Gargantia #13 — Overwhelming Firepower

June 30th, 2013

 

What a joke.

If you want to watch the first half of Fantasista’s first episode, you can do so already. I however, am lazy and passed. Also, I have some personal things starting this week MWF mornings for a while that will keep me from getting to some shows (unless they air unusually early or late) with my usual alacrity, although it shouldn’t be more than an hour or two. It’s not like much airs on those days anyway.

Impressions:

Really? It’s just for a gun? Did we forget that these mechs effortlessly destroyed entire fleets earlier? Somehow, the big reveal that the key was for an orbital cannon. And they then opened fire with further weapons of mass destruction while Team Cultist… uh… got blown up. Repeatedly. Who exactly is oppressing who again here? Oh, and Chamber vs Striker came down to a staring match for a while until they remembered that they had lasers and other weapons, but that took I think 19 minutes… Not that it stopped Red from giving speeches and screaming himself hoarse while trying to body slam it. But hey. I’m still trying to understand why they needed a pilot period if these things were completely autonomous.

Oh, and in case you were worried that they had completely forgotten the squid plot, then fear no more. In the closing seconds of the show, the squids clustered around Chamber’s husk and bleated, which is apparently the sound squid things make. Unless it was Striker’s. These robots all look alike to me. Is that racist? 

 

Final Thoughts:

An Urobuchi work with flat mouthpiece characters and an unsatisfying ending? Stop the presses. But really, the main distinguishing feature here is how utterly nonsensical the plotting went. First we have our stranger in a strange land, starting to learn that his ultra military upbringing is at odds with the peaceful people. Trite, but cliche for a reason. Then that’s dropped for… nothing, basically. Tits and ass. Then we get the big reveal about the squid and horror over it which goes literally nowhere. And finally, we end with a cult lead by a robot that they defeat because Team Protagonist brought orbital weaponry and bombs the size of houses against antagonists who couldn’t even fight off a single mechanized lobster. I don’t think all your scriptwriters were on the same page. Finally, tell this all from the point of view of a character who is almost completely passive to all events around him, utterly lacking in even a shred of personality, and what little he has vaults from one end of the "killing people is bad" spectrum to the other for absolutely no discernable reason. Good lord. Even in the final episode, his total contribution to events was a big fat goose egg.

So the writing is an utter mess, made worse by the glacial pacing and dismal characters. I guess it could occasionally be pretty, but if you want to look at nice set pieces, even Deen manages those more than half the time. I don’t understand why they bothered to animate, or overanimate as the case may be, certain things either. They typically weren’t important and more often than not were just the cheesecake moments It certainly wasn’t trying to be an action show either, despite lobster mechs, squid aliens, and laser duels. I really don’t know what they were trying to do with it and I suspect that they didn’t know either. 

Posted in Gargantia | 11 Comments »

11 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Fate says:

    This show was pretty bad.

  • Anon says:

    “key was for an orbital cannon”

    Mass driver, yes its a “big gun” to put payloads into orbit without using rockets, shooting it up there sort of speaking.

    I found it enjoyable and reached maximum healing, the ones that wanted butcher grimdark just got disappointed it was going to the continuation of a one-trick pony that is what I really enjoyed.

  • Anon says:

    I knew it, Tin Can would not survive the Fight. I was felling for a Terminator 3? Ending, where the Machine would sacrifice himself for the Future. Because he can be used for evil

    And with this Water gysir thing. Right from the Start it was “Out of the Place” when i saw it. Because it was in perfect condition. No Rust like the other Parts. So Lost Technology. But Mass Drive Cannon? Okay my Bet was for a “Antenna” that calls for Heavy Arms or so… here i was near

    • Anon says:

      Well, lucky they still know how to use the Mass Driver Consoles… So much for “Lost Technology”. If they can read the “Status Information” on the Screen..

  • Anon says:

    In the Last Pictures, it is Chamber. You can see that on the Lost Cockpit. Because Striker was blast into tiny Pieces

  • WL says:

    Samurai Bride had Matabei’s ass, so it was obviously better.

  • The Phantom says:

    I liked the battle, overall the writing was an utter mess, but at least it had nice action the few times that it even tried.

  • Di Gi Kazune says:

    Lost Technology?

    Time to call in Angel-tai to search for them!
    Milfeulle!
    Ranpha!
    Mint!
    Forte!
    Vanilla!

    Pacing was always going to be a problem with only 13 episodes in such there was insufficient time to develop the characters and backstory enough.

  • TT says:

    LOL…

    Gargantia is complete garbage.

  • algorithm says:

    If not for Chamber I probably would have slept the whole episode. As for the rest of the show, it was rather nice until they decided to go squid hunting, budget drops, plot nonsense and drama bullshit. But now they are all super happy and they are even salvaging porn movies so I guess it is a h(cr)appy end.

  • UltimaLuminaire says:

    I was lured in by the voices of Tomokazu Sugita and Katsuyuki Konishi, even though I knew it was going to be crap after the 1st episode. Now I can let go of all that pent up hatred thanks to this episode’s review. I normally don’t agree with a lot of your criticisms, Aroduc, usually because I have a set of different criticisms for a show, but dang it you nailed every single one on the head this time. Urobuchi Mr. “Love is a Disease” Excuse Master gets away with too much despite not even understanding screenwriting 101. I needed this closure. Thanks.