As I continued to watch, my hopes started to wane. I had no problem with Joe, O.D and Utsu-tsu as they were continuously marvellous and I still thought of them as my favourite characters. However, I think Sugane (Hajime's mentor) and Pai-pai (their leader) could have been more confident with their actions and opinions especially with controlling Hajime.
They should have acted more like a leader and mentor, and should have stopped Hajime from doing unfixable things instead of letting her do what she wanted.
As a mentor, Sugane should have told Hajime how to transform, he should have trained her think about her actions before doing them and become the best at her ability physically and mentally. Pai-pai should have told her the dangers when meddling with crazy aliens. Both failed at doing that which resulted in possible life-threatening situations concerning lesser-enemies near the beginning and Hajime exposing identities unnecessarily.
The fact that Pai-pai, O.D and Utsu-tsu's Gatchaman transformations were hidden for the majority of the anime made me more and more excited about what they looked like and how strong they would be. I expected Utsu-tsu's transformation to look cool as she is adorable and my favourite character out of the three I mentioned earlier, it looked similar and had the same ability to her human-form - being able to give life and take it away.
I was very happy to see Pai-pai's for the first time because for a creature so small, his transformation was a colossal tank. My happiness ended abruptly as Pai-pai, after transforming, ended up fleeing from the fight due to his cowardliness. Once he got over his issue, this is shown in episode 10, he continued to be a badass fighting machine as I expected of him.
As enthusiastic and confident as Hajime is, I have disliked her from the start. I think she is irresponsible with her actions; she doesn't even think or care about possible outcomes and just goes along with whatever she's doing. She acts like the leader of the Gatchaman despite the fact Pai-pai is the leader, if anyone would be co-leader, O.D or Sugane should have the privilege.
I hoped she would grow on me and I'd start to appreciate her more throughout the series but instead I began to dislike her more and more. I admit she is a good friend to Utsu-tsu and O.D, and she tries to help Utsu-tsu feel comfortable with her powers and insecurities, I'll give her that, but overall I'd rather she just stopped talking or she would just stay in her Gatchaman transformation as that's when I actually liked her.
The aforementioned lesser-enemies should have appeared in the anime more and needed a clearer explanation of who they are and what they wanted. I felt they were just a filler before the arrival of the main enemy character; Berg Katze.
In the last three episodes of the series, all the characters finally blossomed and revealed their transformations and powers. Pai-pai and Sugane finally got over their fear of being weak and cowardly and showed their strength, power and leadership which was great, and O.D…well O.D's transformation looked like an unyielding god, he was absolutely the strongest and most badass Gatchaman…it was spectacular!
During the last episode, I really hoped O.D and Katze's "fight" would continue later on, as all we got was a small brawl. I had so much hope that O.D would destroy Katze but, again, I was disappointed, more so.
Rui's ideas to stop the Neo Hundred Crowds were lame but they worked very well, which I found...interesting, but it seemed like Berg Katze wasn't even an issue anymore.
I wish the whole series had as much action and excitement as it did in the 10th and 11th episodes, I found these two episodes more exciting and can easily say these lived up to my expectation. I still wish the identities of the Gatchaman were secret to the public but I'm happy they helped and worked together.
Despite the fact this review has more bad points than good, I did like this anime. It just had potential to be a whole lot more. The music was great, the "Gatchaman!" parts were used at the definitely more exciting action parts, and the colours of each Gatchaman suited them very well. I can only say that I won't be watching this series again, and I'm rating this anime 7 out of 10.
