by OL » Fri Apr 07, 2017 11:00 pm
^^I didn't think it would be this extreme, but every time I see an ad for it, I find myself actually angry about it. Not like it's the first lame version of the franchise (Arise had that covered already), but it's almost shocking how evident it is by the goddamn 30-second commercials just how much the movie's creators don't understand the series at all. Or, at the very least, how blatantly they chose to ignore what it's all about, instead opting completely for cliche Hollywood overtones about "finding oneself" and whatnot. It's just... gross.
Bleh, anyway.
Just finished Armored Trooper VOTOMS and Gasaraki, both created by Ryosuke Takahashi, though almost fifteen years apart from each other.
VOTOMS is amazing. As much as most fans may revere early-80s anime for breaking new ground and setting new standards, most shows were still pretty obviously made for kids, with a lot of squeaky girl characters and/or cute animal/alien/robot sidekicks. Or, if they lacked those things, then they probably operated on some kind of overly-simple formula which was mainly just an excuse to have characters fight (Fist of the North Star, much as I love it, is a perfect example).
VOTOMS is different though. It actually feels mature, intelligent, grown-up, with a story that flows properly from one plot point to the next without feeling formulaic. There is a grand total of one squeaky girl in the whole thing, but she's far less-annoying than most like-minded characters in anime. The main character, Chirico, is a bit of a stoic soldier trope, but he's still not exactly a superhero, and he makes mistakes frequently. The second story arc is actually an obvious take-off of the Vietnam war, and features one episode where soldiers force villagers to play Russian Roulette. It's not a show for the kiddies, and to me, that makes it totally stand out among early-80s anime.
Not to mention that it features the single most appealing (to me) type of mecha action I've ever seen in a show, despite the animation being a bit low-quality. None of that super-robot Gundam-style shite; these things are more tank-like, and tend to control as such. The visual style isn't a dead-ringer, but this is the closest thing to Front Mission-style mecha action I've seen in an anime. The robots are just treated as military weaponry, and having the "best" one doesn't win a fight. The show doesn't even assign Chirico with any kind of "signature" robot either, unlike most shows like this; he frequently wrecks them and has to find a new one, switching between multiple models throughout the show, even hijacking one from an enemy during the last story arc. It's like a soldier picking up a new gun because he ran out of bullets. The robots aren't the stars, the characters are. And again, that makes it stand out from most shows of its era.
Planning on watching whatever OVAs I can find of it on youtube now, since those have never officially been translated and released outside of Japan. This series really ought to be more well-known.
Gasaraki is an odd one, however. It also is technically a mecha anime, though it also has a number of supernatural elements here and there, as well as a number of episodes near the end that dive into political and philosophical territory. It's... strange. It's not a trainwreck or anything, but it does feel really unfocused in a lot of areas, like the creators didn't quite know what they were trying to make. That sentiment is backed up even further by some of the DVD supplements; one has an art gallery showing early designs for the protagonist, and the accompanying note mentions that "this one is from an early draft of the show, where the characters would have raced around in transformable futuristic motorcycles"...
Wha huh? That's ridiculously different from what the series eventually became.
It's like the writers and Takahashi himself just set out to make a show and... I dunno, just kind of let the pieces fall wherever, instead of having a concrete concept in place.
And it's too bad, because it could have been among the best mecha shows ever. Like VOTOMS, the robots themselves are portrayed in a surprisingly technical, slightly more "realistic" manner than we usually see... but they just don't seem to be used nearly enough. Entire arcs of episodes go by without them being used. Some of the action scenes that do occur with them are really cool, memorable, and well-animated, but they're just too few and far between. Meanwhile, the show's namesake -- some kind of ancient supernatural force called Gasaraki -- barely appears at all.
It's an intriguing show, but one that ultimately feels like a bit of a mess. And it's too bad, because otherwise I really do like a lot of the design work, direction, and atmosphere of the whole thing.
OL has received a thanks from: Rakim