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Chiibi
 Posts: 4829 |
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Believe me, I didn't think I'd really get into Gash Bell either (for the reasons you said) but a certain someone here made me watch the subbed version and it is way better than those other shows. The series isn't a shallow, toy-based series all; its characters are people. Even if a lot of them aren't human. The plot is a battle royal between demon children to decide the next demon king and only ONE can survive. The series doesn't shy away from killing characters off like most "kid anime" do. It has heavier themes along with successfully funny and tearful moments. When they aren't fighting for their lives, the human characters are bonding with the demon ones (like new family) and....well, it's heart-warming and sometimes really tragic. Long story short: Gash Bell is extremely underrated. |
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louis6578
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I will address the few common complaints that the mon genre has which Gash Bell avoids.
"The subject material is too childish for me to still appreciate as an adult." True for Zatch Bell perhaps. Gash Bell, the uncut, original story, has themes of bullying a mentally slow child and manipulating them into committing crimes with you, child abuse, suicide attempts from said abuse, child experimentation (specifically emotional desensitization techniques such as bonding a child to pets only to kill the animals in front of said child, and firing an employee at the facility for being too sincere in their kindness toward said child), child murder, fearing one's own mortality, and grieving the loss of loved ones (while many demons simply get their books burnt, which the show explains early on is just sending them back to their world permanently, many human partners view their demon children as a second chance after losing their kids and grandchildren). "The anime is too repetitive and predictable." How? True, the main characters MUST survive until the end of the battle royal. That much is obvious of any story. But how they get there is never clear. The fights always involve a type of brilliant strategy in the end, since the main characters only get a new spell every once in a while, and are fixed to only using whatever limited arsenal they have. All the variables are there for the viewer to see, so nothing feels like it comes out of nowhere. Never does Kiyomaro reveal their "secret new attack" that the viewer didn't know about. And there are a few times where the main characters are outmatched or too tired from a previous battle to have any chance of winning their current one. Will help arrive? Will they somehow escape? Will they manage to talk their way out of it? You never know the specifics of what will happen and it keeps you guessing throughout. One of my favorite fights in the anime (the manga has far better ones that never got adapted) is where Gash, Tio, Kanchome, and a still partnerless Umagon, exhausted from two previous fights, are up against Victoreem, a tough demon with the added cheap trick of being able to replenish his partner's heart energy with magical stones that only the villains have (just roll with it). Early into the fight, Kiyomaro and Megumi (Gash and Tio's partners respectively) both establish that they only have enough energy to use two more spells. The variables are as follows, Victoreem's partner is being mind-controlled by Zophise and will do anything Victoreem says, outside of Victoreem's direct instructions, he will not act, Tio can only use saifojio (a spell that replenishes the heart energy of others and heals their wounds) twice at half capacity, Victoreem's partner has a fairly large supply of moon crystals that replenish his own heart energy, and everyone of the protagonists is exhausted and beaten from a previous intense scuffle. Ironically, this fight concludes with Gash's strongest spell, Baou Zakeruga, being supposedly fired at Victoreem, causing the demon to use all his strength and effort on blocking this spell. It turns out that it's merely Kanchome transformed into a large electric dragon, perfectly resembling Baou Zakeruga except that it has Kanchome's duckbill face on its stomach. Victoreem fires his best spell at it, and it disperses in a puff of smoke. The smoke clears and Kanchome is nowhere to be seen. Victoreem turns around and finds his partner, Mohawk Ace, with a duckbill face on his stomach, still holding Victoreem's blue book, and another blue book on the ground that is completely identical to Victoreem's. The conclusion is obvious. This Mohawk Ace is Kanchome in disguise. Why else would there be two books? Victoreem is quick to knock out "Kanchome" with a hard punch to the face, but as his supposedly disguised partner drops the book, instead of poofing back into Kanchome, the book that was on the ground to begin with poofs. Kanchome was disguised as he book and, while Victoreem was blinded by the smoke and debris, had drawn a fake version of his face on Victoreem's partner with a marker. Because Mohawk Ace was under mind control, he couldn't object or defend himself as long as Victoreem didn't notice. Once the real Mohawk Ace was knocked out and dropped the real book, Kanchome grabbed it while Gash, Tio, and Umagon were quickly able to subdue Victoreem without using any spells. It seems complicated, but I assure you it was incredibly simple in execution. It just takes a bit to explain the details to someone unfamiliar with the series. And these types of fights are not at all foreign to Gash Bell. If I were to describe most of the fights in the anime, especially those regarding Kiyomaro and Gash, to a Naruto fan, I'd say... "Every fight between Kiyomaro + Gash and an enemy is a Shikamaru fight." "No one dies so there are no real stakes." Considering that when your book is burnt, you return to the demon world forever, leaving you with no way to contact the human world again, it's effectively the same as a narrative death. This isn't like a friend moving away. You can't see them again and until the battle royal is over, you won't even hear of your partner's safety via word of mouth. Likewise, to the human partner, you have failed to help your friend fulfill their dreams and you are given a brief window from 10 seconds to 5 minutes to say goodbye to them as they fade away. This isn't an easy thing to do. Not to mention that the big bads of the three major arcs have all attempted to murder at one point or another. Zophise, a demon capable of mind controlling humans without using spells, used a special type on his partner Koko. Rather than leaving her a blank husk to be