Kurogane no Linebarrels

"An anime whose overall excitement level can be mathematically modeled by the Gaussian distribution function."

As with many other GONZO production, Kurogane no Linebarrels is loosely based on its manga original. Readers from the manga will find the anime not exactly following the story and in some cases the anime is loaded with fan servicing fillers. Please note that this review will judge Kurogane no Linebarrels solely as seen from the anime perspective.

GONZO started the series with a very rare approach, to bastardize the main protagonist (aka Hayase). Countless people turned away from the show after the first few episodes simply because of how much everyone ... hated Hayase. I strongly advise viewer to not get irritated by the early episodes and push forward as the show will get infinitely better starting around episode 4. In fact, the Gaussian distribution curve is a very fitting description for this anime. Average beginning, average ending. I had very high hope in this show around the midway point but sadly the intensity did not carry over to the end. As a long time mecha anime fan (with particular interest in super robots), I find the concept to the story (more on that below) fairly “fresh” thus I was hoping for some serious story development. Unfortunately I set my expectations too high.

The basic concept of the story was actually quite interesting. A teenage boy trying to be the "hero of justice" by piloting a mecha (known as Linebarrel) from another dimension. Viewers were informed in the beginning of the story that a universe/dimension exist in parallel to our own. While that dimension obviously differs from ours in virtually everything, we do share some common ground. The background theory of how the alternate dimension may be formed after the Big Bang was briefly discussed along the way. The story then proceeds to talk about the typical terrorist-taking-over-the-world stuff, leading to some heart-breaking betrayal and thus the climax to the story.

"WARNING, weird looking characters alert! This is not a false alarm. I repeat, this is not a false alarm!" Don't know if Hisashi Hirai (the character designer for Heroic Age, Infinite Ryvius, Mobile Suit Gundam Seed/Destiny, and Soukyuu no Fafner) hit his head or what, but I had a higher expectation from him. The faces of the main characters look like they have been put on TV from a sketch book! They look perfectly fine in magazines or any galleries you may come across, they are just horrible in the animation.

Many viewers also complained about the CG battle animations, especially the first few battles in the series. While personally I have nothing against CG animations (I am actually glad to see something different for a change once a while), this also seem to be another fatal blow to Kurogane no Linebarrels. But with all that being said, the actual animation quality and scene to scene transitions are acceptable. So hopefully viewers can eventually get accustomed to the weird looking faces and CG battles and be able to enjoy the anime.

Perhaps one of the obstacles the viewers have to get accustoms to is the OP by ALI PROJECT. Frankly, after learning that ALI PROJECT is responsible for the OP I decided to skip the OP whenever possible. However, the two ending themes by Maaya Sakamoto are worth your time (hell and heaven when compared to the OP).

If you are familiar with seiyu (as most otaku do), you may want some info as to who is the CV for who. Yuichi Nakamura (Tomoya in Clannad, Alto in Macross Frontier) is voicing Moritsugu which I find very different from his past roles. Hayase is voiced by Tetsuya Kakihara (Simon in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann). The lovely Kizaki is voiced by the also lovely Mamiko Noto (Kotomi in Clannad, Hecate in Shakugan no Shana). There are many other award winning BIG names including Jun Fukuyama, Rie Kugimiya, Aya Hirano, and many many more.

The most noticeable character development without a doubt is Hayase's view of the "hero of justice". He matured overtime seeing how real world battles are fought and what he truly needs to protect and fight against (a very big change from the little punk he started out acting as). Unfortunately, after he “upgraded” his view of the justice system midway through the series, we see little to no change in his character thereafter. A lot of viewers have probably forgotten Yajima half way through the show, but his impression on me was extremely important and he played an irreplaceable role throughout the first half of the anime. Many mysteries were answered slowly overtime concerning certain characters’ past and why he/she end up being who they are in the show. Among many other things, Kizaki’s lost memory, and Ishigami’s past with Katou were the most interesting. Character relationship-wise, Kurogane no Linebarrels could have done some more work for the supporting casts. Many characters left hanging at the end with no satisfactory conclusion. Taken as a whole, the character department is definitely one of the weaker areas of the anime.

