Director: Ei Aoki
Starring: Kaoru Mizuhara, Alexis Tipton, Minori Chihara, Leah Clark,
Running Time: 300 minutes
Certificate: 15
Extras: Location Scouting 6 Part Series
The first episode of GA-REI-ZERO opens like a film; there’s no fist-pumping theme tune to get the audience involved, instead only the credits layered over the opening in a simple fashion. The show launches directly into the main story with zero exposition. The mythology is allowed to unravel organically throughout the course of the episode. This is a pretty decent tactic considering the story is your usual superhumans vs. demon plot. Unlike many shows, these fighters are a dedicated government agency with high-tech gear and awesome weapons. As the first episode comes to a close, it becomes apparent that the characters we would assume are the protagonists are not exactly that, and director Aoki and his team have done well to craft a hoodwinking opener. Just as it begun, an end theme is also absent, with nothing but the atmospheric cracking of fire heard.
After an unforgettable introduction, we’re then introduced to the main story. GA-REI-ZERO follows two girls destined to fight demons, who eventually become great enemies. The non-sequential narrative charts the highs and lows of how these two girls became closer than sisters. It’s quite a jarring change of pace from the first episode, and becomes more reliant on emotion and characterisation than action. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does leave the show simply trying to catch up with how it began. The high school dramatics have also been played out in other tales and it takes a while to get going.
The action is forever chaperoned by frank and bloody violence. The earlier scenes of blood spraying and limb-lopping is in vast contrast with the cheery relationship seen later on. This use of unforgettable violence means that the love between the two girls is forever tainted in our eyes, with an unenviable feeling of tragedy. The dramatic irony of knowing their future, makes it ever the more heartbreaking throughout.
The vast cityscapes are captured beautifully, and are always alive with action. The buildings, motorways, and bright lights are all animated with a confidence usually reserved for lead characters. The action sequences are aided greatly by the design of the surroundings, but there are some CG creatures that don’t quite blend with their backgrounds. This is forgivable in parts, as they are creatures from another world. Going back and working its way towards the events of the first episode is both this show’s strength and curse. It’s a blistering action series at times, but mostly a monotonous angsty teen drama.
EXTRAS: Extras include a six-part location scouting series, with each episode clocking in at around 20 minutes. These go some way to showing why the locales in the show are a mesmerising highpoint of the series. Knowing what we see in the anime is in some way inspired by real settings, adds to the excitement during destructive scenes.
GA-REI-ZERO: COLLECTION is released on DVD on 22nd April via MVM.
