gdMen

GudaGuda is one of the weirdest series of anime I had the pleasure to watch. They’re always weird, wacky and cheap but most of all they’re genuine and laid back. Hell, how often do you watch comedy anime that have actual adlib segments or embrace their low production values and use it for laughs? Those two are some of the staples for this franchise and unfortunately it’s not for everybody.

With that said GDMen is perhaps one of the weaker shows in the series. It still has all the staples but the focus of jokes and tone shifted a bit from casual discussions with absurd non-squirts ... to a slightly more focused story about characters that embody anime archetypes going on a mission to save the princess. Naturally it’s choke full of parodies of shonen, from a paranoid princess that sees kidnapping as little more than a dating opportunity to a fired up youthful protagonist whose hopes for a hot blooded adventured get curbed with every opportunity.

It sounds good on paper and I personally did get quite a few good laughs but like with all comedy your mileage might vary. There’s no denying that rapid fire of references to other shows in GDMen can get quite stale and self-awareness doesn’t always lead to the most witty humour but luckily it doesn’t dwell on any one segment for too long. Thanks to good pacing each 12 minutes episode felt like it was over in a flash and sometimes just left me wanting more.

With how harmless and quirky this show is I think it would be worth your time to give it a quick little try. Though you’re probably better off checking out GdGdFairies.

A spin-off that unfortunately pales in comparison to the original.

After finishing watching gdgd Fairies I was delighted to hear shortly after that a spin-off with male characters would come out. With each episode that then came out my excitement dipped as the things I hoped to see come out of this series did not transpire. This review will compare both series.

Both are intended as pure comedy series. Story does not matter, though I welcomed the attempt at having a running theme, though I wish it was more appropriately used instead of being forced most of the time. A lot of the jokes I felt failed ... to land, nor did they have a good set-up. The scripted segments felt bland and the improv sections even flatter. I was willing to cut some slack for the VAs since I assumed their ad-lib would improve over time, but it did not.

The series lacks the crazy, bizarre atmosphere of the original. The characters in gdMen felt boring and unrelatable. Some of the jokes relied WAY too much on throwing in random references just for the sake of it. When the original series used references it was often part of a much larger, grander joke, or is simply thrown in right before the OP.

I really wanted to like this series, but it failed. Please consider watching the original instead.