Studio Gonzo have this amazing effect; I suspect they have some kind of quota system in effect. For each really good thing they put out, there seem to be a bunch of things about which you end up thinking "if only they'd just done that differently, that could've been so much better...". Every excellent series like Bokurano that they put out is outnumbered by flawed or downright shoddy fare like Strike Witches, Full Metal Panic and Chrno Crusade - and most often, the problem with Gonzo series is the story. Pumpkin Scissors is, sadly, not among the excellent exceptions, but part of the quota-filling compensation.
One thing that's hard to fault Gonzo on, by and large, is their art; true to form, Pumpkin Scissors is pretty good looking generally, with its well-realised and highly atmospheric post-war setting. Animation, while not exceptional, is uniformly fluid throughout, and high in production values. Its fictional war-ravaged state very much resembles post-WWII Europe in temporal setting, appearance and level of technology, and visually, it is credible and detailed. Having a small military unit as its main cast, there's lots of military paraphernalia around too, and mechanical design and animation is very good, appropriate to the period and highly credible. Military uniforms are also well designed and seem believable, while the ornate clothing of various nobles also seems fairly well designed, if sometimes a little risque for the women considering the setting and the series' audience (possibly; more on this later). Character design absolutely screams Gonzo; that's not necessarily bad, but in this case only the male lead, Cpl. Randal Oland, really stands out as memorable, visually, and that's mostly due to his resemblance to Frankenstein's monster.
Otherwise, characters are perfectly serviceable but by and large nothing amazing or charismatic - and that goes for both appearance and actual characterisation. The central cast are Lt. Alice Malvin, a manically enthusiastic, verbosely idealistic and stupendously irritating noblewoman who serves as Pumpkin Scissors' officer in the field, Hunks, the terminally laid-back old guy who is her boss, the rest of the unit comprising Oreldo, a serial ladies man, Lili and Mercury, a mascot-type girl and messenger dog pairing, and Martis, a quiet, nothing sort of guy with no notable qualities other than wearing glasses without a bridge. Add the hulking yet timid and pacifistic newcomer Cpl. Oland as a main protagonist and that's Imperial Army, State Section 3, Pumpkin Scissors Division. Except! Oland has this Special blue lantern, which is Special because it's a relic from his Mysterious Past, and when he turns it on, he becomes nigh on invincible. Sound like a familiar idea? Certainly it does, just like all the characters, who are, frankly, a bunch of one-dimensional stereotypes who seem worn after barely an episode and barely develop across the whole series' run.
Now, with a theme and setting like this, even bearing such characters in mind, you might expect some fairly serious, complicated, grown-up sorts of stories. You might also expect that, with 24 episodes to play with, some kind of overarching plot might develop. And you would be right - in a way. However, here, the curse of Gonzo falls on Pumpkin Scissors hardest. I am forced to wonder if, at some stage in development, the powers that be suddenly decided to dramatically decrease the age-range at which this series was aimed; out goes the violence, out goes the complexity, out goes any scope for grittiness or ambiguity in keeping with the setting, and instead, in come the stereotypes, the boundless, unceasing optimism and the chirpy ending theme. For all its laudable efforts to tell serious, grown-up stories and ask serious, grown-up questions, the series cannot help but be heavy-handedly moralistic, predictable and universally pedestrian and preachy in tone and approach. Despite being armed soldiers, and contrary to what Lt. Malvin's incessant shortsword-waving might suggest, it's extremely rare that any of our heroes actually hurts anyone, let alone kills them, however hard their opponent is trying to kill them; not even when seven foot Darth Maul-style swords enter the picture is anyone actually harmed. It somehow always falls on Oland and the Specialness his lantern grants him to simply soak up the damage long enough for the bad man to be arrested by everyone else, the end. Worse, every time anything like an ethical question arises, it's always dealt with in starkly black and white terms that completely conflict with the setting; if ever there was a setting in which the morality of almost every action is shrouded in uncertainty and ambiguity, this is it. The Pumpkin Scissors unit, however, always does the right thing, and can always tell what the right thing to do is, and never, for example, has Malvin's unyielding idealism cause something dreadful to happen. It's spineless storytelling, the kind common in substandard things designed for kids, and the series suffers from it.
Most calamitous of all is the pacing. Episodes plod, by and large, with lots of unnecessary exposition and little by way of progression. Generally, most stories take only one or two episodes to conclude, with the effect that each fiendish, cut-and-dried plot by the evil noble to defraud the commoners out of what they rightfully deserve, essentially the thrust of all these mini-arcs, becomes the Monster Of The Week (or fortnight). It takes a long time for the main plot to develop into any more than a vague concept hanging around in the background, and development from then on is glacially slow - too slow, in fact, for it to actually come remotely close to a resolution by the end of the series. And what an end - never have I seen such an artificially stretched batch of episodes. Events that should take two episodes at best in fact take six; what occurs covers half, maybe three quarters of an hour of real time, stretches to over two hours in practice, and in the end, gives nobody any answers or resolutions anyway. No, the series carefully creates links between almost every incident Pumpkin Scissors have hitherto been involved in, weaves in an enigmatic antagonist that works behind the scenes to orchestrate these incidents - and ends. Worst of all, it does so twice; as well as not actually providing any end to the actual plot, it creates a huge anticlimax by slowly, piece by piece, revealing the truth behind Oland's Mysterious Past, then doing virtually nothing significant with it.
Even the music is disappointing. You could have all sorts of evocative, classy music in here - some classical or classical-based pieces, maybe, or some soulful folktune-based stuff. However, most of the background music is brassy and march-like or otherwise military themed, and adopts a peculiarly stiff, simplistic flavour of waltz for scenes dealing with the nobility. The opening theme is brash and not much cop, and the ending theme is completely inappropriate in its hyper, overhappy energy and nonsense lyrics.
So yes, this is one of Gonzo's lamentable also-rans. It's not impossible to enjoy, provided you expect little of it, but I'd find it very hard to want to watch any of it again. The fact of the matter is, you just can't help but think of Pumpkin Scissors as something that might have been so much better, if only... If only they'd decided whether this was for kids or for adults... If only they'd finished the storyline... If only the relentless optimism didn't grate so much against the setting... If only it had left some room for ethical ambiguity... If only it had somehow managed to dig up some characters with charisma and some motivations that worked in more than one dimension... If only it didn't wait until the tenth episode before it explained its amazingly contrived and silly name... If only...
