Gatchaman Crowds

Where there's trouble, we need a hero, someone who we can depend on to ensure the public's safety. Who better than Gatchaman?

Don't be fooled by just the title. Gatchaman does exist and in the near future, they are legendary heroes who stands in with the crowds to protect the public. They're not just heroes but beings with supernatural abilities that allows them to fend off threats and criminals. In any city, there's crime. Luckily, Gatchaman is there to put it to end. They're not just wannabees but people who are capable of making a difference.

Gatchaman Crowds is an anime series produced by Tatsunoko Production. It ... is actually a reboot of the original series. Directed by Kenji Nakamura (C: Control, The Big O, Tsuritama) makes its hot summer debut as one series that can be stunningly entertaining. I'm not referring to just the action or its style of execution. Rather, Gatchaman Crowds takes on the hero theme and presents it in a way that is extravagant for viewers whom are into a distinctive series of recent years.

Adapting a series based on heroes isn't entirely new to the anime industry. At the same though, it's not a hugely popular trend. In recent years, series such as Tiger & Bunny and Star Driver have followed such a pattern. In these series, characters become heroes of justice and vows to protect what they treasure. The part where Gatchaman Crowds shine though is that the main action character happens to be a girl. Usually, we are more used to seeing a guy playing the knight in shining armor. However, here we have a girl named Hajime who is infused with hyperactive energy. Instead of being a helpless girl in distress who needs a knight in shining armor, she becomes the sword the knight holds itself. With her super outgoing personality, Hajime Ichinose is the mascot as well as the girl that can make a difference. There are many times though where we see her more of a normal girl with that hyperactive personality. She is like the professor of energy because the many things he does puts viewers at awe of her attentiveness. There's is also a puzzling factor regarding the way she speaks that sometimes comes out as riddles. In a way, viewers might not 100% understand her purpose or way of what she is trying to convey. But hey, that's the fun part.

Of course, Hajime isn't the only character in the show with all the power. If that was the case, her responsibility would be greater than anyone can imagine. Luckily, she does have allies as part of the Gatchaman Crew (aka the G-Crew). These include a variety of characters including Sugane Tachibana, Joe Hibiki, O.D., Utsu-tsu, and Pai-man. Despite his rather peculiar appearance, Pai-man acts as the leader although his appearances makes him a bit weak as compared to the others. Needless to say though, he is capable of leading and is able to unify the group together to take on dangerous criminals, beings with supernatural abilities that threatens the existence of others.

Out of all the characters, we can see that there are a lot of interactions between the various members of the G-Crew. In particular, Hajime and Utsu-tsu has a peculiar relationship as they exist on almost entirely opposite of each others' personalities. Hajime is the energetic girl while Utsu-tsu is the stoic one. She often murmurs the phrase, “I'm dreamy” as if she is setting herself away from reality. However, Hajime at many times brings her closer to reality itself through their relationship.

Other characters in the show also makes prominence, in particular Rui Ninomiya, a cross-dresser with beliefs of his own. In his mind, there's a need to improve and perhaps even change the world for the better. This in a way puts him on the opposite side of Gatchaman as his beliefs leads up the suggestion that Gatchaman would be nonexistent in a world of future. In many ways, he thinks that people would not solve problems on their own but rather become overreliant on Gatchaman. At the same time, there's no doubt that Rui needs help of his own especially when confronted with a dangerous criminal.

The criminals in Gatchaman are distinctive and looks peculiar. There's no surprise that some of these designs might be familiar for those who have seen Kenji's Nakamura's other directed works such as [C]. But besides that point, one particular villain in the show is shrouded in mystery not only by the way he kills but also his way to create a new world – destruction.

Because Gatchaman Crowds is set in a futuristic world (2015), expect some high level technology to come on the screen. Perhaps the most interesting of existing technology that exists in the Gatchaman world would be the GALAX. This interesting tool is a useful piece of technology for communication especially when trouble arises and there's a need for help. And who are you going to call help for in a city of dangerous criminals? Gatchaman of course!

The show also offers plentiful chances for action. Most often, this involves Gatchaman dealing with folks causing trouble and disturbing the peace of the public. Other times though, Gatchaman stands as a symbol of hope and peace. Rui does seem to agree with this but there are many who still looks up to Gatchaman. The action itself is solid with fast pacing moment and characters performing inhuman feats. More than ever though, we can tell that Gatchaman are not just your every day average superheroes. They are packed with explosiveness beyond just those catchy transformation sequences. Additionally, the team itself consists of a group that specializes in all sorts of skills when a trouble arises.

All entertainment factors aside, Gatchaman Crowds suffers somewhat in explaining itself through their origins. There's a certain lack of degree in character backgrounds with minimal flashbacks or character exploration. Additionally, there's confusion that arises occasionally regarding the purpose of our superheroes. Most of them seems to follow a moral of doing the right thing and helping the public. Then of course there's Hajime where some people will like her or others will find her a bit annoying for taking up most of the screen time. In many episodes, she explodes with energy and cheerfulness that contradicts the dangers of what the city faces. In fact, superheroes are supposed to take their jobs seriously and Hajime rarely has a serious expression on her face. In this perspective, viewers might not take her character or involvement in the plot itself very seriously. There's also a lack of diversity in terms of the villains that might lessen viewers' interests occasionally. Finally, the conclusion of this series might give some confusion to viewers with questions that needs legitimate answers. After watching this series, I had to scratch my head quite a few times asking myself various questions.

Gatchaman Crowds crafts its character artistically with their character designs. Hajime looks like a normal girl but her transformation can be described by more than just fascinating. There are the battles with CG elements added in that could have mixed results depending on your preferences. The futuristic setting also looks consistent where viewers can tell that its technology is beyond our times. Otherwise, Pai-man's character design makes him look less menacing as compared to the rest. Also, expect some a little of 'fan service' from Utsu-utu especially when she is wearing nothing but a bikini like outfit out in the open.

The soundtrack department makes sense. The OP song "Crowds" by White Ash plays on a heroic like orchestra with rock like beats. We get to see the majority of the characters in the opening sequences as well including a prominent villain of the show. Hajime herself sings the ED song and fits her style just right. Speaking of which, I give Maaya Uchida praise of her role as Hajime. Her voice mannerism fits Hajime's character quite well as a girl made of energy. OST wise, the show also makes sense through its insert with its action scenes, comedy sequences, and some of the more emotional small talks.

If science fiction is a genre you're into, Gatchaman Crowds should no doubt be on your PTW. I'm not talking about a science fiction where aliens drops from the sky and starts an invasion against humanity. Instead, I'm talking about a science fiction with heroes like you've never seen before. Hajime is one of those characters where you may end up liking or hating her. Other superheroes in the show or rather Gatchaman can also be fun to get used to. Superhero theme shows aren't very common to make it on the screen in recent years but for this show, it definitely is more than just uncommon. It's unique. It's explosive. And it's that damn awesome.

What makes a hero ?

Kenji Nakamura, known for his iconic works like Mononoke and Tsuritama, and Tatsunoko Productions packed this and some other questions into a new original story loosely based on the old Gatchaman series way back in the 70s. The delivered product transcends that and provides a fresh story appropriate to our current timeline and technological advance. The first episode of this series could determine whether you'll be packed by the sheer amount and intensity of the conversations or irritated by the whole concept and drop it. Be sure you'll miss something if dropping, but this anime isn't made for everybody. In fact ... it's a glimpse into an impossible future, another dimension to mankind.

The story and premise look very common. A show featuring main characters who're able to transform themselves into super heroes with special suits and then fighting evil objects threatening the citizens of Tachikawa City and even the city ifself. This foundation is the only common thing, because something rather new is created on many other levels. The story starts with the selection of the main heroine Hajime as a Gatchaman. She brings up a new wind into the existing team with her extraordinary personality and different perspectives, but later more on that. Before she joined Leader Paiman and his crew, they were much more one-sided and executed every step by the rules. It seems like they never thought about what it actually means to have the responsibility of being such an entity.

After Hajime joined, the story begins to unfold and question many main aspects of society and cooperation between human beings. In this world a program called GALAX exists and it connects people from all over the city and world via internet on their smartphones. Its main use consists of helping people in need by providing support from plain citizens like you and me. At first it might seem random and fetched, but you'll have to delve into the course of action to understand the way the characters think and act. Inevitably you'll start to question those aspects, to question your way of living and to question the concept of society itself. This story brings a lot with it and one can only profit from watching as well as understanding the plot.

I'll jump right to the characters to make this more more fluid. To start right off the bat, Hajime's a really controversial protagonist. She's one of the most genki-themed characters ever made and this is one of the main reasons you'll either like or dislike her and the whole anime. There're enough people that agree that no one needs a protagonist who is happy 24/7 is a pain in the ass. The crazy thing is it still works out on the base of the story, because Hajime is not acting inconsiderate or rash, but thinks about the situation and tries to change it to the better in her own way. The insane I'll throw rainbow unicorns into your face way. Still the liking'll stand or fall depending on the light Hajime is seen in.

Every other member of the gatchaman crew possesses a unique personality to contribute to the advance and pace of the story. Especially the thoughts of the sweet pandaman leader Paiman're emphasised throughout the course. Likewise the more supporting characters like O.D. or Utsutsu share their contribution and determination to help fight the bad guys. One interesting point is the question whether those guys or things are really bad and evil. Initially those are fought, but Hajime trys to convince them of other ways of fighting. Every character undergoes his and her own development regarding the real purpose of gatchaman. Something like this is amazing on different levels.

The animation and art has a nice and clean quality and the character designs are lovely to watch. Personally I really like the hair designs, because this provides the extra eye candy and highlights of the faces. Each gatchaman battle suit has its own design and acts singular in comparison to the others. The action scenes're well animated and various passages with a calm or tense feel evoke that exact emotion. The colours're vibrant and always nice to look at. An anime worth watching on that level.

