Anime: Gatchaman Crowds

Art & Animation:
The art and animation work for me. Take a gander at the opening (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rjgqU34B3s or elsewhere on YouTube) for reference.
+ The show has really good artistic direction: it uses a wide palette of colors, favouring pastels. The combination of pastel colours and simple shading create a 'flat' feel to the scenes, which is actually very in-theme: collages are one of the ways in which the main character relates to others, and it's also the title of the last episode. The art style is cool and it works.
+ The animation is okay: it's not something that made the show stand out, but it does have some interesting tricks. Watch 0:20 to 0:30 of the opening, for instance: the stop-motion footwork for Berg Katze is kind of amazing. OD's appearance in 0:44 to 0:46 also stayed with me.
+ There are many little details about the art and animation that made me smile: the way the main character's mouth is drawn, for instance. It's very expressive and she's often drawn with a 'v'-shaped smile that's memorable and becomes her.
- The gatchaman suits feel out of place. They have an obvious, heavy CG quality that doesn't mesh in with the rest of the show's artistic direction.

Overall: Excellent.

Sound:
This deserves an outstanding 10. The opening and ending themes have stayed with me for about a week after having finished the show. Several of the BGM pieces, particularly the one that goes "gatcha-maaaaan (wub wub wub)" also have, and did an excellent job of setting the scene. The sound for this show is amazing, and the most memorable part of it for me.

Story:
This is one of two areas in which the show fails. Gatchaman Crowds feels like a transitional anime: one that wants to grow out of the 'only the Chosen Ones can save the world and make a difference' thing and into 'everyone makes a difference'. It's a bold vision! But it doesn't really work well with the show as a whole. The story feels disjointed and suffers from poor storyboarding:
+ The Crowds concept is cool, and GALAX feels well done.
+ The way in which the Crowds become central to the story was unexpected and really changed the tone of the show from 'standard anime superhero team' into something else.
- The first story is about dealing with an alien threat called 'MESS', which seems to be absorbing / abducting random people and objects.
- The Gatchaman team barely feels like a team at all. Paiman is an annoying space panda that calls itself a leader but defers all decisions to someone else and does nothing for team cohesion; OD is the mother character who tries to keep people from fighting with each other; Utsutsu is a quiet type that barely talks (and then, usually throwing in tangential one-liners like "I'm gloomy"); Joe is detached and has no interest in working with the rest (and it's never made clear why); and Sugane is the idealistic shonen type who actually goes out and does the job. It's not that they have dysfunctional teamwork: they don't have teamwork.
- The above is never explored.
- The production company obviously ran out of time with episode 11, most of which is a recap episode in which the rest of the Gatchaman team reflects on Hajime's arrival and what she's done. It's a gross violation of show-instead-of-tell and it's also redundant: none of the information that you get from people talking is something you didn't already grasp from their reactions and behaviour.
- The ending feels rushed and is completely unsatisfying.

Characters
Much like the plot, cool in concept, flawed execution.
+ Hajime is a great main character. She's a paragon of qualities that are rarely celebrated in anime: she's empathetic, a good listener, socially-conscious. Her greatest strengths are not kokoro no tameni, but her ability to read and connect with other people. It was fun to see her upend the Gatchaman team and become the central pillar of the fight against Berg-Katze.
+ Sugane is a great foil to Hajime. He's interesting as the contrasting honourable, stubborn, determined shonen character who yields to her when he realises that her approach works better.
- Joe is completely uninteresting. He's a stereotypical loner, too-cool-for-the-team, who's supposedly this way because he felt like he can't achieve his dream of world peace (seriously?). He doesn't have major traumas or backstory to justify the way he acts.
- Paiman is completely uninteresting. He's a space panda that's supposedly a leader, but he has no drive, no respect and no decision-making capability. He's fairly pathetic, and this barely improves as the show goes on.
+ OD is an interesting character. He's interesting to watch, has background justification for not fighting most of the time, and you can see his importance to the character dynamics of the show. Also, despite wearing yellow lipstick and being openly gay, he's (by far) the most powerful of the team. There's something socially enlightened about him, which is nice, but he's also genuinely interesting to watch, which is what's really important.
- Utsutsu is... I don't understand how you make an interesting (if stereotypically effeminate) character like OD, and then turn around and give the audience loli-jailbait-eye candy. Why does Utsutsu mostly prance around in her underwear and a garter? Why does she shun human contact (just having superpowers isn't good enough)? She's fun to watch (and attractive, despite being jailbait) especially when she's paired with Hajime, but she could have been better accomplished.

