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Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012


Summary

An animated adaptation of the extremely popular horror/dark fantasy tokusatsu franchise with an entirely new setting and story, GARO: The Animation is directed by Studio MAPPA, also known as that place where all the good Madhouse animators fled to to do quirky arthouse projects, and began airing on October 4. The story takes place in the totally-not-medieval-Spain kingdom of Valiante, which has been overrun by demonic monsters called Horrors. To make matters worse, the local Inquisition has been going after the Horrors' traditional arch-enemies, the noble Makai Knights, and now only two, a father-and-son team, remain to gather allies and stem the tide.

Staff

Director: Yuichiro Hayashi
Script: Hiroshi Seko
Music: MONACA (theme song by JAM Project)
Character Design: Toshiyuki Kanno
Art Director: Kazuyuki Hashimoto
Series Composition: Yasuko Kobayashi
Studio: MAPPA
Original Creator: Keita Amemiya
Original Character Design: Hiroyuki Takei

Characters


León Luís (Makai Knight GARO) (VA: Daisuke Namikawa
The hero of the story, who was miraculously born as his mother was burnt to death as a witch. He's your typical surly teenager, with a burning need for revenge, mysterious curse that sends him into berserker rages, and parental issues like whoa, but he's got a good heart underneath it all.


Germán Luís (Makai Knight ZORO) (VA: Kenyuu Horiuchi)
León's father, mentor, and perpetual pain in the rear end. He loves the ladies, the ladies love him, and his son doesn't love how much he loves the ladies (particularly seeing as he's a widower whose wife died in tragic and unpleasant circumstances). A lot kinder, more chivalrous, and less rapey than your typical anime skirt-chaser, and seriously deadly when he decides to get serious. Shown here on one of the rare occasions when he has all his clothes on.


Alfonso Saint-Valiante (VA: Katsuhito Nomura)
The prince of Valiante, as the name suggests. He's a good-natured but somewhat sheltered young man who's looking to save his parents and break Mendoza's stranglehold on the kingdom, and thinks the Makai Knights might be just what he's looking for.


Ema Guzman (VA: Romi Park)
A Makai Alchemist, one of the Knights' support staff, who León and Germán failed dismally at rescuing from a Horror she was luring into a trap. Smart, tough, and lethal with her signature razorwire, she drops in to help our heroes on occasion, backing them up in fights, offering information, and pushing León's gigantic Oedipal buttons.


Mendoza (VA:Takaya Hashi)
The main villain of the series, Mendoza is a senior royal advisor and former Makai Alchemist with a massive grudge against the order. He was responsible for the Makai Knight purge, and has incapacitated the king via poison, framed and imprisoned the queen, and unleashed an army of Horrors on the land so that he might flood the streets with Swank, a drug ten times more addictive than marijuana take the kingdom for his own. To human misery!


GARO has been rather overshadowed this season by the rest of the glut of fantasy anime - the sequel seasons to the highly popular Log Horizon and Coffin Princess Chaika, the gigantic shonen hit The Seven Deadly Sins, and its big sister, the exquisitely overbudgeted Rage of Bahamut: Genesis. Certainly, it looks much cheaper than ROBG, particularly where the CG's concerned, but it still has a fair amount of that MAPPA visual flair, and some great monster design. The writing, too, is thoroughly solid barring the occasional wobbly episode, and there's a pleasing amount of heart and a reassuring lack of sleaze (the first episode's prostitute with the man-eating vagina is not representative, thankfully) for a grimdark fantasy show about magical knights fighting and loving through medieval Spain. Not only that, but a second season and a movie have been announced, so it looks like it'll have good longevity. Give it a shot - you may be pleasantly surprised.

Darth Walrus fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Feb 9, 2015

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Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012
I must say, this latest episode raises some very uncomfortable questions about León's parentage. Those marks looked awfully familiar...

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012

Serious Frolicking posted:

It is odd how these anime characters are much more believably human than anyone in the live action shows. This is easily the best version of garo.

I liked how Bernardo actually didn't need to fall that far - just a moment of doubt was enough for Mendoza to turn him into a Horror, after which it was pretty much game over and he could be talked into anything.

Ema's a very entertaining female lead, too - I haven't watched that much live-action Garo, but I don't remember the female cast being that great (or the interesting women living that long).

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012
:asoiaf:

Well, poo poo. That got real fast.

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012
Seriously, despite the :stonk: twists, the sheer concentration of metal poo poo in this episode deserves some attention as well. There was Alfonso tapdancing León into orbit, Ema cutting a loving tower in half with her razorwire to give León a softer landing, and even Mendoza managed to give a very solid accounting of himself against two deeply pissed-off Makai Knights. How hardcore are Alchemists/Priests in other GARO shows, anyway? Here, they barely seem to need the Knights to kick additional rear end for them.

Also, it was fairly obvious already, but Season One of this show will be twenty-four episodes long. That's in addition to the planned Season Two and movie. There's a whole lot of GARO to come.

