Eastern Standard wrote:1930 - New York.
Prohibition makes the gangsters rich...and makes it hard for alchemists trying to recreate the liquor that made the immortal.
More than two hundred years ago, a group of thirty alchemists summoned a demon, and asked for immortality. He gave it to them. The only thing that can kill them...is another immortal. Each of them can "eat" the others, obtaining all their knowledge.
The demon also taught one of them how to make the liquor. But only one of them.
In 1930, an old, evil alchemist and his body guard, a young Camorra gangster recently promoted to the highest rank in his small family, and the world's dumbest thieves all crash together on the spiral of destiny, their plot threads crossing and recrossing as coincidence draws them all together.
Baccano! (Italian for "Noise," "Din," "Stupid commotion") is based of a series of Japanese light novels under the same title by the prolific Narita Ryohgo, the Anime specifically drawing from the first three books. Pools from a some classic pulp paperback material such as alchemists, gangsters, ghosts, and assassins, and supposedly meshes very well. So far the series has been publicly slated for 13 episodes (rumors of more abound), and though that seems a bit short, Haruhi Suzumiya raised the bar on both short series and light novel adaptations, so I choose to be optimistic. And bank on more episodes/second season anyway.
