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Directed by: Katsuhito Akiyama
Produced by: AIC
The year is 2085
and mankind’s battle against the robotic MME’s is almost over.
Most of earth’s surviving population evacuated to Mars only the
toughest and most resourceful freedom fighters remain to fight a futile
guerrilla war.
In the bombed-out wastelands of Australia, Sandy Newman and her rag tag
squad are the last hopes to defeat the foe.
Regarding design New
Gall Force isn’t the most original anime out there. The characters are
your standard run of the mill anime folks; all the stereotypes are here the
clumsy kid, the strong silent mercenary type, the fearless heroine with a heart
of gold etc. etc.
As for the mechanical end of things all of the vehicles look like
something out of Shirow Masamune manga while the weapons and architecture
reminded me of AKIRA.
What it lacks in originality it more then makes up for in heart and charm
alone. I
was surprised by the feel good factor of this anime although the issues it deals
with are not exactly sunshine and bunnies the overall outcome of the plot brings
a smile to one’s face.
The message is of course [as with most war based anime] “Don’t kill
each other it’s not nice” of course this message is conveyed in amore
elaborate way during the course of the series but that’s the gist of it for
you.
The animation is
solid however it does cut some corners in order to manage the budget to a better
degree. Spacious
shots are often avoided by the director unless absolutely necessary.
On top of this a lot of the backgrounds are completely static and fail to
impress but in a sense although it looks lazy in the end it helps the animators
spend more time on character movement and interaction.
This is something that I was thankful for because the English script aint
the best thing going round and it is important to pick up on characters emotions
through body language rather than dull voice acting.
The voice acting isn’t always dull though and some points it can be humorous beyond the bounds of what is humanly believable. This is because the Manga Entertainment voice director decided that the voices of the robots should be done by the Darlecs from Doctor Who. This takes away from serious situations turning them into comic relief affairs. Which is disappointing considering it would have been easy to fix if the Japanese dub was included on the DVD however it’s not. The music on show isn’t he worst thing you’ll ever hear but by no means is it the best either. In fact it feels lazy and without much soul even the poignant moments are ruined by out of date synthesiser effects [c’mon lads it’s the 1990's] this aids the bad robot dubbing in its quest to drop the score of this OVA down yet again.
New Gall Force may not have many original ideas in terms of characters and plot however it executes its stolen bits and pieces in a way that makes the series likeable and inoffensive on the most part. Let down by hammy voice acting and a below average musical score New Gall Force suffers for all the wrong reasons however it still manages to be easy to watch and even easier to enjoy and so that’s why you can see a six and not a five below this text.
Six out of Ten
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A brief footnote, although the hyperlink you clicked on to bring you to this review was green the series does contain some mild violence and swearing. However kids should still enjoy it as it's an easy series to watch and the story isn't too complicated.