And then you have the antagonists. Rui is a cross-desser with a dream and Berg-Katze is a heavily-androgynous alien in heels who enjoys seeing planets burn. They work fairly well, though both of them made me raise my eyebrows more than once in a "what is the deal with all the gender-queerness in this show".

Overall

Gatchaman Crowds is good but flawed. I enjoyed it, and although parts of it were unsatisfying, I was happy to have dedicated time to it. The art is gorgeous, the music is outstanding, and it has some characters that are both fresh and great to watch. The direction of the plot and the significance of Rui's Crowds power is also thought-provoking. I'd recommend it.

Wow. Just.. wow. I am old enough to remember the 1970s and 1990s Gatchaman (at least the bastardized western Battle of the Planets) and as most say, this has about as much in common with it as an apple does with an orange. They may both be tree fruit, but that's where the resemblance ends.

This is pretty clearly an attempt to ride on the nostalgia coattails of an iconic sentai series. And despite great artwork and design, a solid soundtrack and some interesting story concepts... it still fails miserably because it never becomes more than a shallow reflection of its target, just like the powers of its supposed antagonist- a reimagined Berg-Katze.

The fundamental flaw in Crowds is its rushed, shallow storytelling. We get nothing more than a cursory overview of the hows, wheres and whys of the team, its members, its mission or even where it came from. The original Gatchaman were a team of humans battling against alien invasion, the new team appears to be a random batch of humans interspersed with absurd, stereotyped aliens- a flamboyant gay man and a stubby panda.



As a 24+ episode series we might have actually understood the motivations of the Gatchaman members, Rui or even Berg-Katze. With 12 episodes, half of them essentially filler about our heroine we get none of this exposition and there's little reason to empathize with any of them.

If you want a vapid, pretty show with good music to numb your brain for 24 minutes by all means watch Gatchaman Crowds. But don't expect anything deep, meaningful or even particularly action-packed. This show tries to be everything to both new viewers and old-school fans but really, it won't make any of them happy.

RETRO ALWAYS WINS

I grew up watching the original Gatchaman series. It was never very deep or that good; just a dark and usually depressing Power Rangers variant. It was still a fine action series for the time it came out, with exciting battles, huge monsters, and oozing idealism. From a historical perspective, it was even revolutionary for using ideas that at the time were still new. I was content with that anime, it was retro, fun, and innovating.

And then they remade it and ruined my sweet childhood memories. Because it’s modern, stupid, and does poorly with its ideas. Let’s start with how THERE IS CLOSE TO NO RESEMBLENCE with the original. The insignia and some names are the same with the rest of it having nothing in common with the clearly superior show you grew up with. Because it’s modern.

SELLING ON NAME

They could have named it anything they liked, and nobody would tell this is supposed to be Gatchaman. This shit looks closer to nonsense like Symphogear or Sacred Seven. If they were trying to sell based on nostalgia, as somebody who grew up with the original I found it to be almost of an insult. The live action movie remake was kinda forgettable, but damn, they nailed how the characters look and act. And no, I am not being a stuck up prick who wants to see things stay the same despite the world moving forward. If they want to make a remake of something, they should keep more things the same than just the name and the insignia. Space Battleship Yamato is an awesome remake, and so are Hunter X Hunter and Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. They are very close to their original versions and just updated the visuals and the plot mechanics. Gatchaman Crowds doesn’t do that.

NOTHING IS SERIOUS

The original was never Shakespeare but it retained a level of seriousness amongst all the campiness. The characters there CARED for the roles they had to fulfill. There was drama, comedy, tension, and even horror at points. The remake throws all that out of the window and just makes a prank of it all. Nothing feels important because nothing is taken seriously. Even when the world is one step away from complete destruction, you don’t feel anything. Despite all the bullshit Madoka Magica had, it still tried to build up some drama. Over there, when the girls found out their souls were snatched from their bodies, they had a mental breakdown. Over here, that stupid bimbo is yelling HOW COOL after seeing her soul turning into a freaking cell phone.