Nearly the best thing about this show's the sound, though. The OP and ED songs're iconic which makes up for a great start. My bias side says that the OST in this series's extremely awesome. A mix of opera and new vibes of dubstep merged together. How cool is that ? Always resounding at the right time and place. All along the atmosphere changes with the music and you may find yourself sympathizing with the happenings just because of the tone of the music. Along with the music, the voice acting's tremendously memorable and the actors're killing the performance. Special props to Mamoru Miyano. Nearly everyone's giving their everything to portray the characters so realistically so you would most likely get lost in this superior magnificence.

Gatchaman Crowds is an anime to love and to hate. The enjoyment is based on how much the characters are appealing to the audience and to what extent they find the story either motivating and interesting. Plenty of matters're attempted to work out. And it works. Some of these matters may remain unsolved and are left to decide for the viewer, but maybe this could be too much mystery so don't expect everything to be chewed and answered for you. Make up your mind and think for yourself. You don't have a brain for nothing. After you've finished watching you'll probably either love or hate it, or even both at the same time. Gatchaman Crowds remains memorable and clearly recognisable for the perseverance of telling this kind of a story. Even if you come to dislike it, you'll have been thinking enough to come to this conclusion. Mission achieved.

Since I recently finished this series (and the director's cut), I feel like I should explain why I loved this series as much as I did. Also, I have not seen the original Gatchaman, but the story is very different in Crowds, so you don't need to worry about watching anything before it. Now, for the review. Bird, go!

Story (8): Gatchaman Crowds is both a deconstruction and homage to the traditional "Hero saving the Earth" story. We have a group of heroes who protect the world from the shadows and have to conceal their identities. However, when a girl named Hajime joins their group, they ... begin to realize that the way they used to do things might not apply to the modern world. Technology, social issues, and even the villains have all changed. The series feels surprisingly relevant, showing us that heroes don't need to have special powers, but they just have to care about the world they live in. I like the fact that, in the end, heroes and villains are all just people. Even with the "aliens", I have to question whether or not they are just the ugly parts of ourselves, considering what Hajime says in the director's cut.

However, some people might not enjoy the lack of action for a hero series, or the relatively easy way in which certain conflicts are resolved. Either way, I think the series is worth watching for how unique it is, as an anime that questions what it means to be a "hero" in everyday life.

Art (8): The art is very colorful, which makes the character designs stand out. However, the use of CG was a bit jarring at times, but it never stayed CG long enough for me to care that much.

Sound (9): First of all, the opening and ending songs were really good, but not outstanding. For the most part, the OST was the same, good without being great. However, when the series wanted you to be pumped, it delivered. I found myself tapping my foot to the beat every time.

Character (9): I feel like the characters are where Gatchaman Crowds really shines. At first, I thought Hajime was not only weird, but not a character I would end up liking. However, I found myself drawn to her more and more as the series went on. She is a character with hidden depths, who isn't just hyperactive and weird, but thoughtful and caring. Each of the heroes changes in some way by the end, and while I liked some characters more than others, they all had decent development.

Enjoyment/Overall (9): Have you ever wondered why they don't just do a certain thing in many hero anime (Didn't they have Google? Why didn't they use their cellphone?). Gatchaman Crowds tries to tackle these issues. It prefers conflict resolution in the way of changing people themselves, instead of having the main characters power up to beat the final boss. In that way, I enjoyed the series. It was different, it was upbeat, and I liked Hajime's character a lot by the end.

Waiting for the second season...

Before you hate on me, I'd like to tell you that I actually go by the description of the rating and unlike many people, my rating system doesn't go from 7 to 10. This show is "Fair".

Gatchaman Crowds is more of a fun kind of series with bright and pretty colors to catch your eye, but otherwise it has few good traits. The story was mish-mashed though sometimes interesting, the characters were mostly shallow and unoriginal (with one of them blatantly ripped off) but made to appeal and it had a little bit of your usual humor that no longer makes me laugh put in. ... It also lacked the flash that something intending on simply being fun and amazing would have thus the series simply failed to deliver anything. The end was seriously unsatisfactory and anticlimactic.

Let's look at the art and animation first, the good part of the series. Like many others nowadays, the colors are bright and vibrant, the art is well-done and the animation is clean, smooth and up to standard. The jewels of the series are the showy Gatchaman themselves, their designs are amazing with Paiman's being especially cool in my opinion, though they are actually seldom shown off and when they are, their fight choreography is quite mediocre. The CROWDS and the MESS, both supernatural creature type of things, are weird in design and don’t look very appealing despite that the CROWDS are a very big part of the show. The human character designs are rather decent and suit their characters, I quite liked the effect of having stripes going through everyone's hair.

Next is the story, it takes several turns which can make it seem quite disconnected, but it did do a well-rounded presentation of people in general and the power of social media (shoot me for sounding like one of those boring activists). It started off like every single other shounen out there with the secret organization randomly recruiting our main character to fight bad guys, but, they spin off on a different route after the second episode, completely abandoning the original premise after the main character solving the problem the organization is trying to solve on her first outing. The MESS, the enemy they are supposed to be fighting, are completely removed from the show until the last episode where they make a random useless cameo appearance for a single scene. I don't actually mind the turn considering how generic the original plot was, but changing the focus of the story like this isn’t great for pacing. The story turns to our other main character, Rui, the crossdressing genius creator of the super-popular social networking site GALAX which promotes random acts of kindness and organises people (Though the AI that controls GALAX is extremely unrealistically powerful, I personally liked the idea of an app like GALAX), and our main villain, Katze, an alien with the motivation of having fun screwing around with people and making them destroy each other and the planet itself, a nice contrast as each tries to bring out polar opposite parts of human nature. We see a few episodes of GALAX and CROWDS, a power that the alien granted Rui, do good deeds and then it turns and focuses more on the main villain. I won’t spoil anything, but Katze causes serious havoc by manipulating people and the Gatchaman have to stop him. The story comes to an anticlimactic end as they simply rely on humanity being good and believing in humanity to solve the problems rather than any of the characters really doing anything.

The characters can be fun, but are quite shallow with unoriginal personalities and stories. Our main character, Hajime, can really get on the nerves of some people, like her or hate her, especially with her notebook fetish the moment you meet her, her jumping around as well as the typical protagonist “bad guys aren’t actually evil” moment in Episode 2, however for those who can somewhat stand her, her character becomes a bit more endearing as the series progresses when you familiarize yourself with her eccentricities and see her bright and carefree outlook on life. Another good point is that she isn’t completely stupid like her type of character usually are and the other characters end up looking up to her indomitable spirit. I cannot say I agree with a character that never shows fear and always sees the bright side of things, not even needing any sort of support, but Hajime was a fun character and even pulled off her silly poses quite well. Rui, our other main character, wasn’t too bad, he was a cross-dressing genius with no backstory, who was actually actively going out there to change the world, but the point is that he isn’t flawless despite his original outward impression, he’s naive but confident and thinks he can do things on her own, then actually fails and shows weakness, fortunately for the Gatchaman as they would’ve otherwise lost relevance. The rest of the Gatchaman or G-Team are disappointing, Sugane was there solely for contrasting with Hajime by being serious and making a fuss over her antics, Utsutsu is your fanservice character who is an emotionless loli meant to make you like her with a backstory that didn't really connect - it appeared that she felt alienated for having a special power that has no bad points and is very useful in helping people, Paiman was comedic relief and mascot who was comically put in the position of leader, Joe is a naive cool guy (think Mustang) who hopes to achieve world peace by never getting a promotion when working for the government and OD is an utter shameless rip off of Leeron from TTGL down to the make-up and hairstyle, though he is slightly more serious and less sexual. Though he is played off as being the Gatchaman's secret weapon who will destroy the world if he were to use his powers, it turns out that nothing really happens when he does and it was all talk to make things more dramatic and to keep him from instantly owning the antagonist, they simply needed a way to take care of the overpowered villain at the finale. Part of the dialogue gets somewhat annoying as OD, Hajime and the villain, Katze, speak in that happy-go-lucky tone all the time, but it really depends on your taste here.

Enjoyment-wise, the series didn’t have any impact and didn’t really have much going for it. Hajime can be sweet to those who don’t mind her, but otherwise, you may very well hate the characters. The show’s art is a big plus for it, but many shows nowadays can match that quality. Overall, Gatchaman Crowds really failed to anything amazing and is a mediocre show that can be used to kill time.

It's a strange feeling when I think that a series would've done better if it were a different genre. I've only ever felt that way about one anime, and it's this one: Gatchaman Crowds. It had a lot of good points going for it, from it's unique art to the lovable characters, but there were a few things that kept me from enjoying it to it's fullest potential. Namely, the storyline.

Right from the beginning, Gatchaman Crowds starts off on a unique foot with the eccentric main character, Hajime, obsessing over her planners. Shortly after, she meets a very tall, god like fellow who bestows ... upon her the powers of a Gatchaman: "the wings that protect the planet." It wastes no time jumping into the action after that, when Hajime witnesses her senpai Sugane fighting a "Mess". It grabbed my attention right from the start, however, the story only went downhill from there. Without revealing any spoilers, there was a plot point involving the "Mess" that made absolutely no sense whatsoever that was never explained or brought up again. The rest of the episodes had high and low points, with the last few being quite good, which is why I'm giving the story a six instead of a five.

The character designs and backdrops were cleverly done. Although the art was fairly simple, it was unique and featured vibrant colors and quickly caught my eye. I really started to appreciate the art when we saw areas like Hajime's room and the way the characters constantly changed clothing and appearance.

Along with the messy (puns are good) story, the characters are the reason why I feel that this anime would do better as an episodic action anime with slice of life moments thrown in here and there. Although in no way unique, the characters had excellent designs and were all lovable in their own ways. There are many people who said that there was no character development, but I disagree completely. By the ending, almost all the characters had their viewpoint changed in some way thanks to Hajime. My favorite parts of this anime were the simple sections where the characters were just interacting. Moments like Hajime's collage group, seeing how they acted inside their own homes, and just having them lounging around at base were all heart warming to me. I would much rather have more character interaction moments like these than watch more of the poorly executed storyline.

