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trismugistus.com and digital-bondage.net are my web sites.

trismugistus.com is where I upload my anime, manga and tv&film reviews, and also where I occasionally post short stories and longer works I've written.

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generator gawl review

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details

The Genre: sci-fi / giant mech / fan service

The Format: 26 episodes in 2 seasons across 7 DVDs from ADV

underboob

The plot: Five years ago, as the Mimetic Beasts laid waste to Japan, Dannar Pilot Go saved young Anna Aoi’s life. Now, as they prepare to march down the aisle, a new Beast appears and Go is summoned into battle once more. But he’s not going alone, not if his blushing bride to be can help it! It’s a honeymoon from hell as two stubborn mecha pilots bump heads, egos and other bits; but if Anna and Go can mate their robots’ interlocking parts, they’ll form the ultimate marriage of man, woman and machine! The battle of the sexes and the battle for the future of mankind are fought simultaneously in the wildest giant robot series ever, GODANNAR!

opinion

If you’re the sort of person who abhors fan service, stop reading now.

You will hate Godannar.

Because Godannar has, per frame, about the most fan-service it’s possible to have without actually straying into becoming Hentai. Not that that’s why I love (well, okay, that’s one of the reasons, but there’s more to it than just the wall-to-wall fan service), but I think for some people – those that really hate it – you just won’t be able to get past all the jiggling and focus on what makes Godannar my new favouritist series ever.

That’s right, I love this show that much. For me, it’s just about the most perfect anime show ever created.... And now I have the difficult job of articulating exactly why that is.

See, the problem is it’s a combination of a hell of a lot things, and not one of them is more important than the others. So lets start at the beginning.

And what hits you first, obviously, is the DVD covers themselves and hence the character designs. They are, to say the least, rather... eye-popping. Indeed, were you to get too close to some of the ladies, their boobs could quite literally have your eye out. All of the character designs and the costumes they wear are highly sexualised – even the characters that are supposed to be relatively plain are knock outs, and possibly the least say about the under-age characters the better.

Don’t get me wrong, the male characters are similarly exaggerated, with those hyper-beautiful bishounen types, as well as some beefy strong men whose chins enter the room several minutes before the rest of them. But Godannar knows its core audience, and so tends to focus more on flashing bits of female flesh at us.

For those fan-service fans out there, this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise when you learn that the character designer on Godannar is Takahiro Kimura, who is responsible for echhi-classic character designs as Dirty Pair Flash, GaoGaiGar, Betterman and GunxSword. If you’re familiar with those series, you should be expecting more of the same.

But, as I say, those of the anti-fan service persuasion (Y’know I must admit, I’ve never quite understood people’s problems with fan service. I mean, don’t get me wrong, fan-service is often used to cover up gaping cracks in things like storyline and character development, but it seems to me that as far as many people are concerned the presence of fan-service instantly ruins something. It’s as if as soon as the idea of sex or sexuality is introduced, *bam* some people dismiss the thing instantly, as if they’re some sort of Victorian uber-prude. Don’t these people have sex drives? There’s nothing wrong with sex; there’s nothing wrong with finding a character attractive, and there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with fan-service.) will almost certainly baulk at this, but they’re kinda missing a trick.

You can enjoy the fan-service in two ways. On the surface it’s there for you to enjoy in the normal way, but it’s also done in an ironic, fun-poking kind of way. Godannar’s fan-service is done with its tongue firmly in its cheek, and can easily be laughed at for it’s silly over-exuberance.

Which brings us to the next two most important points. Over-exuberance and self-parody. Godannar is rich in both.

The plot of Godannar is incredibly dense – there’s enough in there to fill about 6 normal shows – and it’s approached with such enthusiasm and gumption that it’s both easy to loose yourself in it completely, and to get completely lost. Godannar demands your full attention as things happen at break-neck speed, and people often talk like they’re being paid by the word.

If you let it, it sweeps you along and before you know it you’ve watched an entire disk, missed your tea and are hungry for more of the same.

The self-parody in Godannar is, quite simply, masterfully executed. It’s there, but it’s done at such a level that you can either completely ignore it and still enjoy the show immensely, or you can just watch it for the self-parody. But not only does it take the mic out of itself, but it pokes a gentle rib or two of the great Giant Mech series of the past. Everything is covered here, with gags about the impracticability and silliness of Giant Mech themselves (there are girl Mechs with jiggly boobs, emphasising that the Mechs in such shows are simply big manifestations of the personalities within them), pointless transformations, overly-complex combinations, support crews talking utterly non-sensensical techno-babble, every single possible type of relationship from hyper-jealous to longing from afar...

I could go on, and I’ve found that given half a chance I do go on and on – I just love this show so much.

So what haven’t I covered yet?

Well, we get some of the most spectacular animation I’ve seen in a long time and a near perfect soundtrack. Unfortunately it’s only stereo for the Japanese mix, but it’s a good up-mix for the dub (although it does suffer from that characteristic American failing of making everything LOUD and loosing some of the subtlety.). The Dub itself is good and, although the use of accents is always a contentious issue (many of the giant mechs are foreign teams, so the dub has things like fake British and Russian accents) I think it works reasonable well. There’s also some thoroughtly nailed performances as well, I think, capturing the essence of the characters perfectly.

Chriminey, I’m almost at my normal word count and I haven’t even covered half the stuff I wanted to mention, so lets focus on the thing I probably like the most.

The main characters, Anna and Go, are married. Alright, given it’s a slightly odd relationship in that Anna is a high-school girl and Go is, like, in his thirties, but this is Japan after all. So putting that aside, the point remains that we have a fundamentally different dynamic to most Giant Mech shows.

In most Giant Mech shows, we focus on the trials and tribulations of young people. Giant Mech shows tend (at least recently) to be allegories for growing up, for finding your place in the world, discovering yourself or coming to terms with your relationship with your parents – that sort of thing. But here we have a different dynamic. Here we have a young couple who are already married (or at least get married in ep1).

They’re not angsting about being “different”. They’re not fighting against authority. They’re not struggling over how much they hate their dads. It’s almost a completely angst free zone.

What we have instead are a set of trials and tribulations that the young couple must face. We discover throughout the series that Go’s first partner, the beautiful Mira, is not actually as dead as everyone though, putting Go and Anna's relationship to the test. We also discover that one of the other pilots, Shizuru is very much in love with Go; Go’s younger brother, Shinobu, is in love with Anna. Then there’s the fact that their boss, Kiriko, is Anna’s mother; not to mention the fact that Go and Anna effectively adopt a young girl, who then runs away to try to avenge her father and falls in love with a mysterious older man...

Stop me when you realise what this is :). For those of you who are a little slow, it’s a soap opera. Only with Jiggling boobs, Giant robots beating the snot out of some sort of weird aliens called mimetic beasts, explosions and a whole ensemble cast of other pilots with equally complex relationships.

In some ways, as I say, these are soap opera like shenanigans, but in others they seem much more realistic than in other Giant Mech shows and, indeed, a hell of a lot more interesting.

Oh yeah, above you may have seen me mention for the first time the mimetic beasts. Well, guess what? There’s a whole intrigue about what the mimetic beasts are about, what they’re doing and indeed what effect they seem to have had on the pilots.

Seriously, I could just keep going and going until my fingers were bloody stumps telling you all the stuff that’s awesome about Godannar, but I think you’ve got the general idea by now – I love this show!

summary

The Summary: Absolutely, positively my new favourite show!

The Score: 10/5

The Pictures:

(click for larger versions)