A Review of Ginga Denstsu Weed
Hello and welcome to my fourth review, let’s get started!
How much you will enjoy Ginga denstsu weed depends first and foremost on how you would feel about an anime where alomst every single character is a dog. If you can get past this or even enjoy it then I would say that you’re in for a good time.
STORY
While the story is not the same as it was in the prequel, the setup is very much the same, run around and inspire other dogs to join your pack and eventually fight the final boss and his minions. The pacing is nice, having a nice mix of inspiration scenes, fighting scenes and relaxing and often strategic scenes. This will all feel very familiar if you have watched the first season, Ginga Nagareboshi Gin. The main villian does what the vast majority of villains do, give you several reasons to hate his guts. Our main villain is ruthless and rules only with fear and violence. It’s our main protagonist, Weed son of Gin and the dogs he gather to bring the villain down and reclaim their dog paradise that was taken away from them. This being the Ou mountains and the area surrounding it in which they had lived for 14 years since they claimed it in Ginga nagareboshi gin.
It is all very nostalgic if you have watched the first season. There is one thing though that will likely turn off a lot of fans from the previous season, that is the fact that there are no bears at all. I often felt like something was missing because of it, they added something different for the story in the prequel. This should not be much of a problem if you are starting out with This season. Now, they had made a unique character unlike anything I had ever seen before. It seemed like he could have been an awesome villain, he was huge and could somewhat make up for the fact that there were no bears.
It seemed very promising, this villain had a very sad backstory and understandably went crazy all over the place killing everything in sight. Let’s just say the show left him behind and moved on. It just felt like such a waste, if not making him the main villain they could at least have done something more with him. A damn shame.
CHARACTERS: The characters are still mostly lovely just like in the original. A whole bunch of characters from the first season reappeared. It was great seeing the lot gathered on screen once again. Since it has been 14 years most of the returning characters are old, some of theses characters include Cross, Ben, Smith, Moss and Kurotora. They are all old now and most of them has children.
Just don’t get your hopes up too high for these old timers, it’s the youngsters time to shine after all. This is where Weed and some of the veterans children comes in. Like Gin was in the begining Weed is also a pup with a strong sense of justice. This justice is much stronger in Weed than it was in Gin. Weed constantly forbids his companions to kill if letting the enemy escape is an option, no matter the consiquences. It’s understandable the he despice death considering specific events. (watch the show to find out what I’m talking about). Sometimes this strong sence of justice can be very annoying seeing as it gives enemies an easy escape and we get much less blood.
Gin is still a very likeable character and it’s great to see him inspire those without hope to come fight with him. He even turn enemies over to his own side several times. I guess I also should mention that our old hero Gin mostly acts as a damsel in distress character for most of the show. He is one of the reasons Weed is fighting so hard. You also have that other character I mentioned in the story department. His name is Kaibutsu which means «monster» in japanese. Kaibutsu had been a test subject for the humans almost all of his life. He’s bigger than a horse and his strength lives up to his name. After seeing his backstory you can’t help but to feel very sorry for him. His body is in one part naked, one part looks like it has metal on it and the rest is mostly fur. Still a damn shame that they did so little with him.
Our main villain is Hougen. He also had a backstory, but it had nowhere near the same impact as Kaibutsu’s. Hougen is just a dick, simple as that. There’s no reason to like him whatsoever. He constantly kills his own guys and while he is very strong, he is also a coward. I will stick to my statement and say that it would have been a better option to go with Kaibutsu or even keep both of them.
ANIMATION: This is where the show improved from before. The designs of the dogs looks nice and stylish. Some of the old timers that reappeared had gotten redesigned, some for the better and some for the worse. Kurotora ended up with a confusing redesign. He was one of the Kai-brothers from Ginga nagareboshi gin (the blue one with the scar on his eye). This time around he is brown like his brother. I though it was his brother for half of the show. He still looks cool though. The animation itself cuts a bit too many corners, like when they leap around it often looks like they are trying to fly. Not all is bad though, the show does do this in battle at times as well, but it also has nice animation and it can look both fluid and crispy when it really wants to. Moving mouths still looks somewhat awkward like in Ginga nagareboshi gin.
The animation in the opening is nothing special, the majority of it consists of still pictures displaying different characters from the show. There is some decent animation, but like I said there is nothing notable. The ending has even less animation than the opening. Weed and a friend of his named Mel sits and watches the star pictures or constellations if you will, of other dogs popping up in the sky.
Sound: This is probably where the show succeed the most. There are a couple of happy weird sounding songs, serious songs, borderline metal songs and sad songs. Some songs contributed heavily to me tearing up a couple of times. The hard rock songs gave battles the extra spice the animation needed and it can get you really pumped. There are a few comedic moments where they used happy songs, they weren’t great, but still did their job. You also have the serious ones that are often used under difficult times. There was couple of things missing for me. One was the lack on any real standout track and the other was the lack of any eerie tracks like in the first season which were very well utilized there.
The opening sounds incredibly corny and I don’t really like it too much (it got better when I got used to it though). Corny is the perfect word, the guy singing keeps yelling «go Weed!» and stuff like that throughout the whole song. It’s like if a close friend participates in an event with you standing right next to him and then your friend starts yelling stuff like «Yay me! I’m awesome!». It sounds so corny.
The ending theme is great though! It’s a really nice and relaxing song. This is definitely a song I could listen to if I wanted to relax.
The voice acting was pretty decent. It rarely sounded bad, it really didn’t have that many standout moments either. It was more than sufficent, but could have been better. In other words, there is nothing wrong with it. I don’t actually think the show have a complete dub so sub is going to be the only option.
Overall: The show has a decent story with wasted potensial. The charaters are solid, especially if you are a fan of Ginga nagareboshi gin. The soundtrack is great with the exception of the opening and the show has a nice style and decent animation which cuts a bit too many corners. If you have watched the first season you should watch this if you haven’t already. If you are new then this will likely be an enjoyable show if you want to watch an anime that contains a bunch dogs and nice fighting with some emotional moments coupled with a very good soundtrack.
This has been my fourth review and I hope you enjoyed it.