Great Pretender (グレートプリテンダー) is a 2020 original television anime series directed by Hiro Kaburagi, and produced by WIT Studio. Staff credits also include series composition writer Ryota Kosawa, character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto and music composer Yutaka Yamada. The series simulcasted first on Netflix in Japan from June 2020, followed by broadcast a month later.
Background:
“People are willing to believe any convenient truth.
Self-styled “Japan’s greatest swindler” Makoto Edamura is mainly targeting elder people and occasional foreign travelers. But when he tries to scam an apparently clueless French tourist in Tokyo, he can’t possibly imagine that what looked like just another ordinary job is going to take him all the way to Los Angeles, tied upside-down on the famous Hollywood sign… And he is yet to find out what fate awaits him!”
Plot Synopsis via Anime Limited, March 2024.
Great Pretender is really good. That’s all you need to know.
Well to go into more detail, it’s an original series that WIT Studio worked on around the time that they were sunsetting Attack on Titan for other projects. I would say the series is very similar to Lupin the Third in terms of going after specific individuals throughout the globe, though Great Pretender isn’t that focused on fanservice. What I enjoyed about the series was its presentation which is stylish and has a great identity throughout, plus we have Evangelion character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto contributing to the artwork Yūsuke Takeda has done for each episode. The story and characters were also all great to watch, and while I felt the fourth story arc Case 4 had some faults, the anime as a whole is well worth the watch.
Great Pretender aired in Japan through the +ULTRA programming block from Fuji TV, which was relatively new at the time. The programming block’s most notable anime airing at that time being this series, Carole & Tuesday and BEASTARS. Before the block started, Fuji TV and Netflix made a deal in which these anime would stream exclusively on the platform worldwide, but fortunately for a lot of people this does mean multi-language dubs, i.e. English, French, Spanish etc. though the challenge here is whether or not distributors of home video would manage to secure those rights as Netflix is not cheap, which is seen with Sentai Filmworks not bothering to pay up for the English dubs of BAKI and Kakegurui.
That being said, there have been other Netflix titles that were able to include their original English dubs on the home video releases, like Carole & Tuesday, Drifting Dragons, and Violet Evergarden, and Great Pretender now joins them! Crunchyroll from my perspective are more focused on picking up newer content, so it was down to any other distributor to get the home video rights and Anime Limited ended up being the one, for not just the United Kingdom and Ireland territories but also the United States and Canada territories.
Deluxe Edition Contents:
Anime Limited in most cases would provide a collector’s edition but if there’s enough materials available they will upgrade the package to a deluxe or ultimate edition, so for Great Pretender we have ourselves a deluxe edition package.
This release is presented with a rigid box containing four Amaray cases to house the Blu-ray discs, a 198-page book, 10 art cards and a folded poster. The book features title card designs, image boards and background artwork for all four story arcs from the anime series. I do wish they had used the slimmer Blu-ray cases though to save on space for the shelf.
The artwork is free of any information or BBFC content and the info sheet covers the information and specification like previous Anime Limited releases. The deluxe edition Blu-ray has 1000 units printed for an SRP of £129.99 ($159.99 for North American version which is identical in content), and will have a two-part standard edition Blu-ray release later down the line.
The series was made available as an early bird throughout the month of January, and was on offer for £99.99 with the Anime Unlimited membership lowering the cost down to £89.99.
Physical Contents:
- Rigid Box with Amaray packaging and clean artwork
- Info sheet for specification and BBFC description
- 198-page Book
- 10 Art Cards
- Poster
On-Disc Contents:
Distributor: Anime Limited
Released: 11th March 2024
The deluxe edition release for Great Pretender contains all 23 episodes across five Blu-ray discs, with the encode & authoring done by VDMS. The audio options include Japanese with English subtitles and the NYAV Post English dub commissioned by Netflix.
The first disc covers Case 1: Los Angeles Connection (episodes 1-5), the second disc covers Case 2: Singapore Sky (episodes 6-10), the third disc covers Case 3: Snow of London (episodes 11-14), the fourth disc covers the first half of Case 4: Wizard of Far East (episodes 15-19) and the fifth disc covers the second half of Case 4: Wizard of Far East (episodes 20-23).
Also to note, the ending theme song “The Great Pretender” by Freddie Mercury (which is also a cover song interestingly) is included with this release.
The white subtitles are locked during playback, and the regions are accessible to Blu-ray players set to A & B.
Blu-ray Specs:
| Languages | English, Japanese |
| Audio | English Linear PCM 2.0 Japanese Linear PCM 2.0 |
| Video | 1080p High Definition Native format 16:9 aspect ratio |
| Region | A B |
| Subtitles | English |
| Locked Subtitles | Yes |
| Discs | 5 BD-50s |
Blu-ray On-Disc Extra Features:
Disc 5:
- A Spoiler-Filled Exposition Contest with SD Characters
- Trailer Generic
- Trailer All Cases
- Trailer Case 2
- Trailer Case 3
- Trailer Case 4
- Freddie Mercury Music Video
- Someday Music Video
- Clean Opening “G.P.”
- Clean Ending “The Great Pretender”
Unboxing Photos:
Amaray Cases:
Book:
Art Cards & Poster:
Final Notes:
Great Pretender is available to purchase on Blu-ray by Anime Limited in the UK & Ireland. The deluxe edition Blu-ray release can be bought through the AllTheAnime Store for UK & IE fans as well as both the Crunchyroll Store and Shout! Factory Store for US & CA fans.
For the standard edition, it will be available through different retailers including Amazon UK (Part 1, Part 2), AllTheAnime Store (Part 1, Part 2 [links for both coming soon]), and Anime-on-Line (Part 1, Part 2).
(Disclaimer: Amazon links are also included when available. They are affiliated so if you decide to order them, I’ll earn a small percentage if they ship which will help me with any hauls or small bills.)
The Normanic Vault 
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