While I agree there were many changes to the manga, it did not bother me much throughout the course of the show. After all, this show is about parallel dimensions, so why don’t we just treat the events in the anime and in the manga separately (perhaps treat them as they are in two different universes?). Lastly, I have to point out that GONZO must have enjoyed producing Strike Witches a lot. The production crews end up incorporating quite a bit of fan service in a mecha series and that could be disturbing to some viewers.

Alright, this anime finished recently, and I have to say I actually was anticipating for the last episode.

In brief I'll just say, I was on the verge of rage-quitting this anime after the first 3 episodes - and if it wasn't because I started late (so that I didn't have to wait in between weeks) I probably would have dropped this anime.

This is why I gave character the lowest scores, because the main character really annoyed me at first.

But despite that, I pulled through and the anime really is good.
I'm not a Mecha-anime fan, other than Full Metal Panic! I normally don't watch Mecha-anime (I ... haven't seen one episode of Gundam before). So despite that, it really was good and kept me looking forward to each week.

Although it's not GONZO's best work, the story was well done, and the art was brilliant - especially on High Resolution!

Loved the use of the music in key points.

So overall, it's definitely something to watch I reckon :)

Just fight the first 3 episodes!

Need a demonstration of the power a main character wields over a series? Watch Linebarrels. Kouichi is a vicious, self-absorbed prick with delusions of grandeur and nary a whit of empathy, and his very presence makes the first four episodes of the series nearly unwatchable. There is a train-wreck fascination to watching a series with such an utterly vile lead, and there's no denying that the poisoning of Kouichi's mind by constant humiliation and the consequent brutality of his reaction to empowerment ring a lot truer than happier takes on the same material do. But so repulsive is he that the series is intolerable so ... long as he holds sway. Not even the show's knowledge of exactly when to kick him in the balls can change that.

Only when Kouichi himself changes, thanks to a vicious little plot twist, does the series get sufferable. Unfortunately it also loses its spine, giving itself over completely to soggy harem comedy and unelaborated us vs. them warfare. Excruciating as they were, the episodes where Kouichi rampaged his hateful way across the screen had ambition and a sort of unpleasant magnetism. With Kouichi sanitized, the series becomes nothing more than another fan-service-laden save-the-Earth mecha bore. It gains a sense of humor, albeit one dependent on tentacle monsters and "oops I saw *insert name here* naked" snafus, and dabbles amusingly in romance, but it's still a snoozeful letdown. Not that the show had much in the way of options. The choice between a series that's an object lesson in the need for a sympathetic lead and a series made flaccid by an ambition vacuum is truly a rock-and-hard-place kind of choice. And even if you wish the series had chosen the rock, if only because it has character, you can't really blame it for settling on the hard place.

If relative effort is anything to go by, Linebarrels' animators weren't enamored of either option. Hisashi Hirai's typically precise character designs are sloppy and poorly differentiated throughout, Gonzo's 2D animation is even more careless than usual, breasts balloon and shrink, faces fluctuate drunkenly, and after episode one action sequences are slapped together with little concern for comprehensibility. After a small post-debut dip Gonzo's trademark 3D mecha remain consistently sharp and fluid (if not particularly pretty) and the exploding stuff is sufficiently neat, as are the urban settings, but that's as far as the animators' enthusiasm goes, regardless of which stage—boring or painful—the series is in.

Musically it fares little better, though its auditory woes owe more to messy eclecticism than to a lack of artistic engagement. Some musical snippets are good (generally when Kouichi is thumping something) but many are bad, layering on dopey 50s sci-fi noodling, ill-considered techno, and ascending strings that are intended to communicate mecha coolness but sound instead like musical escapees from a Murder She Wrote climax. The opening by the Ali Project, like everything in their unique oeuvre, grows on you, and Maaya Sakamoto's closer is so easy on the ears that it may go right through them without imprinting the gray matter in between.

Through a combination of scenes mildly mussed in translation and Josh Grelle's well-meaning rounding of Kouichi's more abrasive edges, Funimation's dub manages to soften the opening episodes, bringing them more in line with the duller, easier to swallow later ones. Lost in translation is the passive-aggressive disdain in Kouichi's exchanges with Yajima, along with much of his self-satisfied grandiosity and self-pitying petulance. Which makes his rampages much easier to watch, but also throws the tone of the opening act slightly off and weakens the contrast between pre- and post-episode-four Kouichi. Other characters have similar shifts in personality, but being non-essential have less impact on the series. The comic episodes for their part are played fast and loose (just the way I like 'em) and Barry Yandell's boisterous take on Kouichi's unhinged boss is great fun, but the dub still leaves less of an impression than the original—Grelle's excellent wigging out notwithstanding.

