FAKE (1998 OVA)
(this review was originally posted on tumblr on September 19th 2023 at 6:52AM, this is a copy-paste of the original review, as my opinion has not changed)
(Yeah, that was really the best photo I could find.)
You can watch this ova on myreadingmanga.info and animesuge.to(not sure of the reputability of this one)
Summary;
"Dee Laytner and Randy “Ryo” Maclane are two New York cops taking a needed vacation in England. Dee has very strong feelings for Ryo and wants to take this chance to advance their relationship (and if he’s lucky, maybe seduce Ryo). Ryo doesn’t understand his own feelings for Dee, and doesn’t know if he wants to (or should) acknowledge them. Their vacation and relationship is suddenly disturbed when murders and missing person reports keep surfacing around their hotel. The only common tie the cases have is that all of the victims were Japanese or Japanese descent. Dee and Ryo have to solve the case before Ryo, who is half Japanese, becomes the next victim. (sourced from myreadingmanga.info, beware of the porn ads, kiddies!)"
Fake(, styled in all caps usually, but I won’t be doing that due to computer limitations,) is a drama-comedy ova that, while certainly conventional in regards to it’s art direction(I mean, cmon, I’ve seen way too many ova’s of this era feature the same droopy-styled ‘doe’ eyes for their ukes,) manages to be charming and funny while also maintaining a dramatic tone.
If I had to describe this in three words, it’d be “funny, but confusing.”
Sure, reading the manga definitely would’ve helped to give context to certain characters(who even IS J.J in this story?), but that doesn’t excuse the story pacing being an absolute mess. They introduce J.J, an obsessive and obnoxious coworker of Ryo and Dee’s, nearly twenty minutes before the end of the ova! He has no time to stew and mesh with the rest of the cast(Brikky supremacy, by the way,) and generally feels like he was shoehorned in to tie up a loose end.
While we’re talking about the story, can I just say that the ghost subplot(?) was complete nonsense? What genre is this? I thought it was a drama-comedy, not a supernatural. The first scene where the ghost was discovered was hilarious, but that’s all that the ghost provided to the story.
The characters in this ova(, with the exclusion of J.J,) were fantastic, I loved them all dearly and I will certainly be thinking about Ryo being a mom for at least two weeks. They were all witty, and had distinct personalities from one-another while still maintaining impeccable chemistry. I could see them being an actual family, though I’d bet good money that they aren’t meant to be interpreted as such..
I think that the villain got off too easy in the end. The line where Cal(, the one female character in this ova that doesn’t die, by the way,) says that she doesn’t hate the villain, and Ryo justifying the race-based attempted murder he just faced with “Oh, but [they] realized [their] mistake,” was really distasteful to me.
Overall, it definitely could’ve been better. Did I like it? Yes. Would I recommend it to others? Yes, but only under very specific conditions.
Do not watch this ova as your first dip into 90s BL, you will regret it. But if you’re a seasoned veteran, such as I, then I say go for it!
Points docked because both of the main characters are NYPD.