Review for Gun Sword - Complete Collection

Introduction

I'm giving the giant robot genre one more try. Over the past few months, I've dipped my toe into the genre on more than one occasion, to ambivalent results. While I have enjoyed the quirkiness of shows like Dai Guard and The Big O, and found the mainstream approach of IGPX to be very appealing, I still fail to see the attraction that the genre holds to legions of anime fans. For my final attempt to see what all the fuss is about, I have Gun Sword lined up for review, or in some quarters, Gun X Sword. It's my second exposure to this series. A wayward review disc once surfaced on my doormat, and the obligatory swimsuit episode did little to endear me to it. What put me off though was a giant robot that was effectively controlled by the act of pole dancing. Snorting derisively, I put Gun Sword out of my mind. But it has crept back in subsequently. After all it does bear a passing similarity to Trigun, a series that I love and enjoy, and it does have that same Sci-fi Spaghetti Western flavour to it. That makes it worth a second chance, especially now that the series is available at a budget price, given MVM's move to boxsets.


Another futuristic Wild West planet means another group of super powered gunfighters. This planet is the world of Endless Illusion, another forsaken land where past and future collide. The difference is that its particular wild and woolly heroes and anti-heroes duel whilst piloting giant robots known as Armors. The protagonist of this story, Van may not be the most wanted man on the planet, and neither does he have a pacifist nature. He does have the strongest Armor on the planet though, and a burning desire for vengeance. A man with a cybernetic claw for a right hand murdered Van's fiancé on the day of their wedding, and for that reason, Van has been tracking The Claw wherever he goes. He misses him in the town of Evergreen, but gets embroiled in a feud between the townsfolk and a group of bandits, rescuing a young girl named Wendy Garrett in the process. But The Claw has just been through town, and has kidnapped Wendy's older brother Michael. And so Van unwillingly picks up the first partner on his quest to find The Claw. As their journey continues, it becomes apparent that they aren't the only people holding a burning grudge. MVM present 26 episodes of Gun Sword across seven discs in this boxset.


Volume 1: Endless Illusion
1. Tuxedo Blowing in the Wind
2. Funny Stream
3. Heroes One More Time
4. And the Rain Kept Falling

Volume 2: Abandoned Past
5. Twin's Guards
6. Light My Fire
7. Vengeance Within
8. Bound By Blood

Volume 3: Separate Ways
9. Carmen Goes Home
10. Thank You Ocean
11. Where The Goodbyes Are
12. The Days Of No Return

Volume 4: Fallen Knights
13. Dream In Progress
14. Swift Brownie
15. Neo Originals
16. The Electric Fireworks


Volume 5: Tainted Innocence
17. Follow the X-Spot
18. Prayers are for Saudade
19. Prayer's End
20. Wonderful Universe

Volume 6: Lost Prayers
21. Prayers to Heaven and Peace on Earth
22. For Whose Sake?
23. A Song For Everyone

Volume 7: Last Rites
24. The End of a Dream
25. Fool Comes By Armor
26. Tuxedo Blowing in Tomorrow

Picture

Gun Sword gets the usual NTSC-PAL standards conversion for its 1.78:1 anamorphic ratio. It's a pretty good one though, with judder nonexistent, and ghosting and softness at a minimum. The image is by large clear and sharp throughout, and the anime's bright colour scheme and bold and distinctive character designs hold it in good stead. The animation is top notch, with the CGI applied to the mecha blending in well with the traditional 2D animation. I did find it a little too bright and generic an anime though. While the story, and most certainly the music give it a Wild West frontier feel, other than Van's costume design, that doesn't come through in the visuals, certainly not in the same way that Trigun managed it.

Sound

You have a choice between DD 5.1 English, and DTS 5.1 and DD 2.0 Japanese. My option as always is the original language track, and this is one of the shows where the 2.0 Stereo is preferable to the DTS track. The stereo reflects the original broadcast, but the surround upmix really only has the effect of making things louder, and throwing all the music and sound effects to the rear speakers. This is downright distracting when the action is actually happening on screen. The 5.1 English surround does a far better job of establishing a surround presence, mostly because it has to be created from scratch using the stereo elements when the dub is made. It's subtler and more immersive than the DTS track, but is still an upmixed stereo track at heart. The dub from what I sampled is par for the course for action anime. If you like your anime in English, then this will suffice. Translated subtitles and a signs only track accompany the soundtracks.

Extras

While the current release has all seven discs packed into an m-lock style case, I managed to find the previous release that has seven discs in individual thinpacks, gathered into a thick card constructed artbox. The discs all come with animated menus and jacket pictures.

Across all seven discs, you'll find art galleries, which allow you to navigate through series art and stills with your remote control. You'll also find the Gun-Sword-san short animations; little comedy sketch shows with the show's characters turned into CGI glove puppets, goofing around with some light-hearted nonsense. It's all good fun, and you'll find two on each disc, except the final disc which has just one (Episode 10 has the Japanese dialogue out of sync). In total all thirteen episodes will run to a total of 55 minutes.

Also across all seven discs, you'll find trailers for Ah My Goddess TV: Season 1, Speed Grapher, Ergo Proxy, Elemental Gelade, Basilisk, Tenjho Tenge, Trinity Blood, Saiyuki Reload, Berserk, Black Cat and Witchblade.


