Ginga Nagareboshi Gin

Story: 8
The strong part of the series is indeed the plot. I mean it's a about a territory war between bears and dogs. You can't get much more epic. The first seven episodes, though they are necessary backstory, the real excitement doesn't come til afterwards and I really would've rather they been 4 episodes instead.
Once the plot started rolling it gets very interesting. The series doesn't have ups and downs in excitement. It just gradually builds up until the final grand showdown.
I suppose the only real thing about the writing that annoyed me was that there ... were so many possible scenes that could have been tossed in and weren't. Speaking about missing scenes, there are plot holes. Examples: Somewhere between episodes a certain character gets out of a death situation and it goes completely unexplained. "Oh look, I'm alive with no particular reason or explanation!" It was almost as if an entire episode was just dropped. Also near the end an entire slew of dogs mysteriously dissappear from the cast and aren't even mentioned, though some make brief cameos at the very end.
In a nutshell if Naruto was a dog this would be his series. There's ninjutsu, special abilities, big battles, a promising youngster, and just a touch of magic.
The nice thing is that it let's you put the pieces together and doesn't explain all the above to you in any real depth. So you have to use your imagination to fill in these blanks.

Art: 5
Well, after all that glowing sunshine and roses for the story section, here comes the bad news. This show, even though knowing it was made in the 80s, still isn't up to what I could call good art. A few pros are that the dog anatomy is very accurate and when you can have a certain dog do a round house kick and make it look believeable, you've got something good going. The backgrounds are ok, nothing spectacular. Character designs: dogs good, humans bad.
Now when it comes to the animation itself, one on one battles are pretty good, but when there's large groups there are either repeating frames or still paint scenes. An example of this is that a group of dogs are seen getting killed FIVE times, and the only thing different was once the screen was flipped, poor guys.
Facial expressions, though they are dogs, could've been slightly more dynamic. The art near the beginning of the series is better, drops in quality in the middle, then really picks up in the last two episodes and though it becomes more detailed the animation isn't as good. But I again, it was made in the 80s. I should offer it some grace.

Sound: 3
The low point of the show. Music: bad, Intro and ending: bad and ok, Voice Acting: dogs so so, humans my ears burn! Background sounds: poor. Need I say anything else?

Character: 7
I can't give this any higher because of the human characters. The human characters were among the least likeable creations I have ever encountered. But the vast majority of the dogs are quite likeable and easy to put into a box and identify who they are. I think this simplicity was a good thing for the show since complex characters would require more developement and this series was far too busy working on the plot. My top favourite has to be John, though I was surprised that I grew to really like the protagonist Gin and even some of the minor cast members. Anyone who sees this show will probably have a few dogs they would like to have kept as pets.

Overall: 6
Worth checking out for dog lovers. It's got its major faults, but it has some redeaming qualities. Perhaps I may have been a little hard on this series, it is the first "old anime" I've seen.
This series also has a sequel Ginga Densetsu Weed made 20 years later (you should see my review of that soon). Today a sequel to this second series is still in publication in manga form, Ginga Densetsu Weed Orion.

Parental Caution
-Swearing: Dang it, crap, term for illegitimate child, rougher form of goshdang. The propper term for female dog is used but considering they ARE dogs, and it was a subtitle translation, it defeats the affect. The "f" word was used twice in episode 14, that completely surprised me as it wasn't used before or after that point.
-Blood, in fact they leave not much to your own imagination. There is MUCH blood in the finale. This show is NOT for the faint of heart.
-A man forced his dog to eat his frozen flesh. *urk* almost lost my lunch.
-The bears are honestly pretty freaky. Call me chicken but a combination of the lighting and their gastly appearance made me jump more than once.

SPOILER:::

Few animes can be as unique in their history as this. the first episode is one of the best I've ever seen, I found it extremely engaging. I swore this would be one of the favorite animes. But as the episodes passed, the failures began, which were adding up. One of them is his exaggeration, it was not very clear what the anime wanted to go through, sometimes he acted like a shounen, due to the young male protagonism exposed even in the drawing of dogs, which all had extremely manly and masculine bodies, which made me think that the protagonist was a Pit Bull, ... for being strong and not having hair. About him wanting to be a shounen, in many moments, I saw a puppy defeat adult dogs much more experienced and stronger than him, I saw a child enter a forest alone in order to defeat a bear, I saw a puppy carry the weight of a child on his shoulders. And I know that the anime wanted to create an epic feeling, but it was totally necessary this nerf in the supporting and enemies in the name of protagonism. One of the most bizarre moments was the cub carrying a child's weight on his shoulders, and still making it clear that John was not capable. But not only wanting to be a shounen, he tries to force as much violence and maturity as possible from a seinen, which he did not catch, because at no time did I see any dog coming out really injured in this anime. Anyone knows that a dog fighting, or dog-to-bear fight is something really deadly. As an example, I have that episode that addresses the dog-winning dog, the defeated dog was at most exhausted, and before his death humans were to help him, hinting that a dogs fight would be something fair and clean. Totally ridiculous and contradictory. Other things also don't make sense as dogs attack with spears and have teeth and nails for it. Dogs doing senseless combat, like I don't need to be a veterinarian to know how one dog would attack another, but here instead the dogs study martial art to spin like a drill on the enemy and make some unexplained blows. Totally ridiculous. Another thing that didn't quite catch was the excess of characters, most of them undeveloping whatsoever, the character I felt most empathy for cross for being the only one who took a small approach to her past. All the other dogs were fighting because they simply had to fight. And those who opposed john were seen as cowards. Dogs abandoned their precious owners with nothing to gain in return just to help dogs they had never seen defeat evil bears. But talking about Cross who for a long time was being the only woman on the team, was easily rendered useless when having children, look how cute, with Ben. Couple who had none developed and were simply put as passionate out of nowhere just to have puppies in the story. That's because I didn't talk about the characters being useless and totally disposable like that Collie who was introduced out of nowhere and that dog that died as if I cared. The bow of ninja dogs with spear was the worst because it made no sense, I mean, if there were at least one or two ninja humans there it would be okay but the anime prefers to ignore the existence of humans. Why are you serious, how could animals learn ninja technique? And now I'm going to tell you what's most in my life: the fight scenes that lasted seconds and were totally emotionless. I can quote from the senseless attitudes like, dogs committing suicide for nothing just for the laziness of the author to end the action in an easier way. Since dogs disappearing and reappearing as if nothing had happened, like gin's father survived that fall? And I can't talk about the fight scenes as the moment gin would defeat Sniper, who incidentally had no development and no goal in ocing to the leader, was simply because it was evil. Not only Sniper but all the bad guys were bad for being like this. Anyway, the scene of Doberman being defeated in a single blow by Akita's cub in an extremely scrotum fulcrum is what sums up this series.

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.