he early episodes of Gasaraki were complex, fast-paced and hard to follow, but they gradually introduced Yushiro Gowa and his immensely powerful family, the leaders of a project to introduce giant battle-suits (Tactical Armors, or TAs) into the Japanese military. As the series progresses, the storytelling gets much simpler, but the story itself only gets more complex. Kazukiyo Gowa, Yushiro's ambitious older brother, is forming a cabal of his own, working behind his family's back with a fanatic named Tushida, a traditionalist so disgusted at the corruption of modern Japan that he blinded himself with a sword to avoid seeing what was happening to his country. Tushida hopes to destroy Japan's democracy and replace it with a military dictatorship, and Kazukiyo seems to support him.
Meanwhile, two of Symbol's TAs enter Gowa City on a spying mission. One of the machines is piloted by Miharu, the young woman Yushiro has faced several times in battle and in visions. Hacking into a classified report on Yushiro, Miharu finds information claiming he died eight years ago. Shocked, she reveals this to him before departing. The Gowas launch a frantic search for the Symbol TAs, but Yushiro himself is interested only in finding out who he really is, and what became of the real Yushiro Gowa. Everyone he asks points him in a different direction, until he ends up at the old family site where he danced the Gasara, before Miharu interrupted him. There, he makes some surprising discoveries and encounters Miharu yet again.
Acting on orders from Symbol, Miharu attempts to capture him, but he evades her by dropping into a trance and activating an ancient organic battle-suit known as a kugai. Amid the thickening intrigue surrounding the Gowas, the SSDF, Symbol and assorted free agents and bit players, Yushiro comes to terms with the fact that he and Miharu are both pawns, granted the mysterious title of "kai," and caught up in a mystery that predates them both by many centuries. The two kais run off together to learn more, and are given a vision of a past life they shared, in an era where the kugais were the ultimate weapons of the Gasaraki and the people who served and summoned it.
Mysterious, mystical and meaty
The latest volume of Gasaraki is subtitled "Revelations," a name it certainly earns; ADV's long-delayed fifth disk proves worth the wait, as it finally starts clearing up some of the more baffling mysteries of this recondite mixture of mystery, fantasy, military drama, horror flick and science-fiction serial. By this time, the choppy montages, rotoscoping, computer tricks and unsettling point-of-view shots are all but gone; the art has become significantly more generic, and the series has morphed into something more straightforward, somewhere between Sanctuary and Neon Genesis Evangelion in visual design and narrative style. (Some scenes do matte real-life effects--actual fire, dripping water, etc.--over the animation, Ralph Bakshi style, but this is more irritating than novel.)
But what Gasaraki's lost in visual panache, it makes up for in sheer complexity. These DVDs try to clear up some of the more obscure factoids with a number of bonuses: glossaries, text interviews with the production staff, interactive production diagrams which include character bios and details, liner notes including maps and mechanical diagrams. The wealth of reference material may help viewers keep facts straight, but they also just add to the overwhelming pile of information the series pours out in every episode. By now, the hidden identities of all the shadowy players from the early episodes seem relatively clear, but new players and new depths seem to emerge every few minutes. Considering all the innovations of the opening installments, the current flood of facts can sometimes seem like a distraction, put in place to draw attention away from the current episodes' relatively direct structure.
Still, the series is certainly moving forward at a rapid clip, and without the teasing, baffling attempts to keep the character relations obscure and incomprehensible. The project's ambition, and its inescapable demand on viewers' full attention and brain power, is admirable, but its dedication to action and full-bore drama gives it an emotional basis as well as an intellectual one. Once again, like its obvious predecessor Neon Genesis Evangelion, it's mysterious, mystical and meaty. But it also gives every indication of an intention to eventually answer all the many, many questions it raises.
