Gungrave

i don't know exactly why but the whole series just left me unsatisfied it was sort of wooden and lacked emotional power.
 
lol @ vivisqueen and sandbar.

On the "objective" standpoint (if there could be such a thing), it's fairly good. It's difficult to fault the series, and the core story is very well done. However, personally, I found it quite dull. The story lacked a lot of emotional power for me, even though that seemed to be the focus (Deaths, betrayal, power, greed, friendship, etc, seemed to be some of the themes, yet I didn't feel much emotion from it). I kinda thought back through it near the end and found myself thinking that they did a whole lot right, but I was wondering where the entertainment was.

I think though, that the most annoying feature for me, was the shift from a realistic gritty world, to a sci-fi supernatural actionfest. It was just quite jarring, and made the anime seem so much less streamlined.
 
Yeah, the sci fi was very badly handled. I get the feeling Gungrave is scripted by a thriller writer who suddenly fancied dabbling in sci-fi. The sci-fi elements were so corny it hurt. However, I made myself ignore them and found it entertaining nonetheless.

Gungrave's 'entertainment', by the way, is the same kind of entertainment you'd get from watching GoodFellas or Scarface. It's about watching someone tumble through a particularly nasty kind of hell filled with corruption, greed, violence, and ending up in a situation where death is the only decent option. In short, it's gripping cause it's a mafia show. :/
 
well, you saw the zombies the first episode so you knew it was coming.

one big killer for me was gungraves costume, it seemed very arbitrary that the scientist would dress him up in such a ridiculous costume. lol, it really makes me lauph.

each one of the final four decided to fight gungrave alone seemed contridictory to their serous fear of gungrave... the samurai guy was understandable to take him on alone, the rest would have ganged up on him, if not, whats the point of being in a gang?
 
I agree with Viv. I thought the sci-fi aspect of the series undermined the realistic feeling of the earlier episodes. What made it an entertaining romp was the the deep characterization and slow-moving narrative of friendship, trust, and betrayal--not that it had cool action scenes where a cool guy destroys some zombies. Overall, I thought Gungrave was good, but not great. It had so much potential and the first 12 episodes or so really had my hopes up.

WARNING- spoiler below for Gungrave and Death Note
The pinnacle of the series was certainly when Harry killed Brandon-- much like Death note's pinnacle was when Light killed L. Both those scenes were amazing and could have made for great endings. Unfortunately, both shows had less than stellar conclusions.
 
VivisQueen said:
I get the feeling Gungrave is scripted by a thriller writer who suddenly fancied dabbling in sci-fi.
Click to expand...

I'd be less charitable than that. It seemed to me like it was crowbarred in for marketing purposes. OTT, cheesy Sci-Fi seems to do very well amongst anime fans.
 
I rented the game when it came out years and years ago and thought it was only worth a rental, but I remember thinking it would make a helluva fucking awesome anime. The game is really short and doesn't offer much replay value, but I still loved the art and design to it.

I barely got into the anime for the first time since playing it years ago since I found the DVDs at a garage sale I bought for $10. I'm almost done with it now. I really enjoy Seki Tomokazu as Heat/Grave. I think he captures his character very well. The (forced) Sci-Fi kind of reminds me of Skullman - except in Skullman of course, it felt it made more sense and was done better. I didn't get a feel of what point in time the anime takes place in until
You see Brandon's grave that takes place far into the future
to really justify the bizarre technology. But hey, I'm into bizarre stuff (like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure).

I really enjoy it's mix of Scarface, Ryuu Ga Gotoku/Yakuza, Godfather, Skullman, and Trigun though at times some of its elements do feel out of place, but I still managed to enjoy.
 
Whoo finished it now. Episode 2-15 went through in one day, but after that i really had to force myself to finish this.
It was like a bad action game.
With every episode a new boss, all with horrible character design. Honestly, Bob looked too lame :/
Also Mika was totally annoying and whiny.

I'll treasure this series for the first half of the series, but damn those gay zombies.
 
Episode 1:

Um. Yeah. I know everyone says that the first episode is terrible and then the show picks up hard.

Well they're kind of right; at least about this episode sucking. This episode is an incoherent mess that makes Spriggan look like a carefully multilayered and highly textured work of narrative art. It's a half-cocked Hellsing and I sorta liked Hellsing (the series haven't seen the OVA). We'll see where they're going with this.
 
My turn to encourage you. Lol. The first episode doesn't even make sense until you get towards the end of the series. That's how disconnected it'll seem. But yeah, enjoy the rest. ^_^
 
Lucky for me I already played the original Gungrave game long before seeing any part of the anime, so the first episode makes total sense to me :P Lol

Don't be surprised if I comment on comparisons to the video game it was based off while we're watching the series. :smile:
 
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