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R2 DVD Reviews
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Written by maehara
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Wednesday, 19 September 2007 17:00 |
 The Claw finally makes a personal appearance, as Van and Wendy finally catch up with the villain of the piece and his henchmen – but amongst the Claw’s men are people who both Van and Wendy know and respect. Is the Claw really the villain of the piece, or is something else going on..?
9 - Carmen Goes Home
Carmen99's just wondering what happened to Van and Wendy, when she just about manages to run them over. Now there's a coincidence for you. Van's hitch-hiking (along with Wendy and Joshua), and their path is taking them to Trinolia - which is Carmen's hometown, so as much for old time's sake as anything else she offers to give them a lift. Having left town without warning six years earlier, she's not sure what sort of reception she'll receive - she needn't have had any worries on that front, but when Van asks engineer & Carmen's old mentor Findley to analyse a circuit board for him, it creates some family tensions between Findlay and his daughter, Hayetah. Meanwhile, it turns out that Hayetah - also an old friend of Carmen's - has been engaging in a little botany, of the sort that threatens the lives of the whole town...
10 - Thank You Ocean
The gang arrive in the city of Meunniere - a large chunk of the city sank years earlier, so if you think of Venice you'll get the general idea. Their arrival in town is marked by a missile attack on a freight train, which leads to the closure of the rail line out of the city - and since that's how Van was planning on travelling, that leaves them stuck in town for a while. When the president of the local Salvage Union, Vivian, learns that Van's an Armor pilot, she offers him work, helping to protect their operations from pirate attacks. With payment including an express ticket out of Meunniere, Van agrees to take on the job - but even Van's presence doesn't seem to put off the bad guys...
11 - Where the Goodbyes Are
While Wendy and the others are waiting for their train out of Meunniere, Wendy sees her brother standing on the opposite platform - surprise doesn't even describe it, and she immediately jumps onto the tracks to try and reach him. Michael doesn't seem overly pleased to see her - why did she leave home? Why is she with Van? He certainly isn't showing any of the joy Wendy's feeling at being reuinited - and he's also got no intention of going back to Evergreen with her. As if that wasn't enough of a shock, Joshua's decided that the Claw is a great man and that he's found new meaning to his life since meeting him, and is working for him now. To Van and Joshua, meanwhile, it looks like Wendy just jumped into the path of an oncoming train and disappeared, so they begin to search the station for her, while elsewhere in the station complex the Claw's men are gathering and his plans are taking shape...
12 - The Days of No Return
Wendy's in a depressed mood after both Van and Michael tell her to go home. Joshua does his best to brighten her mood, but doesn't meet with much luck. It's not just Wendy that Van's alienting, either - a few ill-judged comments also manage to annoy Carmen99, and leave Van acting on his own again. Below Meunniere station, Gadved and the others work towards the full activation of their latest Armor, Saudade of Sunday - but Gadved also has confronting Van as a priority. The two know each other - Gadved witnessed the Claw's killing of Elena, and was responsible for "reconstructing" Van and bonding him with Dann, but in the three years since them a lot has changed. Gadved's working for the Claw, for a start - and he wants Van to join them...
With Gun×Sword just about having reached its mid-point, we get into the good stuff, as the second two episodes on this release bring the Claw to centre stage and throw a few surprises into the mix to really pick up the pace of the series. But first, Van, Wendy and new tag-along Joshua have to reach that point.
Episode 9 sees the gang pay a visit to Carmen99’s hometown, Trinolia, where the Claw has been involved in some botanical experimentation that Carmen's old friend Hayetah has been involved in, again painting him as a man who has little or no regard for others, and Carmen’s forced to put her old friendship with Hayetah to one side while she deals with the problem. Episode 10 brings the gang to the city of Meunniere, which is where the Claw and his men are already gathered, but before Van and the others get to face them, there’s the small matter of some recent pirate attacks on the local Salvage Union to deal with.
Gun×Sword wouldn’t be Gun×Sword without some fun along the way, and episode 10 provides that, up to a point – although there’s also a serious side to the story which becomes more obvious in the later two episodes. Episode 9 fills in some of the mystery behind the woman with 99 mysteries – although since we’re never told why Carmen left home, there’s clearly still more to learn about her. These two episodes have all the feel of filler, but they’re worth paying attention to as there are useful tidbits buried in there that may well turn out to be important.
Episodes 11 & 12 bring an end to the chasing, as first Wendy is reunited with her brother Michael, before Van is reunited with the man who enabled him to use Dann of Thursday – and both are now working for the Claw. The elusive man himself makes an appearance towards the end of the disc, and turns out to be somewhat different from what I’d expected him to be. All this raises some interesting questions: is the Claw really as evil as Van makes him out to be? What we’ve heard of him through the series so far would certainly lead you to believe that – but if so, why would two people that Wendy and Van would normally trust with their lives, and in Van’s case is fully aware of why Van’s seeking vengeance against the Claw, choose to work with him?
Gadved provides some of the answers during his confrontation with Van (which I’m not going to spoil here), but the issue seems to come down to how far the Claw’s methods can be used to justify his ultimate aim, which may be noble enough. That’s for future episodes to unravel – here, the main focus is on Wendy and Van dealing with what could easily be considered the betrayal of people they love and trust, and who have now chosen to place themselves as their enemies. This wasn’t the way I was expecting Gun×Sword to play out, and as a result the disc became one that I wasn’t going to press ‘stop’ on until the last scene had played out. The story ends on a cliffhanger, and left me fervently wishing that I already had the next volume so I could see what happened next.
On the downside, while the story played out in an unexpected direction, the new batch of characters introduced here – six of the “Original Seven” – play to a number of standard anime stereotypes, without apparently bringing much new to the party. With so many new characters introduced in one go, there’s also not a lot of time available to develop them, so for the moment we’re stuck with a bunch of cookie-cutter characters with cookie-cutter motivations who you can’t really get worked up about yet. Hopefully later episodes will address that. Originality’s never something you could accuse Gun Sword of anyway – it’s made its mark in presentation and execution, not originality, and fortunately that trend has continued for this disc.
This disc starts off normally enough, but soon brings us some of the best storylines that Gun×Sword’s presented so far. The arrival of the Claw on the scene shakes things up very nicely, presenting Van and Wendy with a chance to consider their own motivations and whether they’re doing the right thing or not, while moving the focus away from the more standalone episodes we’ve had up to now and onto something more serious. Earth-shattering, no – but thoroughly enjoyable, yes.
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