There isn't much to say about the OST, except for the fact that it was fantastic. The OP and ED weren't anything special, but were both catchy. What really got me was the background music during the actual episodes: a lot of fast paced, technoish beats during the action sequences really spiced up the scenes for me. "Gatchamaaaaaaan!"

From what I've seen, this anime has received mostly positive reviews with some being in the middle. In no way do I disagree with the relatively good ratings it's received. However, the meh story and quite a few boring episodes in the middle of the anime brought the score down for this show, which easily could have been an eight or even nine.

It's about time I set off and write a review for this anime.

GO BIRD!

Gatchaman Crowds is one of the rare anime this season that caught my attention not so much for what it's about, but the vibrant colors and interesting art-style, so when I began watching this, I honestly didn't know what to expect. I like to think of Gatchaman as the Mecha Power Rangers.
(Although I guess the Power Rangers did have there own giant mecha)

Story: 7/10

The story is rather simple and straight to the point, a group fights everyday for the sake of defending Earth and our faithful MC was chosen to ... be part of this group, otherwise known as Gatchaman. It doesn't really stray from the standard formula so many stories have set up, good guys come together versus a bad guy, conflicts arise, climax, solution and boom finish. I'd say what makes this different is the small twists in the setting, with the use and mix of special powers and technology, which we all use everyday, playing a large role in the overall plot. Unfortunately, there are times where you will ask yourself questions and the anime will not give you the answers to them, leaving you to research it yourself, this may be because it's only a 12 episode show, but who knows? The story does try and set itself apart, but in order to carry it over to become something great requires characters that can do so and whether they do that or not? We'll touch up on later.

Art: 8/10

So this is actually a big part of what had me begin watching it. The anime uses bright vibrant colors, the animation is smooth, you'll find the action scenes to be exciting and all mixed with a unique art-style and is really eye-catching and pretty well-done.


Sound: 8/10

The BGM used along with SFX were of great quality and matched perfectly with the scenarios whether the mood would call for something serious or even some lighthearted silliness, they managed to set the mood to just that. I especially enjoyed that they created a Gatchaman song, letting you know that our heroes were on the move whenever you heard the "Gatchamaaaannn~~" chanting in the back.


Character(s): 6/10


Here's the big one, which we've put off my judgement of the story for.

So right off the bat we're introduced to Hajime and the rest of the Gatchaman crew early on along with our main antagonist and other characters that will be with us for the majority of the show. If you're expecting depth and deep development with our characters, I'm sad to inform you that you won't see it. While there is character development it is rather small and to be honest, I don't know whether to say that the guys who developed the characters are geniuses or not because I've never been fooled like that in awhile. The characters and especially main antagonist felt strong and rather dynamic, but in the end, you'll realize that almost all the characters are actually shockingly static. In fact, most of the characters don't change and the way you see them to start off is pretty much how they'll stay. There are small attempts at getting us to learn about them through even some flashbacks, but they don't hold any real meaning aside for that moment in the episode, which was quite disappointing. Even the malicious antagonist whom I thought was a fantastic opponent, turned out to be nothing more but just what he was advertised as, with nothing deep to him. That's why I can't help but think that the creators are a genius in a way, while they're static, you may not even notice it until you reach the end.

Now before you put a stake through me, hear me out, like I said there is small character development. They do attempt to add a bit more to our characters through the MC, Hajime, but it really isn't enough to flesh out the characters and with only 12 episodes, they didn't have much time to do so. It's unfortunate, but in this case I believe that they were trying to keep the plot their primary focus with characters as a secondary.


Enjoyment: 8/10

While I did have a lot to say on the story and characters, I thoroughly enjoyed the show. The action and interactions with the characters kept me excited and it really was just a good show to kickback and watch.

Overall: 7/10

Overall, Gatchaman Crowds is far from perfect, but is actually a decent watch. The action, music and animation just blend well together and even though there are negatives to it, they can be partially overlooked just so you can have a fun time watching it although I can say that there are people who will enjoy it, but some who definitely won't so I can't say I'd recommend to anyone. If you're not too picky about characters, looking for action and a quick anime to watch then come join the party, the Earth needs your help!

Gatchaman Out!

When I first saw the title Gatchaman Crowds on a list with all the other Summer 2013 anime I didn't even think to look into it; I just assumed it was some kind of remake or remastering of the classic Gatchaman anime and moved on. Shortly after the start of the season, however, I read a blurb about it that made me a little more curious. Rather than any kind of remake, this was supposedly an entirely modern, entirely new entry in the Gatchaman franchise with an all new story and all new characters. Further more, it featured a female protagonist, a selling point for ... me when it comes to most anime. I suddenly became quite intrigued and decided I would go ahead and see what it was like. The anime I found, which hardly resembled what I think of when I think of the old Gatchaman series at all, took me by surprise, but in a good way for the most part.

I don't actually have too much experience with the Gatchaman franchise. I believe the most I ever saw were a few scattered episodes of the G-Force adaption during its syndicated run on Cartoon Network in the mid 90's. I do remember the aesthetics of it at least--the funny looking bird costumes the five heros wear and what not. As said before though, Crowds is an entirely new series so it's not like you're expected to be familiar with the ins and outs what came before. In fact, from what I can tell and what I can remember Crowds doesn't actually bear a very close resemblance to its forebears. I'm sure there are some fun nods for the fans, but this is a decidedly modern anime, CGI armor like something out of Tiger and Bunny replacing the iconic bird suits. It's very sleek, stylish and modern in aesthetic and looks pretty solid all things considered, with distinctive and well designed characters.

The production studio, Tatsunoko Production, really can be commended for a technically proficient anime. In addition to the quality art and pleasingly smooth animation, it sounds good too. The voice acting is top rate for most of the important characters, and I think the music does a good job too. The opening theme sets things off on the right foot, and while not as standout the ending theme isn't bad either.

Technical specifications aside, what of the new team of Gatchaman themselves? Well, the show has a pretty fun cast. Hajime, that female protagonist who hooked me in did so for good reason ultimately; I find her absolutely infectious. She's a ridiculous girl who brings new meaning to the word "carefree" though, and I can perhaps see some people not warming to her character quite as easily. For me, she effortlessly steals practically every scene. Sugane, the male Gatchaman who gets the most screen time, a stern and serious young man, is less immediate a character for me, though he works well as a foil for Hajime. The other Gatchaman are a cute panda-like mascot character, a ridiculously flamboyant man, a cool and nonchalant man and a distant, dreamy young girl. Development on them is subtly but effectively delivered in a way that makes you increasingly curious about each.

The plot for Gatchaman Crowds is quite unusual both in its content and delivery. From the first episode I expected a sort of simple superhero team story, Gatchaman rushing to the rescue of people in need from nefarious threats. That's really not how it unfolds though, or at least not what is at all in the focus. In fact, throughout much of the first half, all of the Gatchaman seem kind of pushed aside. The story instead chooses to focus on a hot new social networking tool called GALAX and its developer, a crossdressing boy named Rui. Extensive time is spent with Rui, who becomes one of the better developed characters in the series; more deep and interestingly defined in fact than most of the Gatchaman. With GALAX, Rui hopes to "update" the world into a utopia where people are always connected and available to rely on each other no matter the situation. However, working toward his dream came at the cost of becoming entangled with a disturbing and malevolent force of evil. It's all pretty compelling, though for a few episodes I wasn't really sure how it all was going to actually involve the Gatchaman in any real way. Recent episodes have set up a sort of power of the collective vs. power of the individual theme, however, and it's starting to sort of fall into place to a degree. It's quite the interesting story, but it's still at the point where it needs to come together at least a little more.

That probably sums together the anime as a whole actually. Watching it, it has all the elements of a truly great anime, but before it all coheres a little more together I have to say it's not quite there. Unless it just doesn't do that or it disappoints me somehow, I expect I'll ultimately change my score to a nine or perhaps even a ten. For now, I feel I have to leave it at an eight. All things considered, it's an intelligent anime that explores some clever and compelling themes, has nice art and animation and a fun cast of interesting characters. As such, I feel safe giving it a pretty solid recommendation at this moment.

Update: So, I've seen it all now, and yeah, it ultimately did find some cohesion though perhaps not quite enough. It's an awkward series, one that seems more interested in its message than its characters. The resolution ultimately feels a little incomplete, questions left lingering. The climactic moments are triumphant but somehow not as satisfying as they could be. It's kind of hard to know what to make of the series as a whole even at the end. It's very much unique in its approach to storytelling and the joyful, flamboyant, optimistic tone it maintains throughout make it an anime well worth watching. It's not a perfect anime ultimately, but it's one of the more rewarding and memorable of the recent season, which is why I decided to ultimately bump it up to a nine.

"What makes a hero?" At first glance, Gatchaman Crowds is just another shallow superhero anime where the main character beats up lots of baddies, but it's actually far from that. While there are some very nicely done combat scenes, which include 2d and 3d animation, the focus of this show is on the underlying themes. And trust me. There's a lot of them.

The first thing that has to be addressed is the music and soundtrack. Hot diggity damn. The composer of Soul Eater's and Gurren Lagann's soundtracks, godly Taku Iwasaki has created a masterpiece of songs that fall into a ton of categories. They range ... anywhere from dubstep to opera and I have to say, I'm a fan of all 21 of them. Soundtrack aside, the opening, Crowds, by White Ash, is a perfect fit for the style of Gatchaman Crowds. I still don't know what these lyrics are, by the way.

Speaking of the style: Wow. The music paired with an unconventional art style and vivid colors creates for a very unique presentation. As far as character designs go, to me they seem a little lackluster but their Gatchaman transformations definitely make up for it. I would love to see a good cosplay of one of these guys.

The story. Without spoiling things, the Gatchaman are a small, secret, superhero organization that devotes itself to protecting Earth. JJ, the leader of this group, which is presumably a god, chooses our main character Hajime Ichinose for some unknown reason to join the Gatcha team. They then to go on fighting the forces of evil as you'd expect from any superheroes, but eventually internal conflict arises from the possible downfall of the planet. While keeping many serious moments, there are also countless things that will make you laugh, especially with the little alien panda mascot, Paiman (which actually hates being associated with pandas).

