Ranked #7968

Kyoshin Gorg

Giant Gorg is a great adventure of an anime. It's the kind of anime you watch gleefully over a bowl of cereal on a Sunday morning, still in pyjamas. The kind we will treasure in future years, reminisce fondly over, as an absolute pleasure if perhaps a slightly guilty one. It's childish yes, but it is a romp. You can bash transformers all you want, but for me I enjoyed it at the time. You will say this of Giant Gorg before long.

The story of Giant Gorg is slightly hard to pin down, and the sole reason for that is because our adventures are so varied yet as such a fast pace. Significant plot advances happen each episode. You know the term 'slow anime'? Perhaps a slice of life, or a romcom maybe? This is the exact opposite.

Our atomic cast of characters in Giant Gorg are shown within the first few episodes. We have our Hero, Yu, whose father has just died (ah, "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose"). We have Doctor Wave, his newly appointed carer. We have Wave's sister Doris, love interest. We have their dog Argos. We have initial antagonists; Rod Balboa part of evil mega corporation GAIL, and we have Lady Lynx and her mercenaries, she holds a grudge against GAIL. We also have the Captain, a strong man character who is a friend of Doctor Wave.

The seed of the plot is the premise of Austral Island. A 'lost' island that is now re-emerging from the sea after thousands of years. There is a secret to Austral island that everyone wants to get, that will manage to engage our cast, and additional new players, from the get go. And boy is it a ride. While the plot is fairly simple and is not the most angsty or philosophical of mecha anime, the contextual worth of the series is wonderful. It's a brilliant criticism of cold war era politics, represents strong anti-corporation sentiment popular at the time, has stereotypes of the time that are hilarious, and is just outright good old fun. I watched this over weeks, not because it was boring, but because it was so fun I didn't want to watch it too fast.

The art is very good for the time. The animation is absolutely solid, which is quite a surprise. They must have had a fairly high budget to keep such consistent quality. The character design is done by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, an unsung hero of the animation industry. He is the man who directed Arion and Venus Wars; two other films with excellent production values like Giant Gorg. The character design is excellent. You may also recognise his work from various Gundam series. The other artwork of Giant Gorg is, well ok, it attempts a kind of Metropolis-like architectural design complexity that adds little to the anime. The environments of our astral island are decent; one does wonder how such growth has occurred in such short time.

The sound does its job. I mean, I can't ask more of it then it does. It is atmospheric at points, mostly it leads us rhythmically to the next piece of action. The sound effects are very varied and quite adequate. The voice acting is interesting. Each character is quite a stereotype, and the voice acting reflects this. However, the performances are taken seriously and are squeezed for their worth. There's probably one or two voices in Giant Gorg you will hate, and probably a couple more you will absolutely love. Ham-acting it may be in part, but it's a guilty pleasure that at some points I remember a quote of Captain's or Yu's for instance.

Overall Gorg is simply just a great big ball of joy. It's really fun to watch. It may be corny, but that's something I can deal with sometimes. Our characters may be stereotypes; but resultingly there is a connection and appreciation for each and more so for particulars. The actual construction of the narrative is also very clever, and how it manages to entertain me so much is a feat to be much appreciated. It's a wonderful series.

A note, Giant Gorg as of yet has only 6 of its 26 episodes subtitled in English. Bro-Lord is currently working on releasing more episodes subbed as I write, so hopefully you can watch in English soon. read more