We don’t have to listen to him! He’s not a main character! Heck, he’s not even a supporting character!
- Last week, the Gatchaman were rounding up the Neo-Hundred and protecting the city from their wrath.
- Summary: Now that Rui has gained control of the GALAX again, he starts using it for good. But first, O.D finally confronts Katze, and he is able to “spread his wings”. He is able to momentarily stop Katze, but gets horribly wounded in the process. He then summons enough strength to deliver Rui his NOTE. Rui then encourages everyone to use the CROWDS app to help stop the Neo-Hundred from their rampage. He turns it into a game to encourage participation, and his plan starts working immediately. After the threat of the Neo-Hundred has been neutralized, Katze recovers from his fight with O.D and goes to witness what has become of the city. To his shock, people are using the CROWDS for good, and he disappears. As the episode ends, we flash forward to 2016, one year in the future, where X helps the prime minister connect to the people, and Katze has been trapped inside Hajime’s NOTE so she can stop him from causing further damage, much to his dismay.
Why, this is the greatest potential destruction our fair city has ever seen!
- My Take: Here we are! The epic conclusion! And it’s…underwhelming. I mean, for a series whose strong point was the diversity in all the Gatchaman team members, it really didn’t showcase any of the characters we’ve come to know and love. Come to think of it, was Joe even in this episode? He had such an interesting character arc between the seventh episode and the eleventh episode, and now he’s nowhere to be found? And Paiman had only a couple of lines! Utsu-Tsu is only seen momentarily…why didn’t we see more of these characters?
So this is what the all-powerful Berg-Katze has resorted to? Rumors? Well, it’s worth a shot
- O.D has finally spreads his wings! I love that… but he was only in the episode for, I don’t know, two minutes? I was expecting the epic showdown between Katze and O.D to be on the same level as the battle all the Gatchaman had with Katze in episode 7, you know, where that battle took up the majority of the episode? I see that as wasted potential, seeing as episode 7 was by far one of the best in the series. Also, what happened to O.D after he delivered the NOTE to Rui?! I need to know! He’s my favorite character… I need closure!
- Look how far we’ve come; in the beginning, I did a heavy amount of speculation as to what Rui’s character arc would be like. Now that we’re finished, it’s interesting to see how much he grew. At first, he was an idealistic dreamer who wanted to change the world through his very specific vision. Now, he’s open to new ideas and has a better clue on how to use the technology he controls for the betterment of society. Although we didn’t see a lot of the other characters in this finale, I’m glad that we caught up with Rui to see how much he changed.
- Maybe the problem with this finale was how much content was expected to be put into it. The amount of questions I’ve accumulated over the series probably couldn’t have been answered in a short, 20 minute episode. That’s a shame, because the buildup to this moment was intense.
- But in the end, there are just so many unanswered questions I have! Some of them include:
- What happened to O.D? Is he alive after his altercation with Katze?
- O.D offers little to his backstory, but none of it is known! Where did he come from? How did Katze destroy his planet?
- Where is Paiman from? What’s his story?
Don’t you just hate it when your body shouts profanities at you?
- Sorry, but this was a pretty disappointing finale. However, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good episode. I just don’t think it was the best way to wrap up this outstanding series. We need a better, more thorough wrap-up of this series, or better yet, a continuation.
Series Review
If you were given the ability and responsibility to protect Earth, how would you go about doing it? Would you use brute force? Superior intellect? Diplomacy? All of these could be employed, but Gatchaman Crowds shows us that sometimes heroes have to think outside the box of “conventional defense tactics” to get the job done.
Gatchaman Crowds is about a group of hand-picked protectors who defend the Earth against mysterious aliens. Yes, it sounds like roughly 97% of all sci-fi related works, but this anime is just diverse enough to seem fresh and new while still employing tactics and archetypes from the genre. We have it all here; the absent-minded yet well-intentioned protagonist, the mysterious dreamer whose power comes from his vast intellect, and a condescending alien who looks down on human life and wants to destroy it. I can recognize these as massive archetypes of both anime and sci-fi, but that doesn’t bother me. It’s just done that well.
That’s not to say this anime is perfect. Some characters weren’t fleshed out enough, and some didn’t offer much to the table. Even with a team consisting of only 6 members, I feel that I only really got to know three of them; Hajime, Paiman, and Sugane. The other three (Joe, O.D, and Utsu-tsu) had enough development to make them interesting every time they made an appearance, but it was harder to get as invested in what they did because a great deal of their backstories weren’t told to us, or even implied. I know that a series like this can’t go into all of the specific details for every character, but I feel it could have given us more depth than it did.
Although the character development was a bit lacking, the plot, action, and dialog were all spot on. The ways the characters had to deal with every set of obstacles that kept on being thrust upon them felt realistic and logical. Even the outlandish parts of the show with the CROWDS and the thought of “changing the world for the better” were used in a very realistic and compelling way.
There is a lot to love in this series, and probably the most appealing characteristic of Gatchaman Crowds is the phenomenal art style. I don’t recall any anime I’ve seen that uses an art style as unique and vibrant as this one. So this anime wasn’t only a pleasure to watch, it was also just a pleasure to look at.
So it seems that this anime completely blindsided me! At the start, I didn’t much care for the plot nor the character of Hajime. However, I now see the plot as surprisingly deep and I view Hajime as being one of the most intriguing and mysterious protagonists I’ve seen in quite a while. Gatchaman Crowds was a ton of fun from beginning to end, and while the end was unsatisfying, I would recommend you check the show out.
The end? But all my unanswered questions…