Moving on, the characters won't leave you bored anytime soon. While there are several members of the Gatchaman team, Hajime is the one everything is centered on. Being a genki girl that tackles everything she can with the biggest smile on her face, she's the kind of character that you should already know whether you'll love her or hate her. Sadly, even if you think this go-get-em personality is great, these kinds of characters simply don't belong as main characters for shows with serious elements to them. Many times while watching her, you'll sit back and think: "This girl's way too positive in dire situations. No matter what happens, what she's doing isn't going to work." And then it does. Hajime's case of the "main character syndrome" of everything working out in her favor is a constant annoyance, but then again it's always great to just see someone being so cheerful. While Hajime's fighting for the powers of gatcha, Berg-Katze is on the other side, taking the role of fabulous alien villain that tears down planets for the fun of it. It's actually quite refreshing to see a nearly all powerful gay alien causing mischief as he pleases. Not to mention Mamoru Miyano, the voice of Light Yagami and Okabe Rintarou, did a nearly perfect job voicing him.

Even though Gatchaman Crowds has a girl that's bouncing off the walls and a gay alien as opposing main characters (oh, and I forgot to mention there's a cross-dressing guy as well), there are very serious issues it brings up, as I said before. The app that everyone in this setting uses, GALAX, which acts a social network that can be used to help people, is used as a catalyst for Hajime and Berg to clash heads and show the viewers the absolutely terrifying capabilities of the internet that we all have at our disposal. Gatchaman Crowds hits much closer home than most animes do, assuming you've used the internet before.

If you're looking for an anime that's simply a lot of fun, or you want to read into something deeper, Gatchaman Crowds is a great pick either way. Also there's a second season on its way sometime in 2014 which will hopefully tie up the first season's rather vague ending. Until then, Gatcha!

Gatchaman Crowds is a reinterpretation of the 70s sentai show that I'm admittedly not familiar with, but that doesn't really matter because Crowds has about as much connection with the old series as Duke Nukem Forever has to do with Duke Nukem 3D. In fact, this show is pretty much what Duke Nukem Forever should have been. Because just like 3D, the original Gatchaman is as much a product of its time as most 70s anime, and trying to air the same shit in this day and age is like slapping a sign on your product that says "you will forget my existence within two ... seconds of airing". So for all of Kenji Nakamura's fault, his decision to have the Gatchaman franchise exist in an "ironic" sense shouldn't be one of the complaints directed towards him.

The story is centered on Hajime Ichinose, a cheerful girl who is always upbeat to the point that you could set her on fire and she'll probably laugh it off whilst torturing you with optimism so painful that Boko Haram cowers in fear at the mere sight of it. Lovers of main characters who are humanly flawed will not take kindly to her, but for what it's worth, the story does a nice job of making said optimism essential to the plot, although they could have picked less annoying voices in both languages to carry that out. After a run-in with a mysterious being who gives her a special notebook, she is inducted into a team of fashion rejects who are actually superheroes that protect the innocent from mysterious beings called MESS. But rather than follow their ways, she forces everyone to go along with her way of thinking, which draws the attention of two mysterious drag-queens: a social network developer named Rui and a shadowy being named Berg Katze. The parties meet, conflicts occur, and so on and so forth.

What keeps Crowds from turning into full-on Mary Sue fanfiction like a fair amount of this show's detractors have claimed is that Hajime's actions are ultimately a small part of what the show is actually about: the evolution of networking. She's the driving force behind most of the actions true, but you're not really supposed to agree with her actions so much as you're supposed to consider the ideas behind the results, even if it can come off as pretty one-sided. Said method of storytelling only works if the actual ideas are worthy of consideration, but considering that you need to actually use the Internet to watch Crowds pre-Bluray release, I don't see how you wouldn't have an interest.

Not that said interest is enough to really make a product good. You need to actually do something with said interest other than dangle it front of your audience like they're a dog tied to a tree with the leash superglued around their neck. And that's where the whole superhero thing comes into play. Without really saying it, Hajime pretty much agrees with me in that the Gatchaman formula is outdated in today's technological-ridden world and that sticking to said formula is basically dooming yourself to repetition until people get tired of you. They need to depend on more current trends that are constantly being updated, and if they do that, they might even end up finding a peaceful solution regarding their enemies. I'm not going to list examples because this isn't the article for that, but let's just say that I respect alternative methods to fighting as long as it leads to somewhere interesting.

Having said all that praise, I have to turn face here and admit that I don't actually like Gatchaman Crowds, and considering its colorful aesthetics, dynamic direction, and thought-pondering issues, that's a pretty harsh judgment for me to give. See, the thing with Crowds is that whilst it produced a unique combination of two seemingly unrelated elements, it fails to really elevate them much beyond their basic core principles.

In addition to not really bringing up the downside regarding technological evolution and all that, it doesn't really say anything about technological evolution other than the fact that it exists, which is about as helpful to me as a bird feather jammed into my asshole. Nothing it says about online socialization is something anyone with basic knowledge of the field wouldn't know, and whilst it's kind of cute to see a fictional person deal with trolls by flat-out ignoring them, it's little more than a mirror of what you should know how to do rather than a shocking discovery worthy of a $50,000 grant. And for all I said about how the technology side of things breathes life into the superhero genre, in the end, the story basically comes down to the good guys fighting the bad guys except with a huge crowd participating, which not only has been done before (Digimon: War Games and Summer Wars anyone?), but if you change "networking" to "wishes", you'd get the ending to the Paper Mario games.

There's a subplot in the anime regarding how superheroes deal with the public after their identities are exposed, but like the technology side of things, it's too one-sided to be really effective and isn't grounded into reality enough to make up for that. Nobody really suffers any negative repercussions aside from Paiman getting treated like a teddy bear at the center of a tug-of-war between kids, and at the end of the day, Hajime is always right and the public will support them no matter what. Everything else is too minor to really matter, and whilst Berg Katze is a flamboyantly cool guy, I have no idea what the fuck he contributes to the story apart from being the anime successor to Oogie Boogie.

But it's not just shallowly explored themes that are this show's problem. It's a mess in terms of production as well. I dunno what happened behind-the-scenes, but dedicating half of your penultimate episodes to recap how awesome Hajime is is a bad move, no matter how you look at it. The animation can drop in quality at the most awkward of times and the final episode was rushed to the point that an entire conflict had to be cut and can only be seen in the Director's Cut, which isn't even available on Sentai's release. Or at least I assume so, because I downloaded the dubbed files and Episode 13 was sub-only. I could check to make sure, but I'm just too much of a lazy bastard to do so. Whatever the case, hopefully the sequel is treated with more care, although considering the studio is Tatsunoko, I wouldn't hold my breath too much.

In the end, Gatchaman Crowds' main failing is that for all its supposed ambitions, it focuses too much on the present and not enough on the possible future and what we get is pretty much the same old thing wrapped in new packing paper. Even when you compare it to something like Kaiba, which also had great ideas mixed in with a typical overall story that kind of ended badly, it just falls short. It had the right idea, especially in regards to taking an old franchise in a new direction. But I don't praise ideas. I praise results; especially when they result in me getting paid in money and blow.

In all honesty, I loved this anime; I really did. I would anticipate a new episode throughout the week while it was on and I would have gone to say it was one of the best anime I have ever watched.

So all I can say after watching all of the episodes is, "What happened?"

STORY - (4): The story was great . . . until the last episode that is. The studio did a really good job building up the tension and the excitement and kept my interest locked. It dropped out foreshadowing on the eventual outcome at little increments and it really added ... to the mystery and the suspense. The only problem was that they compressed the climax and resolution together into a mediocre ending. Everything was rushed at the end, therefore most of the story telling elements that made the series so great lost all meaning and impact.

ART - (8): I'm not an artist, so I could never really justify my scores. But overall, the art was cheerful and matched the tone of the anime really well. It wasn't anything revolutionary but it was one of the reasons that drew me into the anime in the first place.

SOUND - (10): The sound direction was outstanding in my opinion. Every track matched the scenes that they were in and enhanced the story telling elements. Mostly composed of electronic and upbeat tracks, the anime does a great job creating emotion in the viewers. Even though I am not a fan of electronic music, the genre really does fit everything in the anime.

CHARACTER - (9): The greatest strength of this anime was in its characters and their development. It focuses on the concept of what makes a hero. All of the characters revolve around the central, flat character, Hajime Ichinose. The other members of the Gatchaman Team are round characters that benefit from Hajime. Throughout the episodes, each member who are crushed by the pressure of being a hero changes for the better due to the calm and carefree Hajime. Each character starts from a different fault but ends up with the realization that Heroes are flawed as well and there is no reason to be stuck in those flaws.

Gatchaman Crowds never had a progressive decline for me as a viewer. However the single vertical drop to the concrete floor created by the last episode really made me disappointed.

OVERALL - (5): Some may argue that the anime is still amazing despite the ending, but the ending is what ties everything together. Without an ending, no anime would be worth watching. As for Gatchaman Crowds, all of the excitement and the build up became worthless because the ending was presented in such a terrible way. The main factor that depreciates an otherwise fantastic anime is that they rushed the ending. They could have changed this flaw by simply drawing the anime out for just two episodes. Two episodes going into detail showing off the build up and suspense that the studio has created would have made this an all time favorite anime for me. But they just bunched a few incoherent scenes together and passed it for an ending. Its like waiting all year for Christmas as a child and realizing that Santa Clause doesn't exist. It was fun while it lasted but it just all came crashing down.

In its hurry to do everything differently, it does almost nothing well.

Gatchaman Crowds is a horribly jumbled show. It's a Sentai, but also chooses to dismiss the concept of them. It praises human society in one scene then demonizes it the next. When it's all over, nothing really remains as a theme or meaning.