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012
Yeah, they twisted the knife much harder than is usual in these plots. Leon didn't just bruise some innocents, but burnt down a city, and even his dad was up for mercy-killing him before things got worse. These mistakes and failures are usually stuff that the hero disproportionately guilts out over before being talked back into fighting half an episode later, whereas this went all the way and showed that our main character is genuinely, dangerously unsuitable for his job. Frankly, he was lucky that Mendoza didn't do to him as he'd done to Bernardo.

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012
New poster for the second cour.

Looks like the lady with the headscarf who led the evacuation when Leon went loco is graduating to main-character status.

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012

Serious Frolicking posted:

She popped up a couple times before that, as well. I had her pegged as German's future love interest.

Also, I had no idea that this show was split cour.

It's only split-cour in the loosest sense - it's starting up again next week after taking a Christmas break.

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012
In this episode, GARO does a crossover with Vinland Saga.

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012

Serious Frolicking posted:

Ugh, I really hope that this doesn't go the obvious route. You know, where he learns the will to protect via his new family being killed by a horror. The writing has been really good thus far so I don't think it will be that simple, but some kind of tragedy is definitely coming. Also, I absolutely love that no one is furious with or vindictive toward Leon. Instead, everyone just seems kind of sad and disappointed.

It looks like the daughter, at least, is here to stay. It's just a question of how many of her family come out the other end alive. Ema seems to have their backs, at least, which is a positive sign.

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012
I was promised a half-hour of Ema being awesome, I got a half-hour of Ema being awesome. I am content.

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012
Seriously, let me spew :words: about how this episode was awesome.

One of the recurring things in action anime/manga is someone without the protagonists' gifts trying to show that they can be useful too. They generally fail miserably, but goddamnit, they try, and that's what's supposed to make them admirable. Think Rock Lee in Naruto, Ichigo's buddies in Bleach, or, for a particularly extreme example, Mamiya in Fist of the North Star. Ema, meanwhile, devotes her life to showing that an Alchemist can kick just as much rear end as a Knight... and ends up soloing a demonic jet-fighter that's wiped out whole squads of Knights in a batshit insane aerial dogfight, and then bangs the hero for afters.

Leon's attitude to the whole thing was pretty cool, too. He's perfectly OK with giving her space to ice her ex, but he makes it clear that he won't let her suicide, and he won't let the Horror rack up any collateral damage. Usually, the way this goes is that the talentless character gets in over their head, and the hero has to step in and kill the monster-of-the-week for them while complimenting them on their effort because he's the main character and this is his show. Hell, even the random prostitute whose job is to get murdered to establish that the villain is a threat managed to get away safely.

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012
Don't worry, I'm sure there's more bad things coming Leon's (and Ema's) way soon. I mean, he's got a dead girlfriend he's almost certainly not over, and she's got a dead husband who basically killed himself trying to save the unsaveable. There's no way this can possibly go wrong.

Also, there's very high odds that he's a child of rape, what with the markings and all, and finding that out would play merry hell with his big weird Oedipal Madonna/whore complex.

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012
In which Zaruba helpfully points out one of the absolute most awkward aspects of being a Makai Knight.

I like Octavia. She's the kind of crazy you have to respect. Mendoza giving his underling a genuinely useful, reliable tame Horror was classy, too.

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012
I don't expect most of it to stick, but dang. That episode.

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012
GARO and Kill la Kill - two shows in which making out with a hot older woman has the exact opposite effect on the likelihood of you losing your way.

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012

Zero_Tactility posted:

Show was good. The only other Garo I've seen is the first toku series (and I was disappointed that neither of theme songs in this wowed me like Savior in the Dark), but I'm starting to really enjoy the broader concept of angry wolf armor (which I've added to my lexicon alongside "karate bug men").

I think my favorite touch visually was that the mouth on the armor only moves to snarl. It's a nice shorthand for poo poo'S GETTING REAL RIGHT ABOUT NOW.

And if it outright howls, that's the visual shorthand for oh my god run like hell.

Finale gave me serious Asura's Wrath vibes. There was something weirdly satisfying about seeing Mendoza effortlessly punk Anima like that - nice to see a mad scientist do the proper homework for his 'summon giant murderous god-beast to grant me immortality' plan. Good to see one of the Best Characters make it out alive, too.

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Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012

Alder posted:

Animation from a no-name studio which somehow manages to surpass top studios is always interesting. Unless it's DEEN and we can just all go home early instead.

I thought it going to a anime movie not a live-action one? Now I feel somewhat disappointed and not interested as much. I did like how the S2 made sense chronologically-speaking as it just didn't drop us decades into the future or some sub-plot.

Also, I want a spin-off with Alphonso and Leon going on quests now :v:

MAPPA has a rep - they're where all of Madhouse's good animators went off to, and they did animation powerhouses like Terror in Resonance and Rage of Bahamut.

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