Amidst the usual extras detritus (clean OP/ED, trailers, promos) is a commentary track for episode six featuring ADR Director Caitlin Glass, Grelle, and Alexis Tipton (Emi), all of whom get along boisterously well. Fun and info abound, though some will bristle at the comparison of Linebarrels to the infinitely superior Godannar. (Grr).

Messy, ugly and mercurial, the potential for sudden change is never far from Linebarrels' surface. In a series that is only interesting when it is impossibly unpleasant, that potential is one of the few things to inspire hope. Hope that the next corner it whips around leads to greener, or at least less painful and more challenging, pastures; and hope that we'll be able to hold on until they're reached.

Linebarrels of Iron is an ongoing Japanese manga series created by Eiichi Shimizu and Tomohiro Shimoguchi.
The series has graphics as seen in Maross frontier,combo of 2D and 3D which i love. Intro song "Kitei no Tsurugi" is done by by the Japanese band Ali Project. I'm a huge fan of this series! Story is mature and a bit naughty. If you like mecha this is a must see!!!!!!!!
Plot:
The Linebarrels of Iron story takes place in a fictional alternate future, centering around a junior-high school student named Kouichi Hayase, who escaped his daily life of being bullied as a child by daydreaming about being a ... hero. His life was forever changed during a class trip in the year 2016 when an artificial satellite fell from orbit. Due to this "accident", Kouichi was left in a coma for half a year, and upon awakening, found himself with strange powers, including superhuman strength. Then, in 2019, a mysterious robot called "Linebarrel" appears before him. It is revealed that the accident from three years ago was not caused by a satellite, but rather by the Machina robot Linebarrel, and that this turned him into a "Factor", which is the name given to Machina pilots. This leads him to encounter Emi Kizaki, a mysterious amnesiac girl whose unknown past seems to be related to Linebarrel. He joins her in fighting for JUDA, the world's largest medical equipment maker, which happens to secretly own several other Machina robots.

I am not a very big mecha fan, but I have found some mecha to be great. Kurogane No Linebarrels is one of those great mecha anime.

The mecha are extremely well drawn and the fighting scenes are amazing. I would have given the art a 9, but I gave a 8 because the characters do not always look good. The characters seem to be very flat when drawn from the front.

The story line of Kurogane no Linebarrels is excellent. You never expect the outcome and certain events. It comes as a schock when something occurs, just like in Code Geass.

To make the series even more ... enjoyable, some episodes move away from the mecha aspect a bit, and focus on the main character and the girls that like him. Who will he choose in the end? But for now saving the world from the dangerous Kato-Kitan is the most important.

Character development in this anime is great, it is visible from the beginning as each character grows in the series.

This anime will keep you glued to your screen as it sucks you in with it's great story line and fighting scenes. Every episode after the introduction phase will leave you shocked and wanting to know what is going to happen next.

One thing is for sure, every little detail in the story line has an impact in the end.

Definitely a much watch, for mecha and non-mecha fans.

I would have to say that this anime was one of my favorites. I wasn’t a fan of mecha animes before, but after watching this I soon became a fan of mecha animes.
The fight scenes are really drawn out and the character designs are pretty good and bad since I didn’t like some of the character designs of some of the characters.
The plot was well written and the addition of twists was a plus. It was pretty well done but some of the characters are plain out ANNOYING. But instead of focusing on these “ANNOYING” characters, you should ... just watch this anime because it was just a good anime.
Some may agree and disagree with this review, but overall I give this anime a 8 because it was good yet it wasn’t that amazing.

Hope this review was usefull to all you anime watchers :) !

What appealed to me the most was the fact this picked on boy who by mishap, get amazing powers does not instantly start being a big hero and using his power for good. I guess I am just a fan of realism even in science fiction anime, but honestly he behaved realistically in my opinion and it was a nice change.