For what it's worth, the first two or so episodes were fairly good, and despite the steep decline in quality as it went on, it was always at least watchable. But after an incredibly underwhelming finale, and the pointlessness I mentioned above, Gatchaman Crowds is going to remain a very annoying series ... to me for quite a while.

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The story, as set up initially, is a regular Sentai plot. Bizarrely though, the opponents, the MESS, are retired almost immediately. Their non-threat is barely even addressed later, and the Gatchamen are left wandering aimlessly for most of the first half. The subplot takes precedence here, but that's its own can of worms, as I'll get to below. This in itself is annoying enough, but what's worse is that the new plot, the CROWDS, come barreling in with little to no connection. It feels almost like 2 different seasons jammed together and compacted to fit. I don't think this requires much explanation for why this doesn't work.

Next are the characters, and I'm going to have to use "that" term. Hajime Ichinose, the protagonist, is a Mary Sue, by practically any definition. If it's a terrible idea, it turns out it was actually a good one when she does it. If a character doesn't like her, their arc will be realising they should. I can't even say it's saved by her personality, since she's unbearable. The rest of the Gatchamen are much more interesting, but only in so far as for their stories to still revolve around Hajime, of course. I can't say I'm particularly drawn to any of them, but Joe, Paiman and O.D. have some decent moments on their own.

As for the antagonists, Rui is somewhat interesting for the bulk of the show, namely when they don't interact with Hajime. When they meet, a lot of the intrigue Rui had dissipates. Berg Katze, the final villain, isn't much better. Though they have an incredibly over-the-top performance, that really works actually, there's practically no story to them. It's alluded to briefly, but nothing comes of it. The side characters aren't too bad though, and I'd direct towards Prime Minister Suguyama and Kouichi Umeda, who are both neat in their sparse scenes.

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On the technical front, Gatchaman Crowds is a tad above average. The art and animation isn't too spectacular, but there are good designs amongst the characters, both in and out of their Henshin. The music is equally good, with the OP and main Insert being very memorable. The OP sequence itself is nice, and I do appreciate it updating as more and more Henshin are revealed, though this backfires on the final episode by revealing a form that hasn't yet shown up in the series, lessening the impact somewhat. The artstyle is a little bit different, but not too noticeable on most of the characters.

The set design, particularly at the Gatchaman Headquarters, is quite bizarre, and doesn't really land. While colourful and full of intricate details, these are never used in an interesting manner and come off as pointless. The MESS designs are great, the CROWDS are passable and the show does manage to hold a reasonable tone throughout, even through the falling quality.

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I normally try to give my thoughts on improvement, but Gatchaman Crowds would require a serious overhaul. The main character, opponents, story and themes would have to be altered into unrecognisability, by which point Gatchaman Crowds loses its identity, one of the few things it had going for it.

Altogether, Gatchaman Crowds was really disappointing, and if it had begun as bad as it ended I'd have walked away. I may still check the Director's Cut of the final episode, but I probably won't venture into the sequel until I've forgotten the series almost completely.

I have to be honest with how surprised I am with the insightful depth that Gatchaman Crowds offered up with its premise. While appearing to be a loose take and spinoff of the 70s costumed hero series, Gatchaman Crowds' plot revolves around aspects of communication, mainly involving social networking as the series takes place in a near-future setting where a social networking craze called GALAX is popular among the masses and an alien threat exploits GALAX for his own heinous goals. The series explores both the positive and negative aspects of social networking as it highlights how it can benefit the public at large and ... how said system can be abused for one's personal gains. There are parallels between our female lead Hajime and the alien antagonist Katse as both have similar energetic personalities yet go for the opposite sides that social networking can bring about with Hajime using it to befriend others and the alien exploiting it to manipulate the masses into growing hateful and murderous towards one another, being the deadly equivalent of a network troll.

For a female lead, Hajime's character type subverts the typical elements of the "genki gal" character archetype as she is surprisingly perceptive of the various situations that occur throughout the series and understanding the flaws of the Gatchaman team's modus operandi and their characters. Her character's modus operandi revolves around trying to get others to understand differing points of view instead of resorting to confrontation, which drive much of the character changes and plot advancements that take place throughout the series and make a great fit for Crowd's focus on exploring social networking and communication. These aspects to Hajime's character help to balance out and tone down on the more obnoxious elements to the genki gal archetype that are portrayed in other anime titles.

While the plot to Gatchaman Crowds is surprisingly engaging and well developed, its characterization is a mixed bag. While Hajime and the enemy threat have engaging personalities, the other characters are not as engaging in personality as they mostly fall under the typical archetypes found of their characters and are not as memorable of a presence in the series. In addition, elements of the Gatchaman group are also left unexplored as we never get to learn of the group's origins and what role that the so-called leader JJ has to fulfill for the group as he seems to contribute little for the team.

Also depending on how you viewed the series, you may find the ending to Gatchaman Crowds a bit sloppy as the TV airing was notable in cutting out 12 minutes of animated footage for its final episode because it was too long to fit for its timeslot, mainly for what was the second half of the televised episode. A "director's cut" version of the second half for episode 12 was released to video that restores the lost animated footage and helps to tie up ends that the televised airing never had a chance to explore in its finale. Unfortunately, Sentai Filmworks, the American licensor for Crowds, never picked up rights to the director's cut version to episode 12 as the rights for it apparently belong to a different Japanese media company. This is one of those rare cases where you would be better off hunting down a fansub if you want to see the extended take on episode 12's second half.

Visually, Gatchaman Crowds sports a bright-colored avant-garde animation style that give the scenery and characters a sketchbook-like appearance that allowed it to stick out from most anime offerings from 2013. CG animation is used in the rendering of the Gatchaman costumes, some aliens and computer-generated monsters that make for the animated highlight of the series when they move about and engage in combat with one another. The soundtrack to the series is also memorable with energetic and catchy techno/ rock scores that are really addictive to listen to and do very well in complimenting the carefree, engaging developments offered with its plot.

While some of its elements are flawed, Gatchaman Crowds is still a surprisingly engaging title with some relevant things to say on the pros and cons of social networking and having an engaging lead hero and villain in the form of Hajime and Katse. While associated with the Gatchaman franchise very loosely, Crowds offers enough with its premise to have its own identity and be accessible to fans unfamiliar with the nearly 40 year old anime franchise.

Well in order to prepare for Insight I recently did a rewatch of this series, so hopefully the information I provide in this review will be fresh on my mind and ready for action. Honestly I enjoyed this series a lot, so I'm going to be a bit harsh on it to avoid a bias. I've never seen any other media of Gatchaman, so I hope that will bring a more sincere review. Please take these numbers in stride and think about what they mean, instead of just being numbers out of 10.

Story: 7; good
The synopsis brought a lot of other series to mind, like ... World Trigger or something akin to it, but when I watched GatchaCrowds, I got something completely different. The synopsis is messy and complicated, much like the series itself. While Gatcha offers a story that is wholesome and unforgettable, its somewhat rushed ending and insignificant beginning bring its grade down. It's the middle that truly makes this show a fun ride, so putting aside what happened before and after, I truly enjoyed Gatcha's plot.
Basically, Hajime Ichinose learns she's to be part of a team of superheroes called Gatchaman who fight aliens that harm earthlings. However, the initial enemy, the MESS, are abandoned a third of the way through the series to make room for the new antagonist, an evil alien by the name of Berg Katze. Some see this as messy writing, but I think of it more as, simply, the enemy changing, and because of Hajime, the Gatchacrew was able to see a far more dangerous enemy to earth than the MESS.

Art: 8; very good
The art in GatchaCrowds is unique, with the coloring very vibrant and the atmosphere very fitting to the mood of each scene. The happier scenes had many pinks and yellows, while the calmer, more serene scenes had neutral tan tones, and the rare darker scenes were, well, dark. The show's art is really fitting to its mixed-up and crazy plot, so I had to give it a high score. What brought Gatcha's art down were the distance models and the frequent times when the proportions were just awkward and the face structures were laughable. The animation was pretty good overall, with expected CG to fit in with the robot scenes. Overall, my only complaint is the awkward distance models.

Sound: 10; outstanding
Not a lot to say here. I found the opening unskippable, with its catchy song and incredible visuals. The OST was outstanding, and I found myself humming 'Gatchamaaaan.... Gatchamaaaaaaann...." while making dinner or scrolling on the internet. The OST really sticks with you. The voice actors are also great, and I think that they couldn't have sounded more into their roles. They all seemed realistic and ready to provide the proper emotion to each scene.

Character: 7; good
In the second to last episode, the first 15 minutes or so are spent reminiscing on each character's opinion of Hajime and how she has changed their lives. Honestly, this was a good move, because while Hajime and a few select characters got a lot of screentime and development, some of the other characters were forgettable and really had little impact on the plot. But I won't be too harsh with this because it WAS only 12 episodes, and the development that the more important characters got was phenomenal.
About the protagonist, Hajime is a very deep character. She is incredibly optimistic and energetic, and from the beginning, the audience is almost inclined to dislike her. But as you get to know her, you find she has layers of personality, and sure she's always optimistic, but she is in no way obnoxious or naive.
As for the antagonist, it is a very interesting fellow. Berg Katze is an alien who seeks to destroy earth, of course, but its psychology and mindset is really fascinating. As Hajime puts it, "Katze-san is having fun, and when someone is having fun, they don't want to stop." Katze has fun doing what it does to earthlings. You don't often see a show go so in-depth with an antagonist, so I was very pleased with how much screentime and thought it got.

Enjoyment: 8; very good
Like I said before, I really enjoyed Gatchaman Crowds. It had a charm to it that I really liked and Hajime's unrelenting optimism brightened up my days. It has its flaws and its merits, just like every other anime, but in the end, I'd say it's definitely worth watching. Every episode flies by and you're left wanting more, even at the last episode. Should you watch Gatchaman Crowds? If you're able to follow a somewhat complicated story and enjoy the first two episodes, I'd say go for it. In addition, if you have seen the original Gatchaman series, I implore you to ignore the fact that this shares its name and think of it as a different series. They are completely different shows that happen to have the same name. If you abandon your previous bias, you will enjoy Gatchaman Crowds a lot more, I promise.

