Fake(OVA)

I feel I should put my cards on the table so to speak: I know little to nothing about Fake. The extent of my knowledge is that it stars a couple of cops who are into each other. With that out of the way, how does the OVA of the series represent itself to a newcomer? Rather poorly, honestly. It's definitely interesting enough that I want to look more into it but taken by itself it's a boring story with a cast of characters that are rather obnoxious.

The story follows Dee and Ryo, two cops from New York on vacation in England when a murderer strikes. Dee is trying to get Ryo to admit feelings for him and is about as subtle as your average white guy at any given bar. Both plots seem to be staying in separate room for the most part not talking to each other. Unfortunately we're stuck in the romance plots room for most of the OVA till the murder plot comes crashing through the door because it just can't fight this feeling anymore... I'll let this metaphor go now.

We're stuck slogging through a romance plot that isn't particularly interesting because it's clear they are together already if Ryo would just admit it. Instead we getting cute kissing scenes and pussyfooting around at all other time. Meanwhile the murder plot is going on just fine without the duo and I question why they need to be here at all since Ryo's sole addition to the case is being part Japanese, in a case where Japanese people are being bumped off. Admittedly once the murder plot goes into full focus it gets mildly exciting even if it's rather simplistic.

There is a third cop that just happens to be here named Berkeley Rose and in all honesty he could have carried the whole plot and relegated the main cast to side characters since most just fulfill a minor function in the story that could be done by most people. Rose is cool, smart, and overall rather subtle. He's not fun per se to be around but compared to the raging chuckle heads that compose most of the cast he's a cut above.

The writing and humor overall are rather lackluster. The story tries to make us feel for the killer in that his daughter was murdered by Japanese tourists; and he takes it upon himself to kill every Japanese person who comes to his little hotel. Now if maybe the suspects got away with the crime then yeah I can see why you'd go that far but the men who killed his daughter were punished by the law so why go through all of this? It makes no sense and makes him into bloodthirsty monster instead of a tragic father. The humor barring one decently funny scene,that admittedly gets ruined when the gag is repeated, is stale and mostly involves yelling or poor slapstick. There are times when that style of humor work, such as Baka and Test, but here it's meh. It doesn't help that every time Dee goes into his loud voice the things he says are embarrassingly cheesy or have a bit of a sexual predator vibe.

Fake as an OVA is rather annoying but there is this niggling doubt in the back of my mind that this might be an okay manga series. Mostly so I don't have to here the poor English voice acting. Maybe the OVA is just a bad representation of the series and this could be a deep and thoughtful story that happens to feature gay men. As for the OVA, probably best just to avoid it.