The story line for me was all about the growth of this character, how you take a picked on powerless middle school boy and slowly turn him to a mature yet fun savior of the world who accepts the burden of carrying all the ... lives depending on him on his shoulders.

I normally hate when the main character is leagues ahead of everyone else, sort of a goku effect. But for this show and what they were trying to do it works pretty well. The show can get very goofy and anti-climactic at times but the show pokes fun at its self when it does this.

I really enjoyed it all the way to the end and have told many of my friends to pick it up.

Linebarrels of Iron was something I was really looking forward to.
It, sadly doesn't meet these expectations. But overall, I enjoyed the show for what it's worth.

Story/Characters

The story starts off with the main character (Kouichi Hayase) being smashed by a giant mecha named "Linebarrel." He is brought back to life with super human abilities (Super strength, speed, etc.) by the power of Linebarrel called "D-Soil." With the mecha and new found abilities, he also finds a girl inside the robot named Emi Kizaki.
Linebarrel is in a special rank of mecha (called Armas) called Machinas. (C wut day did thar? Deus Ex Machina/god out of the machine). ... Hayase and Emi then join up with a top secret organization, masked on the outside as "JUDA," who also have Machinas. JUDA's main goal is to take down the Katou Organization, an evil organization with mechas as well.

Meh, the main problem with the story is that it doesn't actually pick up until half way through the show.

What they "try" to do with the show is fuse a harem with a mecha show which doesn't work very well.
Whenever the show would bring in these filler episodes it just seems to drag on, and I would just be watching for the hopes of a mecha battle to show up. So the harem parts are not done very well, and are only there to provide unnecessary fan service. As for the mecha portion of the show, this is the main meat of the show and is the best part. The story at this point is also filled with a few plot twists that actually caught me off guard at points. The ending though....Uggg the ending...So generic...

As for the characters, they are also well done in my opinion. You're pretty much bond to find someone you like and most of them developed nicely. Not much to say besides that.

Presentation

The music in the show is pretty good and fits nicely. The animation is also decent with the best part about the show being the mechas. At first, I hated how the mechas were animated using CGI. But over time, I found myself enjoying it, mainly because of how well they stick out. The mechs themselves are also nice and fairly unique. The main point I hated about the presentation was the fan service.
It just got a little to random and unneeded at points. Cheesus, I'm watching a mecha anime for the mechas, not for the girls’ panties.
All in all, the presentation was nice.

Overall

Overall, I'd say this is worth a look into. Not the best mecha I've seen, but most certainly not the worst. The story (after the half way mark) was pretty decent aside from the ending. The presentation was pretty nice as well with some cool mechas and decent music.
Worth a look if you're into mechas, but not a good mecha to start out with.

I watched this anime about a month ago, or rather should I say, I started it.
The first 2 eps weren't anything special, but I taught myself to not judge until after a fourth. When the main character develops his first powers, he becomes wicked and rather mentally disturbed. At that point I thought I could prepare for a character outline similar to the idea used in Death-Note and Code-Geass, the I'm-Evil-But-I-Do-Good style.
however, after a few more eps, he completely drops this character and becomes a harry potter good guy, so I kind of lost the feeling there. the thrill was active for a few eps, ... and in my opinion, it almost looks like the writer thought, "nah, who needs thrill"

tl;dr: A mech anime with a pretty great character arc for the protagonist but that is lacking in most everything else.

This anime is one that’s greatest strength, it’s protagonist, started out seeming like it’s greatest weakness. It starts with the standard premise of a random student suddenly gaining powers and becoming a hero, in this case with Hayase Kouichi becoming linked to the mech Linebarrel. What makes this anime unique is that unlike most anime with similar premises where the protagonist is just luckily inherently heroic and capable of acting as such, Kouichi is anything but. He starts off incredibly self-centered and immature, wherein even ... though he rants on and on about being a hero of justice, he’s clearly just doing whatever he makes him feel cool without any regard for the effect his actions would have on anyone else, basically just going on a complete power trip and reacting violently to anything that hurts his fragile ego.

