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Written by maehara
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Thursday, 07 August 2008 16:00 |
 It's the return of Gun×Sword in collected form, featuring my favourite girl with a gun and man with a sword. Of sorts. Wendy Garret and Van Insert-Name-Here are both seeking the same person a man ominously named The Claw and so Wendy decides to tag along with the man with a mecha. It's a sensible idea, but it takes a while for Van to learn to live with her, while the Claw has far bigger plans to worry about than the ragtag band that soon forms around Van and Wendy...
That "Insert-Name-Here" is quite deliberate, by the way - Van changes his surname of choice quite often, depending on his mood. He's not your average outlaw type with a sword made of a strange flowing metal and the ability to call a huge mecha (or Armor, as this series calls them) down from an orbiting station when the need arises, he's quite a capable little trouble-shooter. His aim is to take vengeance for the death of his fiancé, who was killed by The Claw. Van's Armor is the impressively-powerful Dann dropped to the surface from orbit whenever Van calls on it, Dann's capable of turning any battle into a one-sided walkover, although Van tends not to call on it until it's absolutely necessary.
The same mysterious clawed man seems to have been responsible for the disappearance of Wendy's older brother, so when Van proves his fighting skills by saving Evergreen from the Wild Bunch, Wendy decides he's her best chance of tracking down her brother and tags along. Van's initially reluctant to let her, but she's a persistent wee thing and over the course of the first four episodes he begins to get used to her presence. Wendy's not much use in a fight she may carry a gun, but it's only got one bullet and she's never had to use it yet but she fills the role of the voice of Van's conscience very well, as well as being quite useful for other, more domestic reasons.
This early episodes feel a lot like the early episodes of Trigun, to be honest, as Van and Wendy travel from town to city to village across Endless Illusion, their home planet, looking for clues to the location of the clawed man and invariably running into a string of problems along the way. The tone of the story is generally lighter, though (episode 3 pokes a lot of fun at the sentai / Power Rangers genre, for example, while episode 2 features an army of villains with living moustaches), although Van himself has the feel of someone whose past is weighing him down, and who has had to pay a price for the power that being able to call on Dann gives him.
The series is capable of throwing more serious stories into the mix, too, especially when dealing with the clawed man. Van and Wendy aren't the only people searching for him, and as Van meets and helps more people, so he gathers a band of allies around him that will help him achieve his aim. The Trigun comparision comes in again here, in the way the humour drained out of that series as Vash got closer to Knives Gun×Sword goes down a similar route, and that's no bad thing.
Even before you get to 'meet' the Claw, his handiwork is strewn around the storyline. One other enemy he has is Ray Lundgren, who like Van is determined to track down the Claw and avenge the death of his wife. Hes become quite the twisted one and has allowed his desire to vengeance to completely take over his life, to an even greater extent than Van has, and the result is an instant rivalry between the two Ray is determined to be the one to kill the Claw, and hes quite prepared to kill Van to make sure he gets his wish, despite Vans suggestion that they should really be working together. The two seem destined to meet many more times along the way, especially after Rays little brother Joshua joins up with Van and Wendy - Joshua has seen his brother turn from a kind and caring person into something completely different, and is looking for a way to persuade Ray to come home and return to normal life. This relationship, and some other stories where the 'conflict' is more characters messing with each others' heads, show that Gun×Sword doesnt just concentrate on the Armor action (although theres plenty of that here too, in every episode) - there's a good balance struck with other forms of conflict, and that makes the show more enjoyable.
When he finally appears, The Claw is a strange character from the way hes been built up throughout the series as a remorseless killer, I had a particular image of him built up in my mind (and the early versions of the opening credits that just showed him in outline reinforced that image), but seeing him and hearing him speak gives a completely different image, to the point where a part of me initially wondered if he really is was evil as he had been made out to be. The answer to that is open to interpretation, and having seen the full series I'd say that no, he wasn't (just seriously misguided) but having him presented in a way that paints him in shades of grey rather than as a cookie-cutter badguy was definitely a good move.
The Claw comes with his own band of henchmen, of course - sadly, most of them play to standard anime stereotypes, leaving us with a bunch of cookie-cutter characters with cookie-cutter motivations who you cant really get worked up about. The exceptions are Michael (Wendy's brother, which immediately introduces a problem for her to deal with) and Fasalina (a deliciously evil, positively seductive villainess who knows just how to manipulate men and at times seems to have more influence over the Claw that you'd maybe expect), who fittingly present Van's gang with their stiffest challenges along the road to defeating the Claw.
The final three episodes of the series are pretty much non-stop action scenes, where all the main characters get to play their part to some extent or another, and where both sides get their fair share of success and defeat. If you're looking for character-based scenes here, you'll probably be disappointed, as they're contained to a short epilogue sequence towards the end of episode 26 that tries to redeem some characters but that, in keeping with the theme of the final fight between Van and the Claw, leaves most of the characters short of being able to live out their dreams. The real theme here seems to be that you can't always get what you want, so there's a certain bittersweet feel to how events play out, but at the end of the day everything is properly tied up in a way that's very satisfying to watch.
I have to say a bit about the way Endless Illusion is portrayed on screen. In many anime series, you take a world away from Earth and it's given a single look jungle, desert, whatever, there's often very little change from one location to another. In Gun×Sword, every location has its own unique hooks, and a lot of effort seems to have gone into creating the visuals. The character designs have also been very nicely realised, and the end result is a show that is a real visual treat.
Gun×Sword is thoroughly enjoyable throughout, and while not all the main characters get what they want following final confrontations, the series ends in a way that leaves nothing left unanswered and that shouldn't leave anyone with too much cause for complaint. In an ideal world, a little more character work and a little less fighting would have been nice, but at the end of the day the series has done what it set out to do, and in the process produced a show that's well worth picking up.
Watch video clips for this release: Clip 1 | Clip 2 | Clip 3
For full episode summaries and screenshots, check out our reviews of the original discs:
» Volume 1: Endless Illusion
» Volume 2: Abandoned Past
» Volume 3: Separate Ways
» Volume 4: Fallen Knights
» Volume 5: Tainted Innocence
» Volume 6: Lost Prayers
» Volume 7: Last Rites
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