Oh hi babe, look what I brought!
THIS PIECE OF SHI-
So today we are going to be talking about
an anime that has defined expectations.
An anime that is universally known, and almost as universally revered and feared.
When me and my good friend Abhi first sat down and listed out possible anime to talk
about for a potential Review Week of Awful, I did what any inspiring video creator would do.
I went to Google.
Which honestly wasn’t as useful as you think.
When you search “What is the worst anime ever” on the internet you’ll get a lot
of false positives.
Some shows that really aren’t all that bad but all it takes is a few very vocal people
and suddenly it’s what shows up in search.
I REALZE I’M ONE OF THESE PEOPLE.
But even through the trash and the half-decent shows toted around as the worst ever there
was one... that was constantly mentioned, even if as just a Honorable Mention.
I am of course talking about the sh**-stain that is Garzey's Wing.
Garzey's Wing is a 3 episode OAV series from 1996 it is a fantasy story from the mind of
legendary anime creator Yoshiyuki Tomino, the creator of such famous works like
Xabungle Graffiti
Overman King Gainer, and
And I’ve avoided it for the longest time, because prior to actually witnessing it myself
I figured: It’s known well enough already!
I’m sure that what's needed to be said about it has been said before by others so
I might as well save myself the trouble and skip it.
But now that I’ve watched it, I feel like all the hate, all the discussions,
all the mentions of it possibly being the worst anime ever, all the convention audiences
who laughed in disgust (I hope) alongside one another at showings of this series….
It honestly wasn't enough.
And hell I’ve dug this far deep into utter garbage this week already so why not, IN FOR
A PENNEY IN FOR A POUND I SAY!
So what is Garzry’s Wing actually about?
Well it's
Actually hold on a second.
Ok I’m good.
Garzey’s Wing is about a half Japanese guy named CHRIS.
Who after blowing off his girlfriend gets his immortal soul sucked into the sky off
his bike by a incorporeal duck because of some magical ancient bell thing he wears.
He’s brought to a fantasy world by a slave tribe at the apparent behest of its spiritual leader and is now
expected to be their holy warrior and fight for the survival against some generic elite
fantasy bad guys on dragon back who just can’t understand why these ungrateful peasants are
revolting against them.
I don't know, maybe it has to do with the
SALVERY
Aided by a few female warriors, glowing wings on his feet, and a little fairy, companion
because after Berserk and Zelda that’s a requirement of Japanese Fantasy in
the 90’s.
CHRIS now uses he’s superior knowledge of his modern society to help defeat the elites
and save this tribe from their fate as slaves.
Now that sounds pretty basic, nothing really special.
But there is one aspect that’s actually quite interesting.
When CHRIS was dragged up into the sky by the fat bird, this in effect only just made a copy
of CHRIS and still left a version of himself back home.
So now there's two of them.
and they can apparently telepathically talk to one another and share information, hence why CHRIS
suddenly gains knowledge about gunpowder and other military tactics, he has his Tokyo self just
look it up in a book.
It’s honestly an extremely interesting plot element that I enjoyed the inclusion of.
IF ONLY THE REST OF IT MAKE ANY GOD DAMN SEN-
A lot of the plot of this series sounds great
on paper, which is probably how it eventually got made and even licensed down the line,
but the problem is with the execution.
Much of its plot is told through exposition.
Characters can’t just make simple observations that are later explained though context.
No, they instead have to sound like experts on everything explaining every second of their
lives to the world like everyone else is 1000x times less intelligent then they are.
What’s worse is that this expanded exposition heavy dialogue doesn’t even help
explain things, it just makes it worse.
"Shiratori? This must be the place where Yamato-Takeru-no-Mikoto came down from the sky."
"WHA-WHAT THE HECK IS THIS NOW?!?!"
What the hell does that even mean?
What’s a Yamoto-Takeru-no-Mikoto?
Why do you know of it, what happened where it landed?
Why does an event in Tokyo even matter when 90% of the show takes place in
the alternate fantasy universe?
It reminded me a lot of the Escaflowne film, where exposition was commonplace as a way
to explain to people who had no idea what was going on why they should care.
Difference being that Escaflowne had a TV series backing up its lore, and honestly Yoko
Kanno’s soundtrack made the film worth watching for that alone.
Here though?
None of that.
Well no actually, to be fair that’s a lie, the whole thing is actually related to an anime series
that Tomino created back in the early 80’s Aura Battler Dunbine, which ran for 49 episodes
and apparently takes place in the same universe, though some 700 years previous.
Having said that though the narrative ties between the two projects are tenuous at best,
with you know Dunbine being at least half decent and honestly even knowing the story
of Dunbine will not really make a lick of difference in trying to get a handle on what
Garzy’s Wing is trying to do here.
There are a few shining bright moments however.
