| This anime started off with an engrossing, fascinating premise: Brandon Heat (Gungrave) was back from the dead and he was going to take revenge on his mortal enemy, Harry McDowell (head of Millennion).
Beginning in the middle, Pulp Fiction style, Gungrave saves a young girl and a scientist from strange screeching monsters. He is the undead, gun wielding, one-eyed, gray haired man who sits in stasis, waiting to be revived.
Extensive flashbacks explore the rest of this anime.
Harry and Brandon are childhood friends from an orphanage, street urchins, gang members, who ascend up a murderous, predatory, food chain. As with street violence what begins with fists ends with guns and lots and lots of dead people.
There are three storylines here: Millennion uses near-indestructable dead as its agents; an organization run by a meglomaniacal psychopath grows malignantly corrupt and destroys everyone and everything in its path; and missed opportunities with the right love and the wrong friends.
This anime is violent, but the killing does nothing for the story line. I felt at some point the writers forgot what the story was about - the quality of the production wasn't as good halfway through.
Plenty of other stories regarding revenge were better written and executed.
Gungrave started out promising, but somewhere along the line EVERYONE ends up dead.
Wassup wit dat? |