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R2 DVD Reviews
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Written by maehara
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Thursday, 29 November 2007 16:00 |
 Elemental Gelade shows some welcome signs of developing a real story, but makes you sit through three more episodes of more of the same old predictable guff before getting down to business. It’s a start, I suppose...
10 - Love and Greed
By using her powers to generate a bright flash of light, Ren gives Cou and Lillia a chance to retreat from the bandits trying to capture Lillia - but Cou's keen to teach them a lesson about seeing an Edel Raid as property, and instead opts to React with Ren and give them a taste of their own medicine. Back in town, Rasati continues to fight in the arena, with Cisqua and the others watching on - she wins her battle, but fighting while injured is beginning to take its toll on her. Later, Cou and Ren get back to trying to earn some cash, fearful of what Cisqua will do if they return broke - and when regular jobs prove hard to come by, ends up fighting in the arena, with Rasati as his opponent...
11 - Revenge of the Krasfighter
Rasati's not at all pleased to see that Cou's her next opponent, believing that he's lied to her - after telling her he just wanted to protect Ren, here he is in the arena, Reacting for money, and she's determined to teach him a lesson. With this also being the last fight she has to win to earn Lillia's freedom, she's got double the incentive, and soon takes care of Cou's challenge. But her expected freedom doesn't come, when Marl reveals he had no intention of letting his star draw go...
12 - Sprint to Freedom
With Rasati facing death at Marl's hands, Cisqua finally intervenes - and once Arc Aile's forces arrive on the scene (better late than never), she's able to stamp her authority on the scene. When Marl tries to make a run for it, though, Rasati makes sure he doesn't get away. Later, though, the Arc Aile Commander forces Ren to go back to Arc Aile with him, and refuses to allow Cou to go with her, talking only of the punishment that awaits him. It seems that since Ren is a Shichiko-Hoji, Arc Aile have special plans for her - and Cou doesn't feature in them...
13 - Arc Aile
Ren awakens, to be greeted by an Edel Raid named Lapis who informs her that she's finally reached the Edel Gardens - but that as she's been asleep for seven years now, the people who brought her there, including Cou, have long left. Strange, then, that the city outside Ren's room looks suspiciously like Arc Aile. Cisqua, meanwhile, reports for debriefing to find that she's to be demoted for her handling of Ren's capture, while an attempt is made to kill Cou. Realising that there's more going on that they're aware of, Cisqua and Rowen try to get some answers...
The Rasati / Lillia story has turned into a full-fledged story arc that takes up the first three episodes on this disc. On one level there’s a decent amount of action that helps Cou and Ren to realise that they’re still not working together as best they could – joining the arena fights is as much a way for them to learn together as it is to earn money – but otherwise, all we’re really getting is three episodes of a story that doesn’t really advance the story by much and could probably have been done in a fraction of the time. Part of the problem is that most of the characters introduced here don’t really have that much of a personality, but again the predictability of the whole thing doesn’t help either.
Things pick up with the arrival of the Arc Aile fleet at the end of episode 12, and the story moves on to Arc Aile itself in episode 13. Home of the Edel Raid Complete Protection Agency and possessing technology that no-one else in the world seems to have, you’d expect the city to be the home of all that is good and peaceful – except it soon becomes clear that there’s something unsavoury going on beneath the surface (natch). With Ren made to believe she’s arrived in Edel Gardens, Cisqua demoted for taking so long to “capture” Ren, and an attempt made on Cou’s life, suddenly the story takes a darker and far more interesting turn. It’s a crying shame that it took until the half-way point in the series to get to something interesting (and the cynic in me is still half-convinced it’s just a one-off, and that normal service will soon be resumed), but to finally have the story start to go in directions that wouldn’t have seemed possible back at the beginning of the series is a good sign.
I still can’t bring myself to be enthusiastic about Elemental Gelade, though – there are just too many bland characters, too many predictable plot lines, and too little that’s actually new or surprising to really grab the interest.
One episode of interesting story of this disc is outweighed by three episodes of more of the same bland, uninteresting plot – although the interesting stuff does come at the end of the disc and may just show that the series is going to finally up its game and become worthwhile. I can hope, anyway. Overall, though, Elemental Gelade still doesn’t do enough to make it a worthwhile purchase.
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