Ranked #3513

Gall Force 1: Eternal Story

~Mr. Panda's VCR of Doom: #2~


Gall Force (likely a language perversion of "Girl Force"), details the ending stage of a great war between two races. Without going as far as spoiling certain parts of the work, Gall Force seems to be a conceptual ancestor to the 21st century work Vandread--essentially pitting an all female race of beings against a (presumably) all male species of aliens.

The story has one of the more interesting Sci-Fi twists I've seen out of the 80s. To a certain degree, you can see it coming (if you've got a good Sci-Fi imagination that is). However, it adds an interesting dynamic regardless. The main focus of the story involves a team from the female race carrying out provisions of a secret project. Really straightforward and--let's face it--dull to most people familiar with the genre. Gall Force's strength is in its presentation. The space battles are rather well done, and the artwork on environment and characters is on par with just about any anime out of the period. And again, the plot twists near the end give it extra points in my book.

It does contain a few plot holes. However, ever since Terminator came out, plot holes in Sci-Fi are acceptable. So if you're tempted to ask how an all-female species reproduces, or why if certain forces are in cahoots they don't try to stop killing eachother... Just use your imagination or ignore it.

The music (a department I generally expect little of) was surprisingly good. Music matched the scene quite well in almost all instances. This makes certain sections of the movie that might otherwise be boring easier to sit through. I wish to note specially portions where character development is lacking. This is the largest failure of Gall Force. I found it impossible to have any sympathy with anyone but the main character (well, until the later movies at least). This would often be a very large turn-off for me, but in addition to being slightly more forgiving of Sci-Fi in this matter, the other aspects make-up for it.

The first Gall Force feature really serves best as the gateway to the other parts of the Gall Force metaseries. As a stand-alone though it makes for a decent selection for Sci-Fi movie night. The first movie really is a love it or hate it kind of deal. Non-SciFi fans will probably find it hard to get into. If you do like it, pursuing the rest of the Gall Force metaseries is highly recommended on my part. Availability of Gall Force is questionable, but a brief internet search should provide you with what you need if you are not the flea market type that picks-up VHS copies of anime.

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For a start I have to paraphrase “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover”. I judged it that way all these years so I ended always postponing my visualization of Gall Force. I have to say that I regret not having watched it earlier.

-------Little Spoilers on the beginning of the story bellow----------
In the middle of a space war, our all female team on their spaceship unite themselves to run away from what looked like a lost war, by doing that, they gained some unexpected members on their crew, females of course. But they were unable to escape safely, they were pursued by their enemies, an alien race, in their attempt and that led to some confronts later on.
-------End of the Spoilers----------


Well, the premise wasn’t anything extraordinary, in fact the premise and the cover image made my interest decrease, “an all girl force fighting in some galaxy…”, in fact it was quite lame and it got me away of Gall Force all these years, but fortunately this was one of those cases when “there’s more than meets the eye”.

The characters weren’t nothing extraordinary too as I had expected, except the lead one, which we assume it is the lead, that was pretty dependable and actually developed into a great character.

The story and the plot twists that it led were the strong points of the film, perhaps some twists weren’t well explained and detailed and there were a lot of background story to be told, but the fact how the story ran away from it’s initial course and done in an interesting way leading us to a completely unexpected and pretty cool ending makes for all the flaws of the anime.
Ah, I’m a sucker to those types of endings, I loved it.

The animation was pretty nice and proper for a ’86 OVA, the music fitted well. Some characters really annoyed me, but the great lead made for it.

It’s a pretty good recommendation for a mid to late 80s sci-fi anime title. You’ll not regret it.

Rate; 7.4/10 read more