Beginnings are important. They set the tone for the experience and color the audience's feelings on a work. If done successfully, a medium series can seem better than it is and vice versa. As important as they are, can these first impressions be trumped by the series itself? Most of the time, I'd say 'not really' but Gatchaman Crowds is a glowing exception to that rule. Here we go! (Bird, go!)

Story 7/10

The story of Crowds starts off like the beginning of a lot of super hero shows: a random passerby gets thrown into a conflict that they know almost nothing about and are expected to ... help their allies triumph over evil (in this case, aliens).The protagonist in this case is Hajime, a quirky girl would loves her stationary. Faster than you can transform into a superpowered hero of justice, Hajime is recruited for the secret group known as the Gatchaman. Despite her enthusiasm, though, her allies are not particularly thrilled to have her around and poor Sugane is chosen to be her guide in all things Gatcha!

While this may be a show about heroes, the way the topic is approached isn't through the Saturday Morning Villain of the Week formula. Instead, the story primarily kicks action to the side and focuses on the rest of Tachikawa city as they enjoy a new social media app called Galax. With this app, people from across the city can meet up, do community service, seek counseling advice, the whole nine yards. Its like Facebook only it contributes to society (I'm kidding, don't hurt me...)! Part of the charm of the show is investigating just how important Galax is to these people's lives and how technology and online communication can shape a society. Needless to say, Galax is a defining feature of the series.

Sadly, in investigating this new app, the story has an extremely slow start as the characters are more or less goofing off the first quarter of the series. Now, looking back, there actually was some value to Sugane and Hajime's running around school to save everyone from drinking spoiled milk, but at the time, I was a bit...well, unimpressed. It was during this time that the comedy was falling flat, there was no real action to speak of and a villain wasn't even introduced. It takes Crowds a long time to set up. I can't say the first four episodes are skippable, but the show certainly had pacing issues.

That being said, once episode five kicks off, the entertainment value of the series is like rolling down a snow covered hill that's getting more and more vertical, snowballing at a rapid clip. Characters begin to get fleshed out. Action becomes more frequent. Galax is more significant and complex. Heroes and their place in society begin to pop up in intense conversations. A crazy villain also appears. Finally, stuff is happening and soon you just can't get enough...until episode 12.

The final episode was like an emergency brake on the momentum. Obviously, spoilers aren't welcome in this review, but I'll just say this: loose ends galore. Its evident that the ending was rushed, to the point where you just don't even know anymore. If there was some exposition, it wouldn't seem as bad, but no such thing exists in the episode. A poor ending indeed.

Animation 8/10

The series has a very interesting, very vibrant art direction. It uses differing colors for hair style and what looks like paper cutout figures for Galax avatars. The designs for the Crowds is also otherworldly, lending to almost psychotropic imagery. Characters designs are fresh, albeit some of them are gender-questionable. Opinions regarding these designs, however, are a matter of personal taste (I personally found nothing wrong with them). Animations as a whole are solid and the opening/ending looks good as well. There are some occasionally dips in quality, usually when Pai-man is on screen, but such dips are very few. Overall, a unique art direction and solid animation are present throughout the series.

Sound 8/10

Another good category, the music in Crowds is pretty nicely balanced. The opening and ending are preppy and catchy and the voice acting is very good. Hajime can sound annoying at first, but as her character grows on you, her voice does too. O.D and Katze have...distinct voices that were unsettling at first, but once again, it because of their unorthodox characters.They aren't cons to sound quality, just unexpected surprises of the show. The voice actors for these characters appropriate. On the BGM front, there are some tunes that match the world perfectly and the OST anything but generic. While its not really the kind of OST that I would listen to on my free time, I couldn't help but sing along when a track (I don't know its name) would say "GATCHA-MAN!".

Characters 7/10
The protagonist, Hajime, starts of as a weird subset of the the ditzy female archetype but her positive, quirky perspective toward life and her enthusiasm for community service makes her a different kind of bird then her more genre grounded counterparts of others series. As O.D says about 3/4s of the series, she's the "sun" of the Gatchaman. She may seem like an idiot, but she asks good questions about the nature of heroes, such as why can't heroes reveal their identities or work with law enforcement. While she starts off extremely annoying, she grows on the viewers.

Other characters seem like stereotypes for the first half the series, but later come into their own as the story continues. While some don't break out their tropes entirely, the main cast does indeed develop. Characters like Rui especially are challenged by their ideals and the ideals of others, allowing their own internal struggles to shine. The villain, while freaky in his own right, seems really Joker-esque and does not have much to define himself from similar villains. He does, however, have an interesting relationship with the protagonist, as they talk to each other like playmates. Their exchanges, while not tense, are entertaining at least. The characters, in a nutshell, are late bloomers.

Enjoyment 7/10

Gatchaman Crowds starts off at a slug pace. It's characters seemed uninteresting, the art direction was weird and it's fundamentals of action and comedy were lacking. However, giving it some time will enable to the series to grow as the world becomes more fleshed out. Characters grow, action intensifies and it just seems keep exanding. Needless to the say, the latter parts of the series are better.

It doesn't reinvent the hero genre, but it's fit to be a solid entry on any fan's Anime List. With a unique art style, nice presentation and a good story to tell, this anime makes a nice attempt at sticking out from the Crowd.

[Adapted From Original Blog Post]

I usually don't review anime I've recently watched. This is because in my experience, my opinion on certain anime seem to change drastically over time. I don't want to give an opinion on a show, then have to do a redux review because I now think the show is a 7/10 instead of a 8/10. I remember a time when I thought Sword Art Online was decent, though that brings back painful memories of myself which I don't want to elaborate on. I recall when I thought Kara no Kyoukai wasn't that great; I guess I was stupid or something back ... then. There was even a time where I hated Fate/Zero, something that couldn't be further than my thoughts on it currently. But with all that said, today I'll be reviewing Gatchaman Crowds, an anime I only finished watching about two days ago. The reason for this is that I think I know exactly what I think of this show right now, I want to get these thoughts out before they vanish. And if this review comes back to bite me in the future, well, I just take that when it comes. Now let's get started.

Hello people of "The Wired", my name is Quan, I hope you're doing fantastic, and today I'll be giving my opinion on the funky and eccentric anime known as Gatchaman Crowds, an experience I can't even summarize in one sentence, because it almost needs to be seen to be believed. Because trust me, you're going to be thinking: "did that really just happen?", half the time when you're watching this show. Quick answer, yes, yes it did.

Gatchaman Crowds is a 12 episode anime that aired last year in July of 2013, a rather awesome season in hindsight which brought us other fantastic shows like The World God Only Knows: Goddesses, Monogatari Second Season, the Kara no Kyoukai epilogue film: Mirai Fukuin, Hayao Miyazaki's last film: The Wind Rises, and last and least the slightly depressing story of an introverted girl that was Watemote. 'Crowds'(which is what I'll refer the show as from now on) was brought to us by Tatsunoko Production, an anime company I had literally never heard of until I watched this show. Looking over their list of anime they've created though, there's little wonder why now. Tatsunoko seems like one of those animation studios that have helped everyone else besides themselves. Former Tatsunoko employees have formed animation studios such as J.C Staff(Toradora! Golden Time) and Production I.G(Psycho-Pass, Guilty Crown), but the studio itself hasn't done much of anything worthy of note recently at all, and not only this, but the number of material they've produced over the years has diminished, which is a shame, because I would like to see tons more anime done in "Crowds''s unique art style(more on that later). The anime was written by the one and only Toshiya Oono, and was directed by Kenji Nakamura, a guy who seems to have done this show and very little else, much like almost everyone else who was involved with the series. I mean he was the episode director of The Big O. So that's something...I guess. OK, we're finally through with the technical "mumbojombo", "So", you may ask, "what exactly is Gatchaman Crowds about?" Well that might be the hardest part.

At its core though, 'Crowds' is about Hajime Ichinose, an eccentric and extremely cheerful 11th grader living in Tachikawa City, the "second metropolis" of Toyko and the areas that surround it. One day she has an encounter with a mysterious man about 9 or so feet tall, who promptly reaches out and pulls her soul out of her body, in the form of a device called a NOTE. He then informs her that she is now a "Gatchaman", a sort of superhero/power ranger/thingy, who must protect the citizens of Tachikawa City and the planet from hostile aliens known as MESS. Taking this pretty much completely in stride, Hajime quickly meets up with a fellow Gatchaman named Sagane Tachibana, who takes her to the Gatchaman headquarters to meet the rest of the Gatchaman, which look like someone took a bizarre skate-park, threw random colors into the bullets of a mini-gun and opened fired.

However, Hajime's oblivious and optimistic viewpoint of pretty much everything causes both tension and amusement for her new teammates, especially considering her blatant disregard for typical Gatchaman rules and ideals, such as never revealing yourself as a Gatchaman to the public, which she nearly does on more then one occasion. In between trying to make friends with the Gatchaman's enemies the MESS, Hajime meets the other Gatchaman, who include the panda alien leader Pai-Pai, the gloomy and enigmatic Utsutsu, the cold-hearted Joe-san, and the chipper care-taker of the team: O.D. As the Gatchaman attempt to handle Hajime's eccentricities however, a dark new opponent may be causing the real problems from the shadows.

Meanwhile, a new app named GALAX has enthralled the citizens of Tachikawa City. On GALAX people can do pretty much whatever they want, from social networking, to even disaster prevention. The person behind the show is revealed to be Rui Ninomiya, an older teenager who manages all of GALAX with the help of the strange power known as "Crowds" who he bestows on those he deems worthy. He intends to use the new hit app to realize his well-intentioned yet idealistic goals of an "updated" world, but he quickly becomes aware that his actions and the power of "Crowds" could have consequences, consequences that could spell chaos for Tachikawa City, Japan, and perhaps even the world.

