天下制覇

Sorry, couldn’t resist the tagline.

Impressions:

A rather well done episode all around, aside from the bizarre decision to make the fight against a bunch of random monsters far far better looking, animated, and all around done than the Kagura/Yomi fight. Hell, there was a part of their fight where it just shows you a still shot of the forest while you listen to swords clashing for about five seconds. I kept waiting for them to jump past, or at least the beasts to do something, but nah… they just wanted to show us a forest for a little bit. I really wished they had used Michael’s firing all season like they did in this episode. Instead of shooting the blade out or other wacky firing gadgets, it just blasted the blade forward from the back, making some rather cool choreography. A shame most of it was used to slaughter the grunts.

I’m rather disappointed in a few things this episode that were never really resolved to my satisfaction. Butterfly boy never got what was coming to him. I’m also a bit let down by Yomi apparently being more under control of the evil gem than Mei was since she was fighting with Kagura tooth and nail right up to getting her entrails spilled out on the ground.. The entire epilogue felt completely unneeded and tacked on in a bizarre attempt to sort of match up the anime timeline with the manga, despite the drastically different tones, presentation, and characterizations between the two. Let’s also not forget the kind of silly reuse of VAs. They also revived combat wheelchair girl and her assistant, albeit with amnesia, leaving episode 11’s death total at two, Naboo and Yomi’s father. So, Yomi just stood over them menacingly… and then left? Oooooooookay?

Brief Summary:

Yomi kills some military dudes in the forest, Kagura et all track her down. Yomi and Kagura spar for a bit with Kagura hesitating to behead Yomi, leading to getting a stick shoved into her shoulder. Noriyuki saves her tail and gives her the magical holy Buddhist whatsit that needs to be used against the Death Gem before sulking off since he can’t do it himself. Kagura and Yomi fight again. Kagura distracts Yomi by confessing that she still loves her, but Yomi slices Michael in half. Kagura whips out the Buddhist thingy (I wish I remembered what those were called) and we get a flashback of Yomi saying Kagura as well as Yomi stabbing herself out of the cellphone picture while saying that she wants to protect that girl. Flashback over, Yomi collapses and dies, saying that she loves Kagura back. Zombies close in, and Kagura finally finally overcomes her hangup about killing them.

Flash forward two years. Noriyuki’s some kind of hipster bum. The agency has a new boss. Rocket wheelchair girl and her assistant are amnesiacs at a hospital with bad dreams about ‘a girl in black.’ Kagura and Ken are hunting monsters.

Final thoughts at the bottom.

Final Thoughts:

Ga-rei started amazingly and ended strongly, although I would hesitate to call it a particularly impressive ending. The problem lies in the six or so episodes between the start and the end. I can barely even remember what happened from episode 4-9 or so. There was Mei, and the headcrabbed teacher, and the naked guy with an afro, but very little actually happened and it took a long while to do so. That "Noriyuki and Kagura are fighting and that makes Yomi saa~aad" episode was pretty much just space filler at its absolute lamest. The direction through many of the more dramatic scenes could have also used some work… or at least a different positioning of the camera angle so as to not sexualize the highly erotic misadventure of fleeing for your life from zombies.

All that said, this was a very well done show all around otherwise. It took a while to figure out where it was really going, especially since there seemed to be a lot of setup in the first episode which was totally dropped afterward, and even once it found its footing, it took another couple of episodes to get back to having a plot, but when it finally did, it was back to a very enthralling little show. It was definitely rather well drawn and animated throughout, though there weren’t really any sequences that stick out in my mind as amazing, aside from the combat wheelchair, which is really more incredulous than amazing.

Ga-rei was a very fun watch though, and easily one of the best action shows of the season. There are lots of minor ridiculous things that I could keep listing, but don’t let that distract you. So long as you stick it through the relatively dull middle, you’ll be happy with this one. Aside from the opening episodes, I wouldn’t call it particularly groundbreaking or amazing, but it does put together a lot of strong, confident characters kicking ass, and honestly, what more do you want from an action show than that?