OBNOXIOUS CAST

And boy, how more obnoxious can a heroine be, than the one in this show? While the original version had a young man with the personality of a wooden plank as a lead, this one here is an aloof girl who doesn’t take anything seriously. No matter what happens, she reacts by laughing, yelling stuff like HOW CUTE and generally thinks everything is a joke and the world is full of unicorns and rainbows. Meaning she is a total retard. And it doesn’t stop there; her skirt is ridiculously wide, her smile is a lame V, she has a sexual fetish for notebooks, skips school anytime she feels like it because it’s fun, and nobody ever scolds her because she always manages to make them laugh with her dumb positivity.

There are many who find her adorable, intelligent, and mature, for questioning why the hell she needs to fight aliens and not just have a barbeque party for the lulz. She is a subversion of superheroes who fight without ever questioning their actions! Not really, she is just so autistic in positivity that makes her no better than some show for babies, where they need to be constantly spoonfeeded how to be nice to people. Yeah, whatever, girl, you were turned against your will into a super fighter, with the task of protecting the world from alien invaders who plan to wipe out humanity. You could AT LEAST show you care a bit instead of just thinking it’s all a playground.

And it’s not just her; pretty much everybody is a joke. The other Gatchaman members are also not taking their roles seriously, even when they really try to. One of them is a feminine blonde dude, who exists to be a parody of noble samurais, being a stuck up idiot for the sake of being a stuck up idiot. Another one is a gay dude, who takes the stereotype to such extremes that it makes real gay people to cringe. We have a boy who cross-dresses because… he likes it. That’s it. Then we have a practically naked emotionless girl who repeats the same words like a freaking pokemon, and is there as nothing more that fapping material. We have the leader of the team, a tiny talking space panda which pulls out huge stuff from its pants, pretending to be serious when it’s an annoying mascot, and spits bubbles every time it feels weird. Their leader is some sort of samurai god who after you touch his penis, he sticks his hands in your boobs, pulls out your soul, turns it to a smart phone, and tells you to go fight aliens anytime he feels like writing a cryptic poem. I am not making this up.

MODERN SUCKS

And don’t give me crap excuses such as the makers of this abomination updating the whole thing so it can appeal to the new generation. I mean, who would like the grimdark superhero formula anymore? Can you take seriously a bunch of silly dressed people, protecting the world from silly looking monsters? No sir, we need to modernize something that was perfectly fine but no longer in fashion. So of course and everything needs to be colorful and silly; that’s what modern anime are all about. Of course and the heroes need to be students or it’s the end of the world. Of course the female characters need to be half-naked retarded moeblobs, so the damn thing will sell to ronery otakus. Of course and everybody needs to be using smart phones to communicate and transform, as low effort pandering to gamers and casuals. The good old days when only secret agents and superheroes had wristwatches that worked as communication devices and were full of cool gadgets are gone. Now every 5 year old can have an iphone17 or something, and packs more CPU power in his pocket than the entire NASA facilities of the 60s. This makes the whole concept of transformation devices being smart phones completely boring.

PRETTY COLORS

But it’s not like there is nothing I liked in it. The budget is good enough to make the whole thing look eye-catchy enough, with pop-art animation, videogame-like visual effects during battles, a funky soundtrack, a most over the top arch-villain, and a feeling of HAHA THIS IS SO STUPID I ACTUALLY LIKE IT. So if you go in it expecting pop-corn entertainment, you will like what you will find in it.

UNTAPED POTENTIAL

The problem is, it is not presenting itself as simply pop-corn entertainment. It has this weird theme of social reconstruction based on motivating the population to take action through smartphone applications. The concept is cool, very uncommon in anime, and yet it’s ruined because of the silly presentation, and gets wasted by an awfully rushed ending that does very little with it.

Once the feeling of stupidity from the pretty colors wears off, you will realize it is all crap done for giggles. It feels like a social study done by drunken college students, who gave up half-way through completion and let a 5 year old kid to fill the rest with crayon doodles.