Ginga Nagareboshi Gin

The anime which raised a large otaku generation in my home country of Finland. Many people, especially those which were born in late 80's and beginning of 90's remember this series warmly and nostalgically. This series also hit me when I was 7-8 years old, even though I'm from a younger generation.

The story begins when a small tora-ge ("tiger-striped") colored Akita puppy is born in the northern mountains of Japan and is named Gin, "Silver" (or "Hopeanuoli" ("Silver Arrow"), as he is known in Finland). His destiny is already known when he is a puppy: he must become the best bear hunting dog and protect ... humans from the terrible killer bear named Akakabuto, who terrorizes this area.
Meanwhile, the village's old bear hunter, Gohee Takeda, is hunting Akakabuto with his dog Riki, Gin's father. Daisuke, a 12-year-old boy wants very much to show the puppy to Riki, but unfortunately, Riki gets into a fierce battle with Akakabuto and falls into a ravine. This is where Gin's training to become a good bearhound begins!

In the beginning, the story mainly revolves around Gin and Daisuke and focuses on the development of their friendship and Gin's training, which may confuse first-time watchers if they expected the dogs to talk right from the start. When it finally happens, it happens suddenly, but once you get used to it, it doesn't interfere watching.

Story: 10/10
The story as a whole is very well written. It starts out pretty realistic, which can seem boring, but when things really start to happen with the dogs taking on more of a big role, you won't be able to stop watching! The story will completely take you like a balloon in the wind!

Art: 8/10
The art is really good for the most part. Considering that this series was made in the 80's and the schedules were tight, some characters are drawned not so well sometimes. In one episode, you even clearly notice that the style has changed a lot from the previous episode. It's also typical for anime of this time to repeat scenes so they didn't have to draw a same scene again. This is especially noticeable when dogs are shown running. In these scenes this actually works well and isn't distracting, but in some fights you can clearly see the bear killing the same dogs multiple times, which gives a bit of unintentional comedy for these scenes.
What I enjoy the most in this animation are the landscapes! They are painted with such beauty and detail that they almost look real.

Sound: 7/10
Since this series was already made in 1986, the sound quality is naturally not the best, but you can still apart the characters by their voices.

Music: 10/10
What else should be said to this? Perfect!
Goro Ohmi's compositions literally rub your ears. They are so memorable that they will be stuck in your head for a long time, especially the opening "Nagareboshi Gin", the ending "Tomorrow" and of course that sad Riki theme!

Voice acting: 10/10
There are a lot of popular seiyuus from the 80s (best known from Hokuto no Ken, Dragon Ball and Saint Seiya)! Eiko Yamada makes a suitable puppyish, sometimes really aggressive voice for Gin, Banjou Ginga really shines in the role of Riki, giving him a strong and charismatic voice, Hideyuki Tanaka's Ben sounds like a samurai in the dog form and Takeshi Watabe's Gohee Takeda sounds like an experienced and vengeful hunter!

Characters: 9/10
Even though there are some annoying characters (the minor human characters at the beginning for the most part), the characters are interesting and you want to keep following them until the end of the series. However, in the end, many cool side characters remain mostly in the background, and in addition to the main character, Ben, John, Cross and Smith get more screen time which is a bit pity. The main enemy, Akakabuto, is really impressively created. You can only imagine how much this bear scared me as a child!
Also a minor villain, Sniper is a good addition to the story and you absolutely love to hate him and hope he fails in his plans!

Enjoyment: 10/10
The first mostly humans part of the story may seem boring, but the second mainly dogs part of the story literally kicks you into high speed. However, I enjoy both parts equally.

Overall, GNG gets 10/10 from me! It's a story you can enjoy year after year, no matter how many times you've seen it! It will be my all-time favorite anime series ever!

The story starts in Northern Japan, Akita prefecture, where the main character, Gin, is born. A terrible bear, Akakabuto, is keeping the area in fear, whose biggest rival is Gohee Takeda, whose ears got teared off by the animal. However, he also successfully injured him by shooting out his right eye. At the beginning two parts of the story runs in parallel, the birth of the new hero, and Gohee' attempt to search for 2 lost skiers. These two threads are getting merged pretty quickly, when Daisuke gets the bad news about Riki and Gohee getting killed by the monstrous bear Akakabuto. The introductions of ... the characters and the world is very strong, the viewer instantly gets the feeling, that in this series anyone can die. At the beginning of the story, the focus is entirely on the humans and the bear hunting, but gradually we can also see how Daisuke's and Gin's friendship is getting stronger and stronger. The series gets a very sharp turn in episode 7, where the focus shifts to the dogs as they start to talk. In this episode Gin joins a wild dog pack, and embarks on a new journey, to gather strong dogs from all over the country. Through the story Gin and the others meet with lots of interesting dogs, some who join forces with Ouu, and some who sees them as enemies. Lots of Shonen elements are appearing at these encounters, for example Gin constantly proving himself, solving situations, and with this saving the day. At the end, they gather in Ouu to finally take down Akakabuto, and restore peace. Around the end humans start to appear again, but their role is not nearly as significant as it was at the beginning.

