Review of Ikebukuro West Gate Park
With Fall 2020 coming to a close and having seen all the anime I wanted to see, Ikebukuro West Gate Park (IWGP) was not of the initial anime I thought about when entering this season. I pretty much only started watching it when episode 10 aired after a friend told me he was watching it and I decided to give it a shot after reading the synopsis. Here's my review of Ikebukuro West Gate Park. This is my first review on MAL after 4 and a bit years of using this site and I know I wanted to write one about this anime because I honestlyenjoyed the episodes I watched. Essentially, IWGP follows our mc Makoto Majima who lives in Ikebukuro and he is the Mr. Troubleshooter, going around fixing different problems. Makoto is involved with the leader of the biggest gang operating in Ikebukuro, King (Takashi Ando) and he helps them out as well while not officially being part of his gang which is called G-Boys.
What I think IWGP does well in is the representation of the gang life, which I found to be relatable, as I come from an area with prominent gang activity and basically being like Makoto outside of the fact that I don't risk my life doing half the stuff he does. It's so common to see youths getting revenge on their opposition because one of their own got attacked/harmed in some way and IWGP shows this happening consistently with the turf wars between the G-Boys and the Red Angels (the main rival gang) and the G-Boys getting back at the antagonists of the episodic structure IWGP uses with Makoto dealing with different individual's problems. So yeah I enjoyed that.
Like any series or medium, IWGP does have its cons, which I don't think are game changing, but hold it back from being a super good anime to me in my opinion. I mentioned earlier about IWGP's episodic structure of Makoto being handed a problem he has to solve and the episode is spent with him resolving that issue. That is all fine and dandy to me but the synopsis does not highlight this at all, when that's how the majority of IWGP. That is not the fault of the anime, but by the person/organisation that wrote the synopsis. The event where Makoto "losing a loved one" and the "rising tide of violence" doesn't even happen until the latter episodes, when the synopsis makes it seem like that's the series is going to focus on, I don't know, just lets my expectations down a little bit. I feel like they could've spent much more episodes on that conflict when at this point, we've seen a good amount of how and what Makoto does in Ikebukuro so we didn't need more "Hi Makoto, I got a problem for you to solve."
Concluding here, Ikebukuro West Gate Park was a fun watch for me, I enjoyed Makoto solving problems throughout his town and how he deals handling with the chaos that ensues in Ikebukuro's ongoing gang activity. I'm now obsessed with the opening which slaps.