Gravitation: Volume 3

Introduction

Wow! That was fast. In an industry where fans have to wait like penitents for subsequent volumes in their series of choice, Gravitation makes it to shelves in its entirety over a period of two months. Of course it helps that unlike the original 4-disc US release, it's distributed over a wallet friendlier 3 volumes in the UK. It's the conclusion of the story, where we will find out if Shuichi and Yuki have a happily ever after in their destinies, or if they are doomed like Romeo and, well Romeo. Gravitation takes place in the cutthroat music industry,with unlikely romance blossoming for Shuichi Shindo, lead singer of up and coming pop band Bad Luck. They were lined up as the support act for ASK who are aiming the big time. With just a few days until the gig, Shuichi had writer's block and lyrics weren't flowing. Walking home one night through the park, the wind caught his half formed verse and blew the sheet towards Eiri Yuki, an established romance novelist,who took one look at them and dismissed them as crass and worthless, written by a talentless hack. The confrontation pushed Shuichi into completing his song to prove Yuki wrong, but he was motivated by more than just anger. Romance blossomed between the two, but it's a rocky road they follow. The series concludes with the final five episodes, presented by MVM on this disc, One Million Copies!?


9. The Deepest Brain
Both Yuki and Shuichi have problems, Yuki's been seeing a psychiatrist on the sly, while Shuichi is having a hard time dealing with having his heroes, Nittle Grasper as rivals, and as usual, neither of them is communicating. It's time for Bad Luck's gun toting manager K to step in, and he persuades Yuki to give Shuichi a little incentive, and promise to go out on a date if Bad Luck sells a million CDs. With that enticement in place, K decides to make use of Shuichi and Yuki's relationship to get Bad Luck some publicity. Seeing this p***es guitarist Hiro off to the point where he announces he's quitting the band.

10. Heads Or Tails
Is it all over for Bad Luck? Hiro tells Shuichi that he's leaving, and it looks as if it may be it for the band. The management tells Shuichi to be professional and carry on, especially as Bad Luck has a nationwide tour lined up. He's told that Bad Luck will announce that their guitarist has left at the press conference for the tour. But for Shuichi, there is no Bad Luck without Hiro. At the same time, the constant stress of being with Shuichi, and the constant press presence since their relationship was outed on national TV is taking its toll on Yuki, and he falls ill.


11. Secret Day
Shuichi is flying high on record sales when he brought crashing back down to Earth with a call from the hospital. Fortunately it's just stress making Yuki ill, but when he overhears that he may be the cause, Shuichi's sent into a depression again. Hiro advises him to confront the problem head on, and see Yuki for the truth. It all looks fine at first, with Yuki fulfilling that promise and taking him out for the day. But then Yuki tells Shuichi the whole truth, unburdening himself of all that has been causing him stress. Yuki thinks that by telling Shuichi everything it will heal him of his trauma, but when it doesn't work, Shuichi winds up being left in the lurch.

12. Breathless
Yuki's gone! He didn't go home, and Shuichi can't find him at all in his hasty search of the whole of Japan. It's the worst possible time,as on the eve of their national tour, Bad Luck are truly about to obtain legendary status. Shuichi has a choice to make, the band or Yuki. It looks as if the decision is made for him when he loses his voice.

13. Got It All
Yuki's back at the site of his traumatic past, in New York trying to face his demons. And for Shuichi it looks to be going from bad to worse when the tour is about to start, his voice is still AWOL, and he's trying to figure out where his priorities lie.

Picture

I wasn't expecting too much from an animation that's pushing its first decade, other than the clean and crisp 4:3 transfer that we get here. The character designs are impressive and backgrounds are detailed at times. There is also some excellent use of CG animation techniques, with large spaces like auditoria looking solid and consistent. But consistency isn't the show's strong suit, and while some moments are animated well, others are distinctly lacklustre, and in some instances the character animations look degraded. However, it does look as if the animators saved their money for the final episodes. There's more new animation and less repetition of footage (new songs), and it looks as if the production values have significantly increased.

Sound

You have a choice of DD 2.0 Stereo English and Japanese along with translated subtitles and a signs only track. For the first time in quite a while I feel that the English dub just doesn't cut it. Normally it's just an aesthetic preference with me, but what little I experienced of the English dub here sounded artificial and forced, as opposed to the natural performance of the Japanese dialogue. It should be noted that the songs in the English dub are the original Japanese songs, not new songs created for the dub as some anime are prone to do. It's a good thing too, as music is key to Gravitation's storyline,and is a large part of the overall experience. The opening theme is straight from the eighties, and it put me in mind of shows like Knight Rider and Street Hawk, with a fast electrobeat. The show has a varied soundtrack though, with plenty of toe tapping opportunities, and temptations to look up the soundtrack CD.

Extras

It's your typical anime offering here, with an Art Gallery of 10 line art images to scan through, the clean closing credits, and further trailers for Black Cat and Shana. The subtitles with the credit sequences simultaneously provide an English translation, as well as the Romanji lyrics if you feel in the mood for a little karaoke.

Conclusion

It isn't a good sign when you are looking forward to the end of a disc, and it's even worse when it's because I want to start watching The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya. So not only was I clock watching through the already short episodes, but immediately after, I had something in a whole other league of brilliance to compare it to. With the added proviso that I'm so far outside Gravitation's target demographic, that if I moved even further away, I'd round the other side and start closing in again, you can guess that this disc isn't going to get a glowing review.


It probably isn't going to get much of a coherent one either, as I'm hastening to be shod of this series, and care and attention into my sentence structures isn't a priority. It isn't that Gravitation is bad, it's just that it's very much a Marmite anime, you either like it or loathe it, and that all depends on how you react to the juvenile story, the annoying (for me) characterisations, and the increasingly tiresome humour. I've been wavering my way through the series, trying to acquire the taste, and admittedly I sort of enjoyed the previous volume. But the same aspects that made me chuckle last time around have had the volume turned up to eleven in this instalment, and by the end of the disc, my head was hurting at the saccharine overload. Gravitation is shonen-ai, or boy-love, and as such this is very much homosexuality for the young teen demographic, created by women for girls, and pretty much amounts to playing with dolls in a large pink playbox. Verisimilitude, depth of emotion, and realism were left at the door, and what you get is superficial emotional mayhem, wrapped up in some juicy melodrama. This final volume is all about setting up the happily ever after, after putting some serious obstacles in the way of true love, and giving both the protagonists crippling issues to work out. For Yuki it's his dark past in New York, for Shuichi, it's choosing between his love life and his career, and realising that he can't have one without the other. And to counteract what approaches for seriousness in this volume, the cutesy overload threatens to overwhelm, with Shuichi doing his cute puppy routine again, while rival and hero Ryuichi channels his inner toddler whenever he speaks. We're talking serious tooth decay here; it's so sugary.


There is one reason why I like Gravitation, and that's the music. It's a soundtrack that takes me right back to the eighties, when pop music had meaning, had melodies, had Bananarama. It's my meaningful musical decade, and the likelihood of hearing new songs now from an old decade is low, until you realise they still write those songs for shows like this. To be fair, I was entertained by Gravitation, mostly in the earlier volumes, when there was a better balance between the drama and the comedy, and between the relationship and the music business aspects of the show. But I'm not the target audience for the show. They don't publish Smash Hits anymore, but if that's the sort of magazine that you would read, then Gravitation is for you. If you've done your GCSEs, then you've probably missed the boat on this one. There is also the novelty value of Gravitation being the only title of its genre available in the UK right now, and if you're the compulsive collector who needs to have all the boxes ticked, you aren't going to have any alternatives. For everyone else, I'd say give it a rent first.