Gokukoku was written by Lynn Okamoto, the same mangaka that wrote Elfen Lied and was animated by Studio Arms, which also produced Elfen Lied. Is Gokukoku no Brynhildr The second coming of Elfen Lied? In a word...no. If you loved Elfen Lied, you will hate Gokukoku. If you thought Elfen Lied was terrible, you will think this is worse. If you were impartial towards Elfen Lied, you will hate Gokukoku. This series fucking sucks!
Story: 3/10
The story begins with our young protagonist Murakami and his childhood friend Neko out watching the stars. Neko is an unusual little girl that believes in aliens and wishes to prove their existence to the skeptical and logical Murakami. While playing on the face of an old dam, Murakami falls and accidentally pulls down Neko with him. He wakes up in the hospital and is told that she died. Devastated by this news, he devotes his life to proving aliens exist in her honor. This is an odd vow for a supposedly logical and brilliant character to make, since he doesn't believe in aliens, but the story hasn't actually begun to get bad yet at this point! An evil government organization is creating super human magic users creatively called "witches". Each witch gains her power from a device in her neck called a harness, which contains an alien parasite. If the device is removed, the witch melts into goo as an homage to the wicked witch of the west. Witch after witch keep escaping the facility and finding Murakami, who takes them in to protect them. On the surface, this seems to be a rather similar plot to Elfen Lied, but if you look closer you will notice some differences. In Elfen Lied the director of the clandestine government group wishes to wipe out humans because he is actually a mutant and wishes to be the God of a new race that he views as superior. He is a mix of Magneto and Hitler. However, most of the other government members in Elfen Lied are unaware of this plot and truly believe that they are protecting mankind from the mutants, who often do lash out at humans. The mutants aren't evil, but are realistically what you would expect from psychologically damaged children with dangerous super powers. In Gokukoku the government group is simply evil and wishes to wipe out humans for no discernible reason. For the lulz I guess. There is no level of moral ambiguity or complexity. In Elfen Lied we had the moral struggle of Kurama, but here we just have a sick bastard named Director Ichijiku who has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. The witches have been tortured and experimented on their entire lives, but only a few lash out in anger and use their powers to get revenge. Most of the witches are extremely pure and un-corruptible, and give the government no reason to hunt them, other than the fact that the government is evil. Once again, there is no level of complexity, nothing remotely thought provoking, no questions on the nature of good and evil. The series simply goes on with more and more bland and forgettable chicks arriving at the observatory. The manga is still going, so the anime had to create its own ending. Elfen Lied chose to end with an open ending and leave several points up to viewer interpretation with only subtle hints to help. Gokokoku tries to wrap everything up in a couple episodes and becomes an incoherent mess of nonsense with one of the worst, most anti-climactic endings I have ever seen in the history of animation! The only competition would be from some of the old Soviet cartoons where the State Film Department would simply pull the budget at random and give the animators a few days and a few hundred bucks to make an ending. That's what this fucking looked like! Of course not quite as epic as the final battle in The Snow Queen (1957), which consists of a little girl shouting "Go Away!" Villain disappears with cheap dissolve effect, END. Gokokoku was made in 2013 with a substantial budget though, so I won't go easy on it by comparing it to a cartoon from the Stalin Era Soviet Union.
Character: 3/10
The main character is Murakami, who is one of the best students in Japan. He has a photographic memory and is devoted to xenobiology. He is a pure good guy with no real internal struggles and nothing that actually makes him interesting. He is simply very bland. The main heroine is Kuroha Neko, who at times goes into "tsundere mode" for a tired comedy gag that is repeated ad nauseum, but mostly is just boring. She knows she faces imminent death, but simply shrugs it off with an inexhaustible level of optimism that would baffle even Vanille from Final Fantasy 13. Vanille is a deep, compelling, and tortured character compared to Neko. We have Kana, who is quadriplegic, speaks with a voice simulator, and exists solely as a plot device that predicts future events and allows our heroes to escape trouble. We never hear about how her condition effects her attitude or learn about her struggles. She is simply given ZERO development! She would at least have gotten a few laughs if they had used the Stephen Hawking voice program for her character, but that would require Gokukoku actually doing something right. The worst character though is Kazumi, who exists only for fan service in a series that is afraid to show any nudity. To make matters worse, she is one of the most obnoxious characters in all of anime. Yuka in Elfen Lied was quite obnoxious at times, but at least she was following a childhood crush and actually realizes her own flaws. Yuka also acts as part of a love triangle and has a purpose within the framework of the shows plot. Kazumi on the other hand, simply has no reason to exist.
Art: 4/10
The character art is sort of decent, but many of the characters look the same. The animators just change the hair color and boob size. That's it. All vehicles are done with HORRENDOUS CGI that at least adds unintentional hilarity to this otherwise bland series. The animation is not very fluid and is quite lackluster. This came out in 2013 and looks FAR worse than Elfen Lied did in 2004. What the FUCK happened Studio Arms!!? You will also notice that any nudity and gore is edited out with a distracting bright, white light that burns your eyes and completely removes you from the show. If you are going to painfully edit in a style that would make 4kids blush, why bother having gore and nudity in the first place! The nude scenes don't add anything to the series and could easily be taken out, but they are mysteriously left in and completely fail to accomplish their purpose of erotica and fan service because they are so severely edited. This makes about 1 hour of a 5 hour series completely un-watchable, with vague silhouettes and a bright light borrowing into your eyeballs.
Sound: 3/10
There are no good openers or closing themes. The best thing I can say is that one opening is unintentionally funny by clashing death metal growls with the cutely animation of this series. It is clearly trying to be like the 2nd death note opening and failing at an EPIC level. The background music is so bland and forgettable that I have seen porn with a better soundtrack! Elfen Lied had Lillium, one of the best opening themes in all of anime. It had also had some chilling, disturbing tracks that sounded like Arnold Schoenberg composed them. Elfen Lied had an A+ soundtrack, Gokukoku has a D- at best.
Enjoyment: 2/10
The first few episodes look like this series might at least be mildly enjoyable. Afterwards this series is about as fun as repeatedly punching yourself in the throat.
Overall: 3/10
Gokukoku is absolutely wretched, but I have actually seen far worse. What makes this series painful is that I actually loved Elfen Lied and expected something a shit load better than this! The problem is that Lynn Okamoto by himself is actually a pretty bad writer. He has some good ideas, but without a good editor he can't execute them. With Elfen Lied he also stole characters and plot points from X-men, Crime and Punishment, and Phantom of the Opera. That was essentially what actually made Elfen Lied good in the first place. It felt like a modern variant of an 1800s psychological drama/gothic horror mixed with X-men. It was a delightful potpourri that actually worked thanks to the editing and vision of the brilliant series Director Mamoru Kanbe. In Gokukoku, Okamoto stole from himself and tried to reuse parts of his previous plot without adding any of the themes, struggles, or messages that made Elfen Lied work. Gokukoku actually had a highly esteemed director named Imaizumi that also directed Mushishi and Ano Hana, which are both extremely praised on this site. However, Mr. Imaizumi's style completely clashed with Okamoto's writing and Imaizumi was not able to take the salvageable parts and create his own vision like Kanbe did. Gokukoku is like the hollow shell of Elfen Lied that has lost its very soul. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, unless you REALLY hate that person!