There is background given on why he became the way he did, and though I’m sure many will disagree, I felt it was written reasonably well and justified properly. In general power corrupts even strong willed individuals. Thus, I definitely don’t think it’s unreasonable that a lot of power abruptly and without any explanation or structure being given to someone that’s always been powerless to the point they have a psychological complex about how powerless they are would result in how Kouichi acts. I mean, that’s a pretty typical trope really, just one that is usually used with antagonists or side characters and not the main protagonist, but I think that’s what makes it interesting.

Over the course of the anime, Kouichi definitely changes tremendously. There are a few major events that result in massive sudden changes, but just as importantly is that there’s a pretty slow and subtle shift that manages to stick over time. That in and of itself isn’t that unique, but what I liked was how much he changed while also staying mostly the same. He’s just as obsessed with being cool and acting like a hero as he was at the beginning of the anime. However, what he perceives as cool and as just has changed tremendously and now he actually does seem cool. He’s still pretty self centered and does whatever he wants without really listening to others, but what he wants to do actually feels like what a real hero would do. His growth isn’t that of his actual core character changing at all, rather its more in the direction of him originally only talking the talk but eventually being able to walk the walk. His character arc is straight up him just gaining experience and practice. That’s it. But that simplicity still resulting in such a massive change is what makes it impressive and overall I think it holds up the anime reasonably well.

Unfortunately, nothing else in the anime really managed to do all that well. There are attempts at giving character arcs and depth to the rest of the cast but ultimately I don’t think any of them worked and there weren’t any other characters that felt well fleshed out. There’s various relationship development as well, but outside of the romance between Kouichi and the main heroine Emi which was tied intrinsically to Kouichi’s character arc, that was all incredibly lacking too. That’s not to say they didn’t try. There clearly were attempts made to give at least something to pretty much every character. However, there just wasn’t enough content and in the end nothing really landed. The same applies to the combat, wherein it just doesn’t explain abilities or power ups properly and thus everything just seems sort of random.

The plot was also kind of a mess. Firstly, the pacing is all sorts of weird, especially in the first half. It’s strange how much happens without anything happening at all. It feels a lot like long running shounen that are padding things out with fillers and such in order to not catch up with the manga, but that makes no sense for a two cour anime that seems to be trying to tell a complete story. That’s not to say that these parts are bad, the random humor and such are definitely amusing. But in the absence of what felt like much more critical content needed in regards to fleshing out characters and such, it felt like having so much was incredibly unnecessary.

Secondly, what the plot ultimately builds up to was way too messy in too short a period of time. The majority of the plot of the anime is simple enough that there aren’t really any major plot holes, just a lot left unexplained. But towards the end the final twists get kind of ridiculous that they result in a level of dissonance that’s hard to ignore, and that’s coming from someone that’s really good at ignoring plot holes and inconsistencies. If things were more spread out amongst other plot events, or if there was a stronger emphasis on characters that the anime had successfully built into investment in, it would probably have been a lot easier to just gloss over things. But here it pretty much just feels like it’s giving you a straight infodump with loads of clear issues that are right in your face and that makes it kind of hard to pretend they’re not there.

The ending is pretty standard and has the typical ride of emotional beats you would expect from such an anime. They don’t hit as hard as they should due to the aforementioned lack of proper development in most of the cast, but overall I think it worked well enough and almost hit all the right notes. There’s one incredibly major exception to that in that the ending doesn’t give closure at all on Kouichi and Emi’s relationship, even though it would have been so easy to do so. I thought that was because it was going to go in the epilogue OVAs, but nope, that left things hanging awkwardly as well. Whyyyyyy? Just kiss already damn it.

The visuals were very much a mixed bag. The animation was pretty good and the art quality was also decent enough. However, the art style just straight up didn’t work a lot of the time, especially when an emphasis was put on characters faces or expressions, and thus despite it not really feeling budget, it still didn’t look very good. The mech fights had pretty great choreography, however the fights were all CGI, and this anime is from 2008 when mech CGI was nowhere near as good as mech CGI is these days, so it looks pretty bad. The soundtrack was solid, the use of insert songs in the last third was especially great. The OP has a pretty hype song that fits the anime well so I’m fine with it being used for the entire anime. The visuals for it are also solid, and they have some minor changes as the anime progresses to reflect the changing plot, but they’re so minor that it makes it feel off that it didn’t change more. The EDs had solid enough songs, and decent enough visuals, though I would have to say I preferred the first over the second in both regards.