Great Pretender

GREAT PRETENDER

8.9(1)

OtakuDen

8.2(359,725)

MAL Score

Ranked #465

Popularity #309

Action
Adventure
Mystery
Adult Cast
Organized Crime

Episodes: 23
Duration: 23 min per ep
Aired: Jul 9, 2020 to Dec 17, 2020
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

A run of bad luck pushes Makoto Edamura into a life of petty crime, making ends meet through pickpocketing and small-time scams. When he targets a tourist who looks like an easy mark, the tables turn—Makoto is the one who gets conned, and he suddenly finds the police on his trail.

Fleeing the heat, Makoto crosses paths with the same “tourist” again: Laurent Thierry, a seasoned con man. Drawn into Laurent’s orbit, Makoto follows him to Los Angeles and, determined to prove his claim as “Japan’s greatest swindler,” challenges Laurent to a contest of who can run the better con. Laurent’s answer is a new job aimed at a massive score—one that puts Makoto alongside Laurent’s eccentric partners in the dangerous world of international, high-stakes fraud, where every trick comes with consequences.

Otaku Consensus

Great Pretender earns its 8.19 MAL reputation through Hiro Kaburagi’s stylish direction, Wit Studio’s high-color international staging, and Ryouta Kosawa’s brisk con-game plotting, with the first three arcs widely treated as the show at its sharpest. As an original production rather than an adaptation, its confidence comes from pacing, presentation, and adult-cast chemistry; the genuine recurring complaint is that the final arc feels like a tonal and structural drop from the earlier cases.

Why You Should Watch

Watch Great Pretender if you want a crime anime built around adult professionals, international settings, and social manipulation rather than power systems or detective monologues. It scratches a similar itch to Lupin III’s stylish outlaw energy and Cowboy Bebop’s cosmopolitan cool, but swaps bounty hunting for layered confidence games, role-play, and cultural friction. Wit Studio gives the series a glossy, poster-art look: saturated cityscapes, sharp character silhouettes, and a sense that every location is part of the performance. The best episodes move with the snap of a caper film, rewarding viewers who enjoy reversals, false identities, and morally flexible characters who still operate by a private code. If you want crime anime with wit, color, and an adult cast without grimdark self-seriousness, this is one of the strongest modern picks.

Key Characters

M
Makoto Edamura
Makoto stands out because he functions less like an untouchable mastermind and more like the anxious moral pressure point in a crew of people who are far better at lying than he is.
L
Laurent Thierry
Laurent is compelling because his charm never feels separate from control; every relaxed gesture reads like another layer of misdirection.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
Wit Studio’s production leans into hyper-saturated urban color, graphic backgrounds, and clean character posing, giving the series a visual identity closer to caper posters and travel advertising than standard TV crime anime.
2
The series is an original anime with series composition by Ryouta Kosawa, which helps explain its case-like structure and emphasis on setup, performance, and payoff rather than manga-style chapter escalation.
3
AniList’s high tags for Foreign, Language Barrier, Urban, Work, Mafia, Acting, and Filmmaking reflect how unusually committed the show is to international adult-crime texture instead of keeping its stakes locked to a single Japanese setting.
4
Its reception has a clear fault line: viewers and critics commonly praise the first three arcs as clever and tightly paced, while the final arc is the main source of disappointment for those who felt the show changed shape near the end.
5
Yoshiyuki Sadamoto’s character design gives the cast a polished, instantly readable silhouette language, which matters in a show where disguises, performance, and first impressions are part of the viewing pleasure.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: Great Pretender was produced by Wit Studio and aired as a 23-episode finished TV anime from July 9, 2020 to December 17, 2020, making it a compact complete crime series rather than an open-ended franchise entry.
Fun fact 2: The key creative lineup pairs director Hiro Kaburagi with assistant director Ryouji Masuyama and series composer Ryouta Kosawa, a staff configuration that foregrounds controlled pacing and scripted reversals.
Fun fact 3: Character design is credited to Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, a major industry name best known for defining some of modern anime’s most recognizable character iconography, including Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Fun fact 4: The show’s art side includes art director Yuusuke Takeda and art design by Kazushi Fujii, with additional design work credited to Keita Shimizu, Akiyo Okuda, and Shousuke Ishibashi.
Fun fact 5: Despite a strong MAL score of 8.19 from 359,725 votes and a popularity rank of #309, online discussion has often framed it as underwatched because of its Netflix release situation.