Gunslinger Stratos The Animation

A.D. 2115—the island nation once called Japan is now known as the "17th Far East Imperial City Management District."

The citizens were promised a life of peace in exchange for some of the comfort they were used to having. People believed their lives would never change and tomorrow will be the same as today. No one suspected the impending doom which their society was about to face.

"Degradation"—a rare disease which led to the total disintegration of the human body to a mere pile of sand was slowly but surely spreading throughout the world.

Tohru Kazasumi, an ordinary student becomes embroiled in a multi universal battle between his world and the parallel world of "Frontier S (Stratos)." This meant that Tohru must fight himself from an alternate world.

Their futures collide as their paths cross.

Will both worlds ever find peace?

(Source: Aniplex USA)

Katagiri, Kyouka Main

Kanemoto, Hisako Japanese

Kazasumi, Tooru Main

Abe, Atsushi Japanese

Katagiri, Kyouma Main

Nishida, Masakazu Japanese

Odhner, Brian ing

Tezuka, Hideaki Japanese

Rindou, Shizune ing

Ueda, Kana Japanese

Dogma ing

Mochizuki, Rei Japanese

Mysterious Girl ing

Fujita, Akane Japanese

Odhner, Remy ing

Sawashiro, Miyuki Japanese

Ignatova, Lyudmila N. ing

Hayami, Saori Japanese

Kazasumi, Father ing

Kawashima, Tokuyoshi Japanese

Oowada, Tomoyuki Producer

Adachi, Kazuki Producer

Kitazawa, Shinichirou Producer

Ezaki, Shinpei Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Reviews

Jun 27, 2015

Arashifufu

Recommended

TL;DR : Really enjoyable show, but too much story into only 13 episodes. Characters not completely original with not a lot of character development. Fun fights and interesting story overall: involves time travelling and lots of guns.

I'll try to keep the spoilers to a minimum. The story is set in 2115, with our protagonist, a high school student, falling back into the past and witnessing a battle between some soldiers and their dopplegangers: he even meets himself from an alternate universe. Curiosity eventually makes him in the battle to save the world and the story unfolds.

Story: 9/10

The story is really unique, but it might ... feel like a bit too much to fit into only 13 episodes. This is why some people think it all makes zero sense, but in fact it's really delicate and everything fits in perfectly. It picks up nicely from the beginning, it's really exciting, it doesn't lose steam throughout the series and has a nice solid ending, which I found quite enjoyable. All in all, it's great and flows really well, if not slightly rushed as to compensate for a large story but only 13 episodes.

Art: 8/10

I absolutely love the art and animation. It's smooth, pretty, shiny, colorful at times but also gloomy if the need arises. The combat looks great and explosive, especially the melee party. The only thing I found repetitive were the standard shooting scenes found in almost every episode, they might look a bit too generic. That, and the fact that the girl characters' lips look weird in my opinion. It's still a beautiful anime with a pretty dang neat opening.

Sound: 7/10

The opening theme is really good in my view, with the theme of the song fitting the entire show very well. The background music is enjoyable and it fits the occassions well, but it's not all that memorable. There's a great deal of variety and it's generally above average quality.

Characters: 7/10

While it's true that you can't fit much character development in only 13 episodes, Gunslinger Stratos still seems to fall a little bit short. Apart from the main character and the main female character, as well as their doubles, we don't get too see alot about the cast. This is a shame, as some were quite interesting, but some were pretty blank and stereotypical. The protagonist starts off maybe a bit boring and average, but over time he grows some balls.

Personal enjoyment: 9/10

I must it, I enjoyed this show quite a lot more than I expected to, especially about seeing so many negative reviews. Most of them are by people who don't even understand the plot, though. The characters are fresh, the fight scenes many and greatly animated, which is all backed by a really interesting story and decent music. It was really fun!

Overall: 8/10

Even if the show was great and I enjoyed it alot, delving a little bit deeper into the characters apart from Tohru and Kyoka is what's missing, as well as some more memorable music or scenes. What would do the show more good than anything else, though, are more episodes: if the same story was spread over 24 episodes, things could have been explained better and there wouldn't be a feel of a constant rush.

I recommend the show to any SCI-FI and/or time-travel lovers, but to everyone else as well, since it was quite an enjoyable watch for me.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jun 23, 2015

La_Matona301

Mixed Feelings

Well, all well and ends well, so how do I put this up?

Ok, so now another sci-fi, action packed with the side of romance anime has just ended, and according to a lot of MAL s who made a review of this anime , almost most gave it a 6, so let go over each of this anime's category.

Story

Ok, the story maybe the run of the mill invaders from another dimension who would like to destroy the world, but then again this is one usual invaders from another dimension where the antagonist are the doppelgangers of the protagonist that they're fighting....if you can call it ... that way. Also, the story presents a plot where their is another antagonist and the climax was that the two opposing alternate selves have to team up to defeat it. Also, on the romance side it was good that their was no harem who would compete for the MC's affection rather it was a childhood friend whom the MC had a good relationship at the start of the anime

My verdict: a good 7


Art

It was still the run of the mill situation where the character are a little too overdress for the occasion, ok so I could have forgiven the school uniform ....just a little , but the attire where the characters from the management realm looking like that they're going to a party was just too over the top, and what's with Kyouma's attire anyways, he looks like an Elvis impersonator. Only the character from the Frontier S realm were dress for the occasion, that will prevent me from giving this category a 2, plus the fact that the anime didn't rely on the fanservice to sell, so.

My verdict: a poor 3


Sound

My verdict: a mediocre 5, since I have no comment on the op, ed and the VA's who did the characters voices.

