Opening Songs
OP 1 - Crowds (White Ash)
Ending Songs
ED 1 - Innocent Note (Maaya Uchida)
Genre: Action, Science Fiction
Episodes: 12
When it comes to hero type animes...I'm not too big of a fan of them. "Gatchaman Crowds" belongs to this genre, with characters transforming into "Kamen Rider" esque beings that kick all sorts of alien ass. Normally I would be against watching these kind of shows, but "Gatchaman Crowds" drew me in from the very beginning. While its primary concept and designs may be commonly overused, a brilliant cast of characters make it a rather enjoyable series from start to finish. Combined with excellent CG animations and good fight scenes, you're in a fun (but short) ride. Its definetely not the best thing ever, but its still something you can marvel at when its at its best. Still, it being short plagues it with some issues that you'll see almost everyday with common anime archetypes, so you might have to deal with that.
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| Just cuz Hajime is so f**king adorable! |
The opening song is "Crowds" by White Ash, and its got to be one of the most addicting songs I've heard in a long time. Its catchy as hell, the vocals are crude and amazing at the same time. It gives off this huge vibe of awesomeness and badassery...its really hard not to like it. The ending theme is a disappointing average one, its "Innocent Note" by Maaya Uchida. Its your very standard affair of a slow song, with a little bit of jumps here and there to up its tempo. Nothing too special here.
Rating: 7.5/10
Its does its job well when it counts. The story is pretty boring and generic at first but quickly ramps up into something pretty good right towards the end. However, the story isn't exactly its best point, its the characters that take part in it. Almost everyone is likable and is awesome in some way or another, except for a couple of stereotypes here and there. Though there isn't much in terms of character development, its the way that the characters are presented that makes them awesome...especially our egoistic female lead. While the animation by itself is already somewhat above average, the CG animations where the characters turn into their "Gatchaman" selves are downright magnificent. Its a pity though that the actual awesome fight scenes only come towards the end of the show.
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| Gatcha! Mother f**kers! |
Ichinose Hajime is just your everyday normal high school girl whose just cheery as f**k. She remains cheerful as a shining star of her classmates, with everyone knowing her one way or another. There's one thing that she was always crazy about, and that's notebooks. She keeps different kinds of notebooks all around her, even going as far as giving them names. She meets a strange man one day known as JJ, and she gives Hajime the power of the "Gatchaman". Of course, Hajime has no idea what that is, until she runs into an armored individual chasing down a strange floating being in the middle of the street. It seems like only she could see what was going on. When the floating being was defeated and the armored individual revealed, she realized that he was Sugane, one of her senpais in school. After Sugane is done explaining the existence of the "Gatchaman", Hajime finds herself in a group with a fate that she would have never expected.
With a season 2 looming over us soon enough, "Gatchaman Crowds" seems like something promising that we could invest some time into. If they explained some of the stuff that happened in season 1 over at season 2, I could see this becoming somewhat of a ongoing thing when the time comes. Just make sure you scream "Gatcha!" when we finally get season 2.
Peace.
