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R1 DVD Reviews
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Written by maehara
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Monday, 29 September 2008 16:00 |
 Let the final battle begin! And go on, and on, and on, and... You get the picture. With the insania virus keeping the men out of the picture, it's up to the girls to take on the mimetic beasts themselves - will they be up to the task..?
21 - Godannar, Grounded!
Bad news for Goh: he's being taken off active duty. With the Rabid Syndrome virus having been shown to have already infected most of humanity, the risk of allowing him to continue piloting is just too great, when the pressures of combat are exactly the sort of situation that could cause the virus to manifest itself. Add in that Goh is pilot of possibly humanity's strongest robot, and there's no way his superiors are going to risk having him go on the rampage. For Goh, though, piloting is his life - is he really going to take this lying down? Why, yes, it looks like he is - and that doesn't please Anna at all. Meanwhile, with Goh out of action, Shizuru's ordered to learn how to pilot Dannar, to take his place - but Shinobu may have other ideas...
22 - Clash! Dannar vs Gainer
Anna and Shizuru are faced with a battle on two fronts - they're determined to prove that they can deal with the attacking mimetic beasts themselves, but to do that they'll also have to deal with Ken and Lou. Not to mention the ever-present danger that the Insania Virus will activate inside Ken and send him berserk. Unwilling to sit on the sidelines, Goh heads out to swap places with Shizuru and join the fight. Before he's able to do that, though, there's an unexpected development on the battlefield - one of the beasts they've been fighting is the one that Ken's been after all this time, and contains within it the captured mech Celeblader - the mech of Ken's beloved Rosa. Achieving his goal isn't enough to stop Ken from being turned by the virus, though, and Goh finds himself forced to fight once more...
23 - Dannar Base SOS!
The beasts launch a global assault on all the Bases, but it's short-lived - almost as quickly as the attacks begin, they end, as the beasts retreat and head as one for a new target: Dannar Base, where Goh's subconsciousness is fighting against the effects of the Insania Virus, leaving him unable to fight. Not that he'd be able to risk it, anyway. With the base at Red Alert, preparations are made to repel the attack - but the beasts' attacks on the other bases have helped them increase their fighting stength, as they've managed to gain control over the automated Boy units they found there. Against such overwhelming odds, do the girls of Dannar Base stand any chance of winning..?
And here we are at Godannar's endgame - and it initially appears that it's going to be up to the girls to save the day, with the boys grounded for the safety of both themselves, and the people who may well be killed if they were to go berserk while in control of a giant mech. Sounds sensible. Here's the problem: when the final climax begins in episode 21, you just know it's going to be a long, drawn-out affair, and so it is.
The way it's done leaves very little to write about, to be honest, as it's just a very long battle sequence. It's broken into segments as different people and creatures join the battle, are defeated or leave, and a new section of the fight begins. Rinse, repeat, until the end of episode 23, with the odds just getting higher and higher as the sequence progresses. Love giant robot battles? Then there's a lot of appeal here, although for me the experience was spoiled by the general way in which Godannar portrays itself. I've touched on this before, but let's try and really explain it...
Giant robot shows, from the subset of them I've seen, come in two types: those that take themselves seriously (eg Patlabor), and those that don't (eg Gravion). Godannar tries to straddle the two - it has the visual style and comic cues of a lighthearted, comedy-focussed show, but the story and the emotions underlying it are more suited for a serious show. Instead of meshing to create something really enjoyable, the two aspects of the show just clash horribly, and give the show a feeling that it has ideas above its station. So we get a climax with lots of brightly-coloured giants and jiggly breasts, dealing with issues of real threat, and of death and destruction, and it just doesn't fit. For me, at least. (Yes, I know this seems to clash with how well I enjoyed the almost-entirely-serious volume 5, but I'm allowed the occasional inconsistency.)
So, yeah. Robots & beasts fight, stuff happens, and it drags out for long enough that we're not going to get a resolution until somewhere on volume 7. Will the mimetic beasts be defeated? Probably. Wil Goh succumb to the insania virus? Almost certainly. Will love save the day? Who can tell - but the Theory of Plot Predictability says that yes, it probably will. To be honest, I'm not really caring either way. Just let it end...
On the plus side, the fighting is well choreographed and there is some enjoyment to be had from watching all the action, and a few fun little revelations along the way, but they're really about the only saving points. Your mileage may, of course, vary. For now, roll on the final volume - and please, let it be a little more than just fighting...
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