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Ok, ok. You may have already seen this one as it was fairly widely released in the US. But that doesn’t detract from its loveliness. What does detract from its loveliness is the fact that it somehow ended up as a PS2 game. I’m still scratching my head over that one; done properly it could have turned out to be a tour-de-force, but ended up being a bit of a rote shooter. Nevertheless, the storyline (once it gets going) is a dystopian dream. Not, of course, the bits with all the shooting but rather the character development over the course of the series, which is on par with many of the longer running anime out there. Mafia controlled mega-corporations, human enhancement, gutter-punks rising to riches, all abound in Gungrave.

HaHA! English language release aggregated from a Vietnamese website! I love how the little buffering thing sez ‘Dang’. And surprisingly, they’ve got better embed code than almost all Western sites. Naturally the bit-rate isn’t perfect. But just bask in the irony while you’re waiting.

Unfortunately, like many series, this one does get away from itself towards the end. Though I’m pleased to note they maintain a self-referentiality towards the primary characters all the way through to the end. Beyond the glitz, tech, and absurd mutations it retains a certain humanism reminiscent of Cowboy Bebop.

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Tags: Aesthetiophilia, Videophilia // 1 Comment »