The characters are very well written, we can see lots of personality developments, for example the most obvious being Gin, who starts out as a puppy, who barely knows anything about the working of the world, and at the end he becomes a strong leader. Even minor characters got lots of personality development, like John, who starts out as an egoist, cold blooded hunter, who can't imagine to accept orders from anyone, but at the end he ends up as a loyal Ouu soldier, who deeply cares about his comrades. Or Gohee, who started out as a cruel old man, who beats puppies, but at the end it's like if he would have completely changed. Lots of characters have references to the Japanese culture, like the Iga and Koga ninja dogs, Benizakura, whose name means "Crimson Cherry Blossom", or the Four Heavenly Kings of Mutsu. All of these characters have strong personalities, which makes all of them interesting, and helpful in different situations. However, I must note that most characters has big potential, but the series wasn't able to give enough screen time for all of them to shine. This is why Bemu, or the Four Heavenly Kings only appear a few times. But all in all, the characters are very likable, and interesting.

The music of this series can only be described as "wonderful". All scenes was able to implement a very fitting music to its feeling. Just by listening to it, it can be heard how terrible and cruel those bears are, or how exciting the fight scene is. The composer was Goro Ohmi, who is not very popular, but he is a great artist, and heavily underrated.

The series includes many well known voice actors, for example Hideyuki Tanaka, Banjou Ginga, Daisuke Gouri, who are all in Saint Seiya, Hokuto no Ken, and a lot more. So it can be said, that Ginga Nagareboshi Gin got a legendary cast.

The series was also dubbed in many languages, with good results. It became popular mostly in the Nordic countries, especially in Finland, where this series have a very big and dedicated fanbase. There are also many official merchandise available, especially from Japan and from Finland. And the Ginga series is still being continued by the creator, Yoshihiro Takahashi, so mangas are constantly available from the newer series, but even about this older masterpiece they can be found on auction sites.

To sum it up, this is an extraordinary series, and well worth watching it, it has very deep messages, and a few comical scenes as well. Strong 10/10 from me.

This anime has a lot of heart, though it's a big shame how poorly it's presented and written. I got into this thinking it was a story about a war between dogs and bears, which is a fascinating concept. In actuality, the story revolves almost entirely around the dogs, with the bears merely being an evil group of monsters who are barely more intelligent than regular animals. There are many plot holes and every cliché imaginable within the plot, and if not for some strong characters, I would probably not even give this a pass. Overall, it's highly flawed, but charming, and a mercifully short ... story.

The story can be broken down into three arcs:
1. The human hunters and dogs versus Akakabuto, which lasts 7 episodes
2. Silver recruiting dogs, which lasts until about episode 18
3. The last four episodes, which is the final battle, episode 18-21

I really liked the first arc. It had a nice blend of realism and the feeling that it could lead to something extraordinary. It's quite measured and consistent with its logic. In episode 7, Silver spontaneously begins talking with the other dogs, and then no humans are ever heard from again for a long time. Most of the series is Silver recruiting other dogs. A big problem with this section is that new dogs are introduced without developing the existing ones enough. Canonically, there are hundreds of dogs, but in terms of named ones, there are easily dozens of them by the end. I liked many of them, with solid characters like Silver, Ben, Cross, Moss, and Benizakura, but there are too many. As another reviewer pointed out, many of them just disappear for the final battle completely.

The logic also goes entirely out the window in this section. It's ridiculous how dogs will bite each other's necks and somehow not kill each other constantly. Also, if I knew this series was primarily dogs trying to kill each other, I probably wouldn't have wanted to watch it! What makes it not so uncomfortable is that the dogs seldom die, even in situations where they really should die, which happens basically every episode. Dogs do this strange judo flip and drill into one another with their mouths, which wouldn't be so silly, but the series spent the first 7 episodes building up a pretty realistic setting. It would've helped if they established any "rules" for why dogs act so much like humans, but it's taken for granted. In any case, by the end of every episode, you know that the new dogs, or some of them, will join Silver's group, and they'll just continue to the next area.

This whole segment got tiring when you consider the bears do not even speak and seem like barely intelligent monsters. Silver goes to all this trouble to gather hundreds of sentient super dogs from all over the region to fight maybe a dozen bears and Akakabuto, who begins "building a fortress" in the first arc. How does a bear that's not even sentient do that anyway? This conflict could've been realistically handled by just the core group of about thirty dogs and not stretched disbelief to its breaking point for so many logical reasons. I would also have liked that version much better as it could've developed them all more and shown anything about the bears. What was funny to me is when you finally see this "fortress," later called a "castle," it's just a big pile of snowy rocks. One has to assume the dogs instinctively knew terrible shit was about to go down that is never shown after Akakabuto succeeds, as his building a fortress in one Japanese mountain pass is treated like the end of the world. I had to get this thought off my chest because it's infuriating how little thought went into this story while watching and slowly realising there will never be a satisfying explanation.

The final battle is pretty good overall and raises the stakes. The showdown with Akakabuto does not disappoint, even if he's not much of a character. Though frankly, the series needed a strong ending after the middle went so off-the-rails.

After all that, the presentation, visuals, and music are lacking. A few instances of obvious reused animation or still shots are quite cheap. Sometimes it can be very well done, though. The music tends to reuse the same melodramatic songs all the time. It's pretty bad: cheesy, but not in a fun way.

Overall, this series started strong, had a weak middle, and a decent end. At only 21 episodes, it could both be much shorter by cutting a lot of repetition in the middle and much longer if it added more development. It's hard to dislike it with how many good characters and memorable moments it has, but it could've been much better.