So, if you couldn't tell, the plot is far from the best thing about this show. The concept of a person being suddenly thrust into a super-hero team to fight humanities enemies isn't exactly something overwhelming with creativity, but 'Crowds' doesn't exactly go the direction you would think. It's not a typical, MESS fight of the week formula you would expect, in fact, I found the direction quite unpredictable after the anime throws a certain plot-point two or three episodes, and while it didn't quite throw plot-twists and the such at you very often, I thought the story evolved quite nicely from the beginning into something that I didn't really expect by the end. But the growth itself is annoyingly gradual, and the anime takes a long time to actually set everything up until the plot can kick itself into overdrive. These first few episodes of set-up could be slow to some, because you really don't have much besides characters talking to each-other and getting into wacky adventures to save the milk supply(no seriously), and whatever intrigue you had with the interesting cast of characters starts to fade when you learn that the anime has no intention of developing any of them. It's not boring by any means, it's just that the anime seems to lack any sort of objective. When, the plot does gets going, while it isn't anything amazing, I really enjoyed watching the final episodes play out, because if nothing else, I think it's extremely entertaining.

Any real meat in the show can be found in the themes in portrays throughout. It asks questions like: "what is a hero?", "what does it mean to change the world?", "and is it worth having heroes?", the kind of things I haven't seen presented in an anime since Fate/Zero. I found these themes extremely interesting to ponder throughout the anime, and they mostly carried the show when the plot was lacking. What I really love though is how the show presents these themes; instead of using them to tell a dark and gritty story, it throws 80's pop music and funky colors at them, to form an experience that I can't really explain in anime terms. If any of you have played the game Japanese offbeat RPG "Earthbound" though, I think I can draw a comparison. In the same way that Earthbound hides its mature themes behind wacky humor, 'Crowds' takes themes that could easily be warped into something dark and adds a spice of fun to it all. And that's almost a way to describe the show as a whole: an eccentric thrill-ride reminiscent of old Power Rangers episodes, that has wonderfully bizarre characters and a animation style like someone dumped waterfalls of random color of everything, but once you start to look a little deeper and actually think about what is happening, you realize it's a lot more intelligent then it first appears. I don't know...I guess I just think that's really cool, the way the show toys around with darker things, but never forgets it just wants us to be having fun. In that regard, I think the show has succeeded.

Going to be honest here, the characters aren't the best aspic of the show. While all of them are relatively original, and their designs are absolutely amazing, but the questions that are raised when you meet them aren't exactly answered by the end of the show. It kind of feels like sort of a waste to be honest, when you have characters as cool and potentially complex as these, but they never really become anything more than their initial introduction leads on. Not they never could be awesome, especially when you consider that Gatchaman Crowds will be getting a second season at some point; there's still plenty of unanswered questions about the characters, especially our main character Hajime. Speaking about her, let's get on with the individual descriptions.

Hajime Ichinose is our offbeat protagonist, and pretty much a headache for all her new Gatchaman teammates. Hajime is optimistic to a fault, willing to see the good in everybody, even her MESS enemies, and this trait makes her a natural at making friends, even among Tachikawa city's most prestigious people. Going to be honest(I like that term don't I?), when I first met Hajime, I thought she was really, really annoying, but over time, I began to appreciate her as she constantly acted as a friend and a moral booster for everyone around her. And quite like the show in a way, she might be more than she appears under that cheerful demeanor. Nothing is ever explored in that regard, but the anime does hint at it, in very small ways, and I'm looking forward to that being possibly a highlight in the second season.

Sugane Tachibana acts as a stark contrast to Hajime, he diligently obeys and upholds the rules, and never is quick to trust unless he has a satisfactory reason to. As you can imagine, when he is assigned as Hajime's mentor for all things "Gatcha", he becomes quickly exasperated at her care-free nature and lack of caring when she does something against his wishes. For the first part of the show, they mostly have an oil-and-water relationship, but slowly and surely, Hajime's optimism begins to rub off greatly on Sugane, as well as the rest of the Gatchaman, but that's almost another problem in itself. What little development the characters get is initiated by Hajime's personality, but our main character herself really doesn't get any back-story, even though that back-story looks like it could potentially be very interesting.

This last character I'll talk about is Rui, and he's probably the most interesting and developed of the cast. Being introduced into episode 3, Rui is a genesis programmer who created GALAX and whose motivations about why he created the social application and what he intends to do with it are slowly revealed as the anime progresses. I found his ideals and intentions very interesting for the most part, and once they start to potentially turn against him by the end of the series, we get a very good look at his character.
The rest of the cast are relatively interesting if not complex. O.D gets a rather good character moment near the end of the series, and Utsutsu and Pai-Pai do get predictable but decent development, but once you look past that, they are all one-dimensional, which is kind of a shame for a show this crazy. We do get a kind of cool villain named Berg Katze later on in the series, but even he's just a deranged alien who basically just wants to see the world explode. Not exactly original stuff there anime. At least these characters are entertaining to watch, which is really important if no development is on hand. It might be because the anime is only 12 episodes long, but if they can spare an episode to detail saving a school from milk poisoning(yeah, I'm still hung up on that), they can have time to explain why O.D's Gatchaman could destroy the world, or why does Pai-Pai hiccups bubbles when he gets scared? Seriously what's up with that?

The animation for this show is far from typical. I don't know what Tatsunoko was drinking the day they animated this thing, but it must have been full of caffeine and sugary drinks, because the show looks just so cool, and unique as well. OK, admittedly, when nothing much is happening, the animation is just decent, Tachikawa City is brought to life fairly well, with fair colors and efficient lighting, expect for people's hair, which for some reason always was a streak of another color in, and that's kind of weird. Not sure why that's there. However when anything supernatural or Gatchaman related starts happening, the animation gets really wacky. The Gatchaman suits themselves are always really awesome to look at, so there's a certain thrill when a new suit is revealed, and the rainbow colors circulate in the background like there's a rave party happening. Also colors become extremely nonsensical and surreal, as you've already seen with the CAGE, so it adds a little more style to the fight scenes and paranormal happenings of the show. It might take a little getting used to when you first start watching the anime, but I think you'll come to appreciate it as I did, when the funky look of the show correlates with the fun and strange characters, and the music starts starts yelling out: "GATCHAMAAAAAAN!!!!" Speaking of which...

The soundtrack of 'Crowds' is one that's typical with a few awesome standouts. In the usual manner of the show, all of the music is either extremely strange or so varied that you can hardly believe it's all part of the soundtrack. I mean you've got a gentle French song with a name I can't pronounce, "Pandaman" which sounds almost Chinese, and a song like "Tutu", which I can't even begin to explain. While none of it is particularity great, it's a very interesting soundtrack to listen to at the very least, what with all the different kinds of music that is has cooking. That is, with the exception of two songs, songs which solidify 'Crowds''s OST as one of my new favorites. The first of these songs is the OP: "Crowds" by WHITE ASH, and I must say, it's just fantastic. It combines the best of the show's wacky and awesome art style with a song so different and cooler than most OP's that I can't help but love it. The second song is the one titled "In the name of Love", and plays every time Hajime or some other member of the team transforms into a Gatchaman. And once you've listened to this song multiple times during the show, I will give you a medal if you don't have "GATCHAMAAAAAAN!" stuck in your head till the end of time once you finish the anime. It's so cheesy yet awesome at the same time, and I just love it to death.

So when all is said and done, I think I can safely say I really liked Gatchaman Crowds. It's certainly not a show for everyone, its eccentric nature and strange art-style might be off-putting to some people, but if you want a little break from the norm, there's no reason not to give it a try. It just has a way of capturing you with its charm, what with the 80's pop music and Hajime's face always having smile on it as she delivers some kind of motivational speech to her teammates or knits them yarn frogs as presents. And hey, if you give it a try and find it too cheesy and stupid, try looking a little deeper into it, it might just surprise you. With that though, I must bring this review to an end, bid you all goodbye, and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day; I need to go spell-check this review and such. See you later.

Final Verdict: 7/10

P.S: Is she gloomy or dreamy?


For this review and others, feel free to check out my blog! (Link on profile)

Don't waste your time watching this. Those of you who do no drop shows once you start them will regret going through 12 episodes of this. This show might be ok for people who don't usually watch anime because the show is very cliched and heavy handed with no subtlety.

The plot with regard to why these characters have been assembled is actually not so bad. It's a collection of mostly high school kids given powers to protect Earth/mankind from a kind of pixelated aliens. Not original but not offensive either, somewhat believable.

The major problem has to do with the stupid characters. First, the protagonist ... is air-headed and maniacally cheerful. I'm not kidding you; she does that anime thing where they pause for a moment, tilt their head, close their eyes, and smile real big to win your heart every other scene it seems like. It's disgusting. By the second episode after receiving her power, instead of capturing/defeating the enemy like she was instructed, she smiles and laughs and uses the power of friendship to make things better. Does it work? Of course it does, which implies that the method of force that the group has been using might have been wrong. Go put on your seatbelts and wait to watch the main character preach (so many monologues) and display the power of friendship and crazy cheerfulness. It sounded so fun that I had to drop this shit cause everything is so predictable. If she were a real person, she is definitely someone who needs to receive several bitchslaps to get her back down to Earth.

Other problems include the horrendous soundtrack that plays whenever the characters transform into power rangers. The protagonist and her senpai (these 2 you see the most) mouths also are drawn to open really wide so when they talk it looks like they are shouting. Anime vets will know what I mean.

