Gude Crest: The Emblem of Gude

sothis Dec 21, 2004

4

StoryThe entire premise of Gude Crest revolves around just that -- the Gude Crest. Our two heroines Efera and Jiliora received this crest while escaping a slave ship and/or attempting to save a young boy who perishes. He hands them the crest, and they set off to return it -- and the story begins. Unfortunately, as if that was unexciting enough, it just goes downhill from there. The girls end up running into a cult-like group who communicate with a being known as the Supreme Mother, and end up trying to save two royal twins (and rightful heirs of the crest) and the entire continent from evil itself! Wow... how stimulating. Seriously folks, it's generic fantasy by all means. Maybe not completely Record of Lodoss War type fantasy, but still textbook as far as how generic it seems. There is nothing more than remotely interesting throughout the entire 45 minutes, and is rounded out by poorly developed characters and terrible pacing. I lost interest several times throughout the 45 minutes, and took two days just to finish it! By the end I didn't care at all about what happened, which was convenient considering nothing substantial happened anyways. The ending was rushed, and overall, the story sucked in general. Wow, I am such a beacon of positivity today! I deserve some sort of medal. AnimationVisually, Gude Crest is nothing spectacular in any way. In fact, some scenes are incredibly ridiculous looking, such as two moons overlapping that look completely flat and appear to have been animated in 5 seconds or less. Colors were darker, character designs looked fairly generic fantasy style, and there were no good special effects worth mentioning. Granted, for the time period this was made in, I suppose the animation would be considered "ok" at best, hence the average score. I found the cheesy bits to be far more noticable than the decent ones, by far. SoundThe audio was totally forgettable and boring. Generic fantasy synthy tunes were piped into your ears during most scenes, and fit the tone, but didn't stand out at all. Voice acting seemed fine for everyone involved, but all in all, extremely generic audio all around. CharactersThe characters were most of the problem with Gude Crest, by far. We are introduced to quite a few of them, but know little about any. Efera and Jiliora are the two main characters, and we know almost nothing about either except that they are fairly masculine and ass kicking. The main bad guys are just bad guys, with no depth or character, and we really can't empathize with the good guys, since we don't even really feel like the bad guys are bad for any good reason! I felt nothing throughout the OVA towards ANY character, good or bad. The concept of the Supreme Mother was thin and uninteresting, even when she was revealed. Relations between characters were shallow at best, and uninspired. All in all, very weak character interactions and development, which didn't help coupled with the poor plot. OverallWatch Gude Crest if you are looking for a generic and quick fantasy watch, but really, that should be the only reason. There was nothing about the story that warrants a special viewing, nothing about the animation that screams "WOW, THIS ROCKS" and really, nothing about average at all that I can think of. Rare hunters, this would be a good thing for you to check out. Fantasy lovers, this might be worth a watch if you have run out of anything else to view. Otherwise, perhaps not a good choice of something to watch on a rainy day.

bunda6662 Sep 6, 2022

6

This is not bad by any means, just full of problems. The OVA feels like two average anime episodes glued together, which is not bad if you are watching the complete series but, in this case, there is no complete series to watch, just this single OVA. I don't want to be dishonest to the readers so I will add that I think the idea behind this ova was to animate an arc from the manga or a original plot using the universe as a base (I can't say for sure cause I have not read the manga). In either case, the viewer will definitely enjoy this much more if he read the manga before (cause, like I said, this is not bad), at least that is what I feel like. The story is very simple, not interesting and not really enough to grab your attention. The plot makes it feel like you should be familiar with some things before instead before. The pace is good and things flow nicely. The animation is average anime series episode tier with some parts here and there better animated than the rest. The character design and overall look is very good and definitely the high point. The characters are likeable but not much of them is explained. All in all I would recommend this only if you read the manga first otherwise you might be disappointed in what could have been a very fun OVA.