Character

I not gonna focus on any specific character since one can't defined one without involving it's doppelganger ( if I can call it that), but instead I could say that the character's fighting their alternate selves was really something else to say the least . The reality was that the real character wasn't the character themselves but the girl who showed up to Tooru , and how she was responsible for the chaos that has happen between the two worlds, also it was the relationship between Tooru and Kyouka that has more impact in this anime's overall.


My verdict: A Very Good 8.


Enjoyment

It was always enjoyable when you see the two selves from different dimension duking out with each other, because it in a different form, I just don't see any reason why this anime can't be that good.

My verdict: a good 7.

Overall

The setting maybe the usual, it may have presented a good character portrayals, the romance between Tooru and Kyouka maybe good since there was no harem to competed for Kyouka's feelings for Tooru, but the fact that the ending didn't have that much of an impact where it even violates Einstein theory of relativity, since the good Tooru have decide to destroy the cube things would have reverted to normal, instead we see a lame ending where are still a few of the Time keepers still causing troubles, if the cube has been destroyed then they should have been destroyed with it, also those who have died should be alive, well I can't blame studio A-1 Pictures for it's lame action on the anime, just go watch and judge it



So, my verdict: a fair 6.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jun 23, 2015

Link_of_Hyrule

Not Recommended

**SPOILER FREE REVIEW**

Let’s face it: There are a LOT of bad anime out there. Despite that fact, 99% of anime created over the course human history have at least some sort of redeeming quality. It doesn’t matter how incoherent the plot is, how god-awful the characters are, how piss poor the animation is, or how maddeningly awful the sound effects are; there is almost always SOMETHING that you can take away from a show. Maybe the art style is pleasant. Maybe that comedic relief character was actually funny occasionally. Or maybe the show just provided some mindless fun at times. However, once in a blue ... moon, you may stumble across a special show that falls into that remaining 1%. A show that quite literally could not be worse than it already is. A show that lacks so much as a single redeeming quality. A show that is so awful, it feels like an accomplishment. Ladies and Gentleman; we have been gifted this season with one of those remarkable anomalies that defy all human comprehension. I present to you: Gunslinger Stratos. One of the worst anime of all time.

Synopsis: I have absolutely no idea. There are two parallel universes with completely arbitrary differences, the inhabitants fight each other for no reason whatsoever, and people turn into sand sometimes. I just don’t know.

So in case that synopsis didn’t clue you in, the biggest and most glaring problem that Gunslinger Stratos has is the fact that it makes NO sense. Usually anime that don’t make sense have a able script that was poorly executed or an awful script that was executed averagely. Not good ole’ Gunslinger Stratos though! Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING about this show’s writing and directing is an absolute disgrace. The plot, setting, and characters are all an absolute muddle of incompetence that leave you awestruck out of sheer incomprehensibility. It’s actually hard to believe that people who clearly don’t have the foggiest sense of even the most basic elements of storytelling were getting paid to animate this trash. Clearly there was some sort of conceptual story in place, but they could not have gone about conveying it to the viewers in a worse fashion. This show will info-dump and info-dump and info-dump and info-dump, yet you never actually learn anything. Each and every plot device introduced raises questions that demand answers, are extremely confusing and need far more fleshing out, and/or connect to nothing at all in the rest of the story. From beginning to end, it is entirely unclear to the viewer what is going on. I won’t go on so this doesn’t start to sound too much like a rant, but for all of these reasons, Gunslinger Stratos’ plot is among the worst of the worst. You would have to put forth a conscious effort to make something worse than this show’s story.

Continuing on with this anime’s theme of incompetence, the cast of characters are as boring as they come. Even some of the worst anime ever made have at least one character that qualifies as two dimensional, but Gunslinger Stratos can’t even muster as much as that. You could replace any given character of this show with a cardboard cutout and I probably wouldn’t notice the difference. Seriously, I can’t even go over what archetypes the cast fill because they aren’t even archetypes! They are NOTHING! I’m struggling to find so much as an ounce of personality in a single character to talk about here, and that should tell you all you need to know about the personas of Gunslinger Stratos.

That brings us to the presentation aspects of the show, which, while not quite as bad as the writing, are still not nearly up to scratch. Gunslinger Stratos will have one, maybe two well-composed scenes per episodes, and about five or six mind-bogglingly stupid shots that have no direction to them whatsoever. From beginning to end, the animation is incredibly inconsistent; the animation has so few frames that it looks like a flipbook at certain times, and those times far overshadow the very little good that this show has to offer. Overall, very poor animation. The music is equally as forgettable as the rest of the show. At least it fits the tone of the anime more often than not, but I counted one and only one song throughout the entirety of the show that I would consider to be good, and it only played during a single scene. It was hard to pay attention to the nuances of sound design when the rest of the show is so mind-numbingly awful, I suppose. Factoring in the below-average voice acting, I can say that the sound design is just plain bad.

There are only three possible explanations for the existence of a show like this: Incompetence, greed, or a combination of the two. I do not believe for a single, solitary second that anybody cared about the quality of this show. Not the animators, not the directors, not the writers. Strike that; I CANNOT believe that anybody cared about the quality of this show. There are simply too many glaring, immersion-breaking problems to be able to say that Gunslinger Stratos was put through even the slightest form of quality assurance. This anime is an ment. A 12 episode ment that even the most easily entertained of anime fans will be unable to follow. This is one of the worst anime of all time.

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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GIRLS WITH GUNS (Part 2)

by MainBattleTanks

45 Entries · 55 Restacks

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