If you look up this series online and have a gander at screenshots you might be
forgiven for thinking that the animation is good considering the time it was made.
To wit, the character designs and the background of this series IS indeed very well done, but
the actual ANIMATION of the series is abysmal by comparison.
I made a comment in my video of Mars of Destruction that the animation of that series was like if
someone just manipulated an image across the frame in a video editor, but I thought
I was exaggerating and didn’t expect TO SEE THAT ACTUALLY HAPPEN.
The amount of animation cell panning in this series is just…..
*Screams of Agony*
And you know I’ve been pretty harsh so far, but really as bad as everything has been,
the animation, the exposition and the like, as bad as all that is, it really only made
me feel like this OAV, to this point, was a below average production.
Like if 5/10 is perfectly average, this is like a 3, or a 4 if you want to be generous.
But there’s one last thing, you may have noticed, that drops this down to a solid 1
if not lower.
The Dub.
Like I already complained about the dialogue being exposition heavy, but I assure you it
is so much worse when that dialogue is presented to you by one of the most wooden, un-emotional,
and grating dubs I’ve had the displeasure of listening to.
It felt like half these actors where only here because someone threw them into the booth,
put a gun to their head and told them to read the lines.
I almost feel bad for the dub makers though, because it’s not as if the material they
were handed was golden or anything.
They were handed trash and reciprocated in kind.
To the dubs credit, I guess, the horrible dub actually makes this series more noteworthy
here in the west.
When before I found myself almost falling asleep at watching this series with subs,
now with the dub I’m wide awake trying to fully understand what it is I am listening
to and why I am listening to it.
The dub almost pushes this series into a “So bad it’s good” kind of territory.
You want to show people, right? Not because of how good it is but just because of how BAD
it is.
But regardless it’s still one of the least directed, most hastily developed dubs in my memory.
To me though, Garzry’s Wing is
like the Star Wars prequels, give a creative mind absolute control, don’t have someone
around to tell him “You know, maybe that’s a bad idea” and let them do their thing damn
the result.
Garzey’s Wing is “The Room” of anime, it is a mess of a fantasy story told with
so many cliché tropes that the few actual unique and interesting ideas get drowned out
in the wave of utter crap.
It is a made anime made worse by the star power attached to it and someone’s probably
“GENIOUS” idea that because it’s a Tomino work it’s like a money printer, which is
why it got brought over and dubbed here in North America instead of staying at the bottom
of the disease ridden barrel of unmentionable anime next to Mars of Destruction where it
belonged.
I just wish I had an answer to like one or two things, and I wish these things were properly
conveyed in the actual series itself, not something I have to try and parse together
after the fact.
One at the end of it all, what’s the point?
It’s not as if Chris makes it home, Spoilers by the way, so he’s just what, supposed
to be separated between two worlds for all of eternity?
Second thing, Who the f**k is Garzry?
I can at least have some bright sides though, as bad as this was it didn’t begin a downwards
spiral in Tomino’s Carrier or anything.
Hell, 3 years later he went on to create my favourite Gundam series ever in Turn A, but
it really just goes to show that you can’t expect gold from someone all the time.
Eventually they will have some duds, and that’s ok, at the very least we can watch this series
and laugh?
Even if it’s to drown out cries of despair.
If it’s not obvious by this point Garzry’s Wing gets a fuck it rating from me.
Though honestly I would never tell someone not to watch it.
Like don’t go out of your way obviously and I would say to not watch it alone, bring
someone with you to share the pain, at least then you might have some good memories to
take from the experience.
As far as alternate recommendations, well like with many things in this Review Week
of Awful I feel like saying literally ANYTHING ELSE is sufficient enough, but ok if you want
a series of the same sort of ilk but you know actually GOOD, start off with Visions of Escaflowne,
I mentioned the film version of Escaflowne earlier but honestly the TV series is where
you should start.
Just try to avoid the original dub for the series if you can, while it’s not as bad
as Garzey it’s still not great.
Funimation recently did a re-dub though that’s leagues ahead of the original in quality to
check that out, or you know the sub works too.
Second recommendation because why the hell not at this point is the English Dub of Ghost
Stories, an example of a dub that makes mediocre content comedy gold.
Between those you should hopefully find something to your liking.
and that's it from me. Please subscribe if you liked the video, follow me on twitter if you feel so inclined, and hey!
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As always a major thank you to all of my patrons who support these videos! Because without I would not
be sitting here watching this crap!
I would have had another job.
Maybe better, probably worse, I don't know.
So thank you!
Specifically though I would like to thank, Victor Ekmark, Yunru Dovaqueen, Jacob Parkin
Joshua Garcia, Calhoonboy, Robert Chumsae, Siri Yamiko, and Bing Thio
for being espcially awesome! and until next time...
Stay frosty everyone!