class.” All the way throughout the series new students are introduced. The characters are a tad one-dimensional, but the dialogue and outrageous situations make up for it. The last two girls introduced(the”apologize for everything girl” and the “she acts like she looks and its implied that shes mean”) are pretty fresh as far as the stereotypes introduced thus far go. A girl who apologizes for everything, and a girl who acts exactly as she looks. While going a mile a minute SZS also manages to offer a crushing satire on the Japanese culture being overly-apologetic, then switches gears to a very mean girl who looks so very mean, that she can’t possibly be as mean as they think she is. Its this kind of convoluted logic that makes you scratch your head, then a picture of a very mean looking girl shoving a stick up a dogs ass only to be declared innocent because she looks so mean that couldn’t have done it, and you just get it.

In short it’s a blazing satire on both culture and the frailties of life. Or I am reading far too much into a very shallow book. either way its a helluva fun ride. The second season is now airing, and it is totally worth your time. I give it a 95/100.

Plus it has the stereotypical normal girl. Shes so damned normal it almost makes my eyes bleed

I just want to hug her out of her normalcy

I really have no idea of what to blog next, I was going to apply Sartre’s absurdism existence to this, but that essay I helped write was mainly about Sartre so screw it. Next I might do editorials over ghost in the shell/the actual ghost in the shell theory or Gurren Lagann/gender stereotypes. Or I might just fanboy out to ghost hound, or perhaps review the new gintama that just came out…Idk what to do?

Baccano and Kant:Relating Immortals that murder haphazardly to the Godfather of German Idealism

Baccano is anime for a film nerd. It’s anime for the Pulp Fiction fan in all of us. It convulses and twists through stories, years, and genres. The story refuses to be tied down to drama/mystery/light comedy. The setting goes from prohibition era new york to a ship in the 1700’s. It’s about alchemists, wait no its about immortals, no wait its about this train accident. Baccano is all of the above. The story starts out in 1711 when a bunch of alchemists summon some kind of demon, and they gain immortality through this drink. They can only die if another immortal absorbs them into his right hand, also when speaking to each other they can only use their real names. The story follows a multitude of characters and depending on how you define a main character(according to bateszi its 18 so i’ll go with that) you get about 18. It’s a hell of a ride, whether we are following Firo in his badass-ery, or Isaac and Miria as they dig for gold in a mountain. The story is simply too large to be detailed here, but one thing that does remain the same throughout is the violence.

The immortals throughout the duration of the show generally don’t partake in the hardcore violence(except for Chane). The “normal” humans are portrayed as always fighting. Mafia violence, robbery, turf wars are all there, but is it truly necessary? I suppose it shows the immorality of humans versus immortals, but the immortals are generally just as violent.

One of the first things I noticed with this show was how it made me think about what I would do if I were immortal. Do the same rules apply to those that can’t be killed through normal means? Is murder alright if in 100 years you’re the only one that remembers it? Heres the part of the post where I teach all of you a little philosophy and relate it to the anime i’m reviewing right?

Well I was trying to think of a topic of either politics or philosophy to relate to Baccano, since Immortals can outlast politics I suppose Philosophy is an inevitable choice. Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher who greatly influenced both Epistemology(theories on knowledge, what it is and how do we obtain it?), and Ethics. One of his most popular thoughts on Ethics, was the theory of the innate “Good Will”.

Kant claimed that its not the desired effects of our actions that determine whether or not our actions are “good”, but it is the will behind it. If I am being nice to someone to look good for instance, my actions are flawed. If I am being honest because its how I was raised to be, then I am not thinking according to my Good Will and am flawed. It’s not the decision to do or even the how to do, its the motivation behind the action that determines if its good or bad. If I normally lie, cheat or steal to get by and suddenly begin to act honestly because its what I feel is the right thing to do, then I am acting according to the Good Will

So what does this have to do with Baccano? Everything. All the actions, or murders, or tortures of Baccano all had different motivations behind them. For the mafia gangsters it was about duty and family. They murdered because to them the family was more important than anything. Whether that was motivated through the Good Will or not, you decide.

Even when Eve was searching for her brother. Was she searching because she genuinely loved him and wanted him back, or because she was raised up believe she should love her brother and chase after him. Quite frankly Dallas Genoard was a dick, and its hard to see why she searched so hard, so was it because she genuinely loved him, or because thats what she was raised to do? This philosophy raises more questions than it answers, what predetermines what makes things good/bad or right/wrong? If I exist and the good Will to me means that murder is right, and inherent goodness is wrong, who’s to say I’m wrong and they are right? In acts of God is the Good Will suspended? Just what are the Morals of Murder?

As for Baccano! it was one of my favorites of the year, and I give it a 96 out of 100.