Kikou Kai Galient

I like Takahashi and how he actively seeks to make his creations plausible and palpable. It sometimes works, it sometimes doesn't. His earlier works are so littered with so many flaws it's impossible to take the damn thing seriously despite his most genuine efforts. I don't know how much of that falls on him or the people he had to ultimately please in the process. Regardless, Galient, in spite of its interesting elements scattered throughout, is a badly animated, childish, cheesy, and sometimes even cringeworthy tale whose messages are tackled with the finesse of a derailed train exploding midair. It does play out slightly better ... than some other of its genre, but that shouldn't be hard to do. Such annoyingly blatant forthrightness is characteristic of the 70s/early 80s where few works managed to be as effective as they wished to. It goes against any attempt to be insightful and believable. As a piece of entertainment it should go without saying the production values here don't help at all. Unless you're already desensitized to constant static keyframes, zooming in and out, panning shots, rough and erratic drawing, generic music, etc, you better walk away. It's not like it was its intention to be entertaining either, it's clearly striving to make a statement. It is pretty silly actually, and the way characters react to it is hilarious, as if it made any sense, when it doesn't for anyone with half a brain cell. To be honest, it's not like I'd ever expect a Japanese kids cartoon from the 80s to approach the pettiness of humanity and the damaging nature of peace (???) with actual wit.