Review of Elemental Gelade: Vol. 3

Introduction

Another day, another volume of some sort of anime hits the doormat at Reviewer HQ. `Elemental Gelade` volume 3 is up for review today, and if you`ve been following the reviews for the preceding volumes, you`ll know it`s a very decent, but perhaps overly-juvenile anime series, one whose dips into childishness without any real meat in terms of story and characters somewhat limits its appeal to traditional anime fans who grew up on a diet on Manga releases. But it`s fun, has always been watchable and is nothing if not pleasant. That said, you can`t swivel your hips without bumping into a half-decent anime show vying for your attention, and `Elemental Gelade` certainly isn`t the one who`s going to be shouting the loudest.

Cou is the sky pirate who`s made it his job to escort the ancient, powerful and terribly cute Edel Rain Ren to a paradise called Edel Gardens. They`re accompanied by members of a group called Arc Aile, sworn protectors of the Edel Raid race, and find themselves hampered at (seemingly) every turn by Chaos Choir, a stable of baddies with an as yet unconfirmed motive. This selection of episodes continues the small arc involving Rasati, a woman fighting for the freedom of her little sister Lillia in the grounds of an underground fighting arena. Cisqua is convinced she has to put a stop to the barbarism, but Cou is looking to make money, and fighting alongside Ren may be the way to do it, even if it means coming face to face with Rasati in the ring.


10. Love and Greed
11. Revenge of the Krasfighter
12. Rush For Freedom
13. Arc Aile

Video

Full-frame 4:3, and you`ll be hard-pressed to find any major technical flaws with the transfer. The show itself is bright and colourful, with some fairly energetic animation and the quaint, semi-cutesy visual style that seems to go down well among the broad-appeal anime fans. There are a few evident artifacts during some fast-motion scenes and a few instances where the visuals notably soften or dull, but you really have to be looking for these to pick them up.

Audio

English dub or native Japanese with subtitles, but disappointingly only in Dolby Digital 2.0; a strange choice for such an action and set-piece orientated show. Still, the tracks are both clear with solid mixing. The voice cast on the Japanese track is notably more mature-sounding and versatile compared to the rather dull and samey Americanised dub, which when combined with the manga-faithful artistic choices in terms of character design, does tend to make it feel like you`re simply watching a Saturday morning `toon for kids, doing the show an injustice in the process. Also worth mentioning is that the score is full of pop-ish tunes if that`s your cup of tea, and the theme tune which opens the show is truly a bubblegum J-pop fan`s wet dream.

Features

Nothing but several trailers on this volume. Two for the show from the 2005 Tokyo Anime Fair and Comiket 67 comic market, and the usual trails for MVM fare.

Conclusion

If you`re looking for anime with depth, character and an involving story to tell, you`re in the wrong place. `Elemental Gelade` is fun, sure, but so undeniably broad (that`s to say, straddling pre-teen and teen markets with exemplary success) that, as already pointed out, it can`t help but get swamped under the sheer weight of the mature-themed and hard anime it rubs shoulders with. If you`ve enjoyed what you`ve experienced so far of the show, by all means continue. There`s plenty of bloodless action and awkward humour as pervaded the first two volumes, but you can`t really expect too much from the show. It`s not for everyone, and if you`re over 18 and new to anime, I`d avoid it like the plague. But it`ll have its audience, and I`m sure they thoroughly enjoy it.

The two greatest strengths of the show, as evidenced in this volume, are that even if the stories are wishy-washy fluff, or at least handle their plots in a fluffy manner, they move along at a fair crack and don`t feel the need to get bogged down in an overly convoluted back story or grand narrative arc (the whole Chaos Choir angle has yet to fully materialise, and I`d bet against it coming to much), and the gently evolving relationship between Cou and Ren, which, in an anime so bereft of real adult appeal, is possibly the the most expertly handled teenage union in the medium, and it`s genuinely touching to watch it evolve through the volumes as they become less strangers and more friends. The show does throw up some other darker motifs now and then, such as child slavery in this volume, but these really are just by-products of how the story has come together and `Elemental Gelade` is on the whole, too squarely aimed at a younger audience to handle or deal with these sorts of themes in a satisfactory manner.

While it`s getting harder and harder to review a show which is comfortable in its own little groove without much change from month to month, it isn`t getting harder to watch, and if anything, the more you try to convince yourself that you should be watching something more `grown up`, the more you enjoy it.

And that theme tune is a bugger to get out of your head.