There are some minor extras unique to each disc. Disc 1 has the textless credit sequences for episode 1, Disc 2 has 2 minutes worth of original Japanese trailer, the O.S.T. CD commercial, and the drama CD commercial, Disc 3 has another drama CD commercial. Disc 4 has 6½ minutes worth of Japanese TV commercials, and another Japanese trailer. Disc 5 has the TV version of episode 17, the swimsuit episode sanitised for the easily offended (which somehow works to make it more offensive). Disc 6 has the textless opening sequence, 11 variations of it running to a total of 17 minutes. Disc 7 has a further six minutes worth of opening sequence, as well as Dave's Wedding Proposal, the first time an anime has been used for such a purpose, probably.

Conclusion

Gun Sword joins an exceedingly long list of anime that I find entertaining, enjoyable, and yet utterly forgettable. It's disposable fun, the serialised equivalent of a summer blockbuster, with characters and a story designed to push the pre-programmed buttons in the well-versed anime fan, without actually requiring much thought or consideration. Little details exist to differentiate it from other shows, differences in nomenclature, nuances of plot, quirkiness of some of the characters, emphasis in tone, or the budget spent on the animation. But when it comes down to it, I find that shows like this, Burst Angel, Trinity Blood, Black Cat all begins to blend into one big futuristic, sci-fi, mystery action morass. A company called A.I.C. Asta made Gun Sword, but it is the most Gonzo like non-Gonzo anime I have ever seen, with a similar story and structure, and with an equally lacklustre and unfulfilling conclusion. The one thing that it does better is the animation, or more particularly the consistency of its character designs.


The story is as simple as it gets. The bad guy, The Claw, wrongs the good guy, Van, by killing his fiancé. That sparks a crusade of vengeance, as Van travels the land hunting down The Claw. On his travels he encounters a growing group of like-minded heroes, as it becomes clear that The Claw's plans are far more insidious and with far greater consequences than just the murder of one woman. It all leads to an epic conclusion, a battle between right and wrong, good and evil, with the fate of the world at stake. And on the way, Van and his band of allies have all sorts of random adventures as well. How else would you shoehorn a swimsuit episode into a tale of epic vengeance?


Actually it's the mecha that feel shoehorned into this particular story. Gun Sword is a story that would work perfectly well without the giant robots. They feel totally out of place with the world and the tone of the show. Actually, giant robots aren't the most realistic of plot devices in the first place but here they appear exceptionally misplaced. The story demands it, you can't have the bizarre, overblown conclusion without it, and the reasons behind the existence of the planet of Endless Illusion justify the existence of the mecha. It's the society and the lack of complexity in the engineering (steam trains and airships) that makes the use of mecha seem at odds with everything. Besides, strapping on a giant robot to do battle does tend to distract from the central theme of vengeance more than slightly. Like the summer Hollywood blockbusters I alluded to, Gun Sword turns out to be a show designed to cater for fans of giant robots, and the story feels grafted on after the robots came off the drawing board.


The Gonzo-ness of the story comes with how it plays out in the latter stages, with more and more fantastic revelations about the nature of the Planet of Endless Illusion, and who The Claw actually is, as well as his plans for the people of this world. It gets more and more outrageous with each subsequent episode, but just as Gonzo shows are apt to do, Gun Sword fails to back up these plot twists with back-story. You want to know why the giant robots exist, why there are orbiting support stations, why the infrastructure to put the Claw's plans into motion exist on the planet, why certain events referred to in the world's past occurred, and why they have a bearing on what happens in the present. You get none of this explained, you just have to accept it all at face value, which feels a bit like a cheat.


The characters suffer from this as well, with back-story and motivation not top on the list of the storytellers' priorities. You just get the surface with most of the characters. Fortunately that is enough, as while the story may disappoint, the characters are at least colourful and varied, quirky and individual. They, as well as the way they interact offer a goodly amount of enjoyment, and while some conform to the usual anime tropes and clichés, some are different enough to at last inject a helping of originality into proceedings. It's hard to empathise with Van's search for vengeance, the Claw's desire for a better world, or Carmen 99 and Fasalina's mutual antagonism, because the story fails to elaborate on the reasons behind these things. But Van's laconic downbeat style, and tendency to overload his food with condiments entertains, the unexpected, kindly old man character of the Claw makes a difference from the usual moustache twirling villains, and Carmen 99's proud declaration that she is named thus for her 99 centimetre bust tends to put a smile on the face. Fasalina piloting her robot by pole dancing still irritates me no end though.


Where Gun Sword actually succeeds in being somewhat original is that it offers shades of grey, rather than simple black and white for its good guys and bad guys. A lot of this comes with the surprising reveal of The Claw's character, who up to that point has been built up as a lethal, unremitting villain of the worst kind. He turns out to be anything but, and the way that he is introduced challenges all these preconceptions in the most stunning way, putting him in close proximity to one of his unwitting enemies for most of an episode, before the actual reveal. It turns out that the Claw's goals may not be ultimately malicious, that he is being compelled to do horrific things for the greater good. That is an issue in the real world that causes more debate now than ever. Add to that the vehemence with which Van, and his erstwhile ally Ray Lundgren pursue their need for revenge, and the blind fury that Ray in particular displays, then you are forced to wonder just who is the villain and who is the hero in this particular tale. Gun Sword does chicken out in the end, opting to avoid the ambiguity for a clear-cut conclusion, but it is interesting while it lasts.


Ultimately it boils down to this. Gun Sword is fun, forgettable yes, but fun nonetheless. If you want to sit in front of an anime show for twenty odd minutes, and leave your brain in idle for the duration, then Gun Sword is just the show you need. You may not recall the beginning by the time you get to the final episode, but that doesn't really matter, and is actually a bonus when it comes to watching it again. This series boxset is pretty fine value, especially when you see how much fun the Gun Sword-San mini-episodes are as well.