Bird Go!
Gatchman crowds is basically a re-imagination of an older TV series known by a similar name: Gatchaman. This show tells the story of a group of heroes united under one goal: Stopping all evil. Pretty simple right. Taking the more light-hearted shounen like path in story telling; the plot unfolds from the perspective of our main heroine Ichinose Hajime, a fun and quirky character who has just become a gatchaman, one of the legendary and supposedly mythical heroes who protects the world. However as her own character conflicts with the normal identity of secrecy that is being a gatchaman, she soon reveals to the ... world the truth that has been kept secret for so long, the existence of gatchaman. And it is with this that our story and hers begins.
Characters: 7
Character Development: 6
Don't expect much in the character department, yeah sure the characters are fun and will make you smile, they also do a good job tying the world together; however there is no real character development seeing as how this show is one of those where friendship is a non-spoken of kind of magic that can power up characters.
Plot: 8
Pacing: 8
Interesting plot idea, some plot holes, but nothing that will take you out of the experience. While watching this show I suggest that you turn of for the most part the analytical part of your mind, because while the idea of creating a utopia is a very intricate theme, it is not a topic that can be easily done well if the show isn't serious enough, a criteria that this show doesn't fulfill. Ignoring those small faults, the show is still well spread out and I never really found myself thinking that a part of the show was out of place or pointless, so in that regard the show did a good job with its pacing.
Sound: 8
Art: 7
Fun music and a fitting art style. Not to mention the gatchaman theme that plays all the time is the best thing ever.
Enjoyment: 7
While I may be giving this show a rather low score do not let this make you think I disliked the show, in reality it was a fun and enjoyable experience, while I have yet to finish the second season I am still looking forward to seeing it as the original content was super silly and simple fun. I highly recommend watching this show if you are low on things to watch, or are just in the mood for good old fashion super hero action.
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Final Verdict: 73/100

Gatchaman Crowds is a show that tackles the boundary between anarchy and freedom of people through a superhero theme. The show plays with "great power comes great responsibility" theme.

The show tackles the theme with average people obtaining supernatural powers, being able to remotely commit crimes or assist people in need. The real conflict begins once large number of people, who are willing to abuse this power, obtains it.

This reveals the nature of anonymity and the people's behaviour. Bergkatse is a representation of malice within internet community, being hostile and negative, impersonating others, while actively destroying other people's livelihood for entertainment.

The concept itself was fine, ... but representation of these idea through superheroes seemed weak, as their role seemed less significant as time went on, eventually ending the final conflict with the power of the people.

In terms of art direction, it had very simplistic art with a vibrant colours and damn I love me some colours. 3D art of the superhero suits were interesting and distinctive.

Tatsunoko could have had taken the theme into digital world to make all the internet references, however given its experimental nature, I think they were more worried about viewer count as Gatchaman Crowds is only in name Gatchaman and nothing like its predecessors.

As a disclaimer, I am biased as trump when it comes to superhero content.
Should you recommend Gatchaman Crowds?: Potentially, if they dislike internet community for being toxic

*Disclaimer: This is a review of the original 12 episodes of the first season

Gatchaman Crowds was a series that I had my eye on, and was planning to watch, but managed to fly under my radar. This was partially because of a bunch of other shows that came up that caught my attention, and the fact that the series had gotten some mixed reviews. But, I finally got around to watching it. There aren’t a lot of super hero anime series’, and I was really interested in the direction that Gatchaman Crowds would take. Is this something noteworthy, or are the negative reviews more accurate ... than people want to admit?

Story:

Gatchaman Crowds’ story takes place in modern day Japan in the city of Tachikawa. Unbeknownst to the general public, their city has been invaded by a mysterious alien species known as MESS. In order to combat this invasion, and to protect world from all other alien attacks, several individual were given a NOTE, which granted them superhuman abilities. These individuals are known as Gatchaman.

Unfortunately, the most disappointing thing about Gatchaman Crowds is its story. It starts off decently enough if you can tolerate the main character, which I’ll get to later. It’s not that the story had a lot of problems, it’s just that the problems that it had are pretty significant. The first issue with the story is that there are several things that aren’t completely explained. The story will just present you with some things, and you pretty much just have to accept it because you won’t be getting an explanation. The only other major issue I have with the story is its ending, because I made absolutely no sense. After I finished watching it the first thing I thought was, “Did I miss something?” I honestly thought that the reason I didn’t get it was because I just didn’t notice something, but I was wrong, the explanation just wasn’t there. I can’t say what exactly happens, not only because it’s a spoiler, but because I had to look up what actually happened because the event took place off screen in the anime. Which when you consider how significant of an event it was, is pretty ridiculous. And speaking of significant events, there is another thing that happens at the end of the series that no one even acknowledges. It’s a pretty big deal, and the characters just act like never happened.

The rest of the story is pretty good. It’s interesting; with a cool villain and some really cool concepts. The story flowed pretty well up to episode 11 where they decided to through in a mini-recap episode in the middle of the final battle. While it did provide us with some insight into what the characters were thinking, the first twelve minutes of episode 11 was essentially filler. I wished they would’ve used that time to explain what exactly happened off screen during the ending, instead of reminding us of things that already happened. Overall the story, while enjoyable, could’ve been so much better.

Animation:

This series boast some truly unique animation that I really enjoyed. The characters are distinct, and the background scenery is also done really well. The animation also features some really nice CGI, that works really well with the colorful art style. The fights scenes in this series are also animated well, and are fun to watch.

While I liked the animation style for the most part, there were times where I thought the characters looked a little funny.

Characters:

The series stars several characters, O.D, Paiman, Utsu-tsu, Joe Hibiki, Rui Ninomiya, Sugane Tachibana, and our main character, Hajime Ichinose. The main problem I had with the characters, especially in the beginning, was Hajime. While I did start liking her more as the series progressed, at first I couldn’t stand her. She was just annoying. From what I’ve heard, she tends to be a deciding factor in whether or not many people enjoy this series, and I understand why. As for the other characters, they are all likeable, but some definitely get more development over the course of the series than others. We really aren’t given a lot of background information on any of the characters. Which is a shame because, from what little information was given to us, I’d be interested in learning more about the characters. It was entertaining to see how they developed as a team throughout the series, especially considering the fact that they don’t exactly start off on a high note.

I also have to mention the main villain in the series, Berg-Katze. He is an odd character, but he is a great villain who made every scene that he was in fun to watch.

Sound:

Gatchaman Crowds has a very good sound track (OST). The OST is varied, and has songs that can fit the tone of every scene and moment in the series. The thing I like most about the OST is the fusion of different sounds. The OST features songs from different genre’s, like electronic, dub-step, and even some orchestral music that has a more epic and classic feel. It has an interesting way of combining these genres of music to make some good songs. The best example of this is when the OST combines all three of aforementioned genres, and even adds in some opera vocals, which are also used in other songs in the OST. It might sound like an odd mix, but it actually comes together really well. But the OST isn’t all fast-paced and upbeat, it does have plenty of songs to fit the more somber moments as well. Even though there are definitely songs that are a lot better than others, overall Gatchaman Crowds’ OST was excellent.

Enjoyment:

Until about the last five minutes, I really enjoyed watching Gatchaman Crowds. I haven’t seen an anime super hero series in a while, and this was an interesting take the genre, even if it wasn’t incredibly well executed.

Verdict & Breakdown:

Story: 3.1/5

Animation: 4.2/5

Characters: 3.2/5

Sound: 4.3/5

Enjoyment: 3.9/5

Verdict: 3.7/5

While Gatchaman Crowds isn’t anything spectacular, it’s definitely an enjoyable series, and I’m definitely planning on watching the second season.

I'll try to be as short as possible, because this show has a lot of stuff i had something to say, good or bad.

Let's start clarifying one small but important detail: this show is a reboot from the Gatchaman franchise, a mythical anime classic most modern fans, including me, haven't seen. Despite that, i don't recomend this reimagination to the classic Gatchaman's fans to check it out. Kenji Nakamura, the director, used the reboot as an opportunity to share his opinions about social media and the current japanese situation.

I won't lie, the idea and his development on the show is really interesting, and ... i don't mind it offers a more positive point of view about how technology influence our lives, a subject is usually portrayed in a more grimdark and pessimistic way, about how dangerous it could be. And i like that kind of stories about how humanity must be responsible. Is something we see in fiction over and over since Frankenstein, and anime it's not inmune to this. Look at Serial Experiments Lain, Fantastic Children or Giant Robo. But i don't mind a more optimistic portrayal.

But how this show portrays politics is just...wrong. We see a japanese prime minester that didn't give a fuck about his country, and we're supposed to sympathise with him when he read people expressing their dislikes? Okay, by the end, he learns the lessonand decide to listen more to his people. But i'm still pissed off about how this show seems to say: People shouldn't complain when the goverment do something wrong, specially if they don't vote. So, in dictadorships, people shouldn't complain because no one votes the goverment. Great message, Nakamura, you denied oppresed people their rights.

I know i just sounded pissed off, and probably it wasn't Nakamura intention to say this. Sometimes, unfortunate implications are not intentional, and they didn't mean to harm anybody. So, let's see what Nakamura really means. The story reminds more to Death Note than Gatchaman. A brillaint boy gets a power by a supernatural being that allows him to change the world. There are important details that made the show differents: Riu is not as morally despicable as Light, and Berg Katseis not just a simple bystander like Ryuk was.

The Gatchaman in this story are important, but not as important they should be. The main character, Hajime Ichinose, is a Mary Sue: always cheerful, everybody, ven the villain, likes her, is chosen by no spparent reason and she became inmediately important in all her teamworks' life, is portrayed as someone that can do no wrong...Also, she's pretty bland, and the voice actress made an awful work, sounding really annoying. Really annoying.
And that's a problem. Half the main cast made their characters sound annoying. Mamoru Miyano has oone of his worst works in this show playing a saddistic, campy gay villain. And Jou Hibiki is a failure as a character in every aspect: is not badass, is not cool, is not sympathetic, and most fangirls ignore him. And he's supposed to be the closest character to the original show, but more complex. It didn't successed.

The other half of the cast is better written, and has more depth. Special mention to Rui, the real series' protagonist, and Utsusu, an example as how you should writte a kuudere character. Started apathetic, but as the series progress, you became more attached to her, while we see how she actually is and feels.

Art is the strongest point in every Nakamura's work, and this show is no exception. The visuals are astonishing, despite some generic character design. The music has some really outstanding instrumental tracks, but the OP and ED are mediocre.

Interesting idea, badly directed voice acting, awesome visuals, is all this show has to offer. Don't watch if you're a classic Gatchaman's fan.