Set in the Mexican village of San Simon, the series follows a trio of orphans, mute and angry Silencio, grounded and focused Isabella, and laid back and aloof Jesus who are the pupils of kung fu master Sifu Chiu at his school just outside the village. After the trio's teacher is killed by a rogue henchmen of a brutal assassin associated with darkly magical cartel boss El Balde, this sets the trio off on a journey to find out who killed their teacher and why.
Seis Manos is the second adult skewing animated series from Powerhouse Animation Studios who previously gave us the deservedly critically acclaimed Castlevania series on Netflix. With Seis Manos the approach is similar, but the Gothic horror atmosphere in this show is replaced with a 1970s grind house aesthetic made popular in use of Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse. And while it does capture the aesthetics reasonably well, it overstuffs itself with so many elements that the show doesn't come together quite as seamlessly as it should. This isn't to say there aren't good merits to the show, and overall I do recommend it, but throughout the first half of the 8 episode run I didn't feel myself as engaged as I wanted to be and between the points that hooked my attention were several meandering points where I found myself losing focus.
First the good, the animation is as good as Powerhouse's previous effort Castlevania. What Castlevania did with Gothic horror, this does for 70s Grindhouse cinema and you can feel a clear love of the decade and this cinema be it in its usage of Shaw Bros. inspired kung fu fighting, it's narco film based intrigue, even homages to blaxspoitlation, spaghetti westerns, and post Exorcist/Rosemary's Baby Satanic horror films. Much like the movie Grindhouse the show utilizes a filter to mimic the effects of low quality film grain, "cigar burns" in the upper right to show end of reel, and even celluloid jams. It's applied sparingly and never feels overdone and definitely helps forge its own identity. Though on occasion it allows itself to become a little too brazen with its references, including a rather hamfisted reference to John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13.
Unfortunately the actual substance of the show is where things start becoming bit lacking in focus. The show is co created by Álvaro Rodríguez a cousin of Robert Rodríguez who's collaborated with him on El Marachi and Machete, and his influence can still very much be felt here. While Robert Rodríguez does utilized 70s Grindhouse aesthetics quite frequently in his films, they're still used in service of a story and there's not much sense of that until about the half way point of the show. Without giving too much away, the first episode focuses heavily on a character who becomes completely in consequential after the first episode and because of that it feels like it was just filler to justify the 8 episode length. In addition to the Trio of orphans we follow, we also follow a DEA agent and a Mexican federale whose story threats don't link up with the main trio until about episode 4. As a result the first half of the show feels very messy and chaotic as it constantly feels like setup with not much payoff. It sets up the back story of some characters while not developing others, and because of this I didn't have much investment in the characters for the first few episodes.
With that said however, the show does regain it's footing somewhere around the tail end of episode 4 when it moves passed the burdensome exposition and is allowed to let the characters be characters and actually move towards the main villain of the series. We see each of the trio conflicting with one another over their approach to their master's death with Jesus ignoring it, Isabella trying to find a purpose in it, and Silencio brooding anger. The personal connection also serves as a good foil to the investigative connection with DEA agent Brister and federale Garcia who have a good buddy dynamic, even if it isn't given as much time as it needs to be explored.
Seis Manos is an okay show, its story doesn't flow as smoothly as it should and has a tendency to linger on extraneous elements, but it's also stylish and filled with gorgeously brutal animation. While it can sometimes become overburden with it's references and the different genres don't always coalesce as well as they should, animation and grindhouse fans should find plenty to keep themselves entertained.