controlled via words, he planted a seed of darkness into her soul. In doing this, he made her become evil, not against her will, but instead making her want to be Zophise's partner. The type of mind control where you aren't being controlled, per say. You're doing awful things because, in your newly programmed mind, you want to. Zophise even said at one point that defeating him and burning his book would erase his influence on Koko's mind, but it wouldn't erase what she did. She would go on with her life being fully aware of the horrible atrocities she committed, the people she's hurt, and the lives she's destroyed. And once a person's guilt is completely overtaking them, there's only one path they can take. That's the sort of impact that Zophise's evil had on someone without killing a named character. Even then, when evil!Koko is introduced using Zophise's explosive spells to burn down her home village, it's implied that there were at least a few casualties, even if none of them were named. That aside, when a human partner has realized they can't defeat Zophise, and offers their book in exchange for her and her partner's lives, Zophise states that he wants their lives and persists with attacking the demon and human. Zeon, the next arc's villain, intends to destroy Japan and force Kiyomaro and friends to watch. Clear Note, the final villain, and by my own admission, the least interesting, comes the closest to killing the protagonists out of anyone. In fact, in mortally wounding the protagonists, he forces some of the good demons, who had been around since the earliest chapters, to ask Gash to "mercy kill" them by burning their books. This isn't even getting into the fact that whoever wins the Battle Royal can immediately use a god-like power to erase or revive anyone, living or dead, in the demon world once they become king, and Clear Note wants to eradicate his entire species. "The characters aren't interesting." This is purely subjective, but I think that Gash Bell's cast has plenty of great characters. I admit that early on, there are a lot of villains who just seem to be mustache-twirlers, but even in the first 50 episodes, there are plenty of exceptions in the form of the Apollo and Ropes, Brago and Sherry, Kid and the Riddle Professor, and especially Bari and Gustav. Once the Zophise arc begins, the villains are either great anti-villains or Frieza-levels of "so evil that you can't help but love watching them." On the protagonist side of things, I admit that Gash is a wholly likable, but not uncommon protagonist. In fact, I'd say that Gash himself is the weakest character of the main four in terms of characterization. Tio, Kanchome, and Umagon all have far more depth to them than Gash himself. In fact, I think the true protagonist here is Gash's partner, Kiyomaro. His character arc of going from a self-serving genius who thinks he's too good to care about the lowly idiots he's surrounded by, to a true hero whose bravery is admired by powerful demons and humans alike, is one of the better ones in shounen manga. Admittedly, his arc is completed around episode 20 of the anime, but I wouldn't say that he's done being interesting. He helps many of the other characters find their inner strength, and not in the tired and done a billion times way of fighting for them while they hide in the corner for five minutes and monologue the oldest "Why is he doing this for me?" script in the book. I would argue that every demon-human pair gets a satisfying character arc after the initial wave of Monster of the Week is finished. Even oneshot demons like Yopopo, Danny, and Ropes get enough to make you feel for them when everything is over. I think the show's greatest strength is its ability to sincerely redeem villains. Something that many other shounen anime fail at. In Fairy Tail, Gajeel is introduced by brutally beating Levy, lynching her defeated form by painfully crucifying her nonfatally for the rest of her guild to see, beating up Lucy while she's defenseless, and clearly enjoying every moment of it. When he's reintroduced as a member of their guild, he's a silly guy who sings bad jazz songs, and Natsu comically getting into a brawl with him is the closest the characters come to not forgiving him. In Gash Bell, a character I hated deeply was Patty. Patty is a blue haired demon child who loves Gash. When I say she loves him, I mean that she watched him from afar in Demon World, hid behind trees and dropped his favorite yellow tail nearby, and only spoke to him once. Oh, and she also wears his face on her panties. She is introduced being a self-serving girl who attacks food trucks for a snack, takes things without paying, destroys things when she's having a bad day, and acts like a spoiled brat to her book owner, who, while subservient to her whims because he was a homeless loser before meeting her, is clearly uncomfortable with enabling such brutality. When she finally meets Gash, excitedly shouting that she finally found him, he replies by simply asking "Who are you?" Keep in mind, in reality, she has only spoken to him ONCE before, and even if you ignore that fact, Gash has no memories prior to the start of episode one. She attacks Gash, ignoring all logic, and even remains enraged when Kiyomaro tries to explain the situation. After their initial encounter, she becomes one of Zophise's lieutenants simply to fight Gash, and forces innocent, mind controlled humans and psychologically cornered demons into harms way just to make Gash suffer. One moment that solidified my hatred for her was when Tio saves Gash from her squad of 1,000 year old demon henchmen, enraging her further. While Tio doesn't spare Patty much attention past being an enemy commander and is more focused on Gash's injuries, Patty is enraged and further betrayed in her delusional mind because another woman is treating her man's wounds and defending him. In short, seeing selfless, unconditional love in contrast to her selfish, obsessive, vindictive crush is too much for her mind to comprehend. When she starts threatening Reira, one of Zophise's minions who only follows him out of fear of being trapped in stone and has already made friends with Gash and Kiyomaro at a prior point in the story, Reira cries, broken at the thought of being frozen while totally aware of her surroundings after having spent a millennium of time suffering that fate. For those who can't relate, when I was a little kid, I was locked in the closet for about an hour by mistake. I felt sensory deprivation, fearful loneliness, and claustrophobia within a mere hour. Most people go insane after half a day of being locked in such a space. Gash Bell even makes small comparisons to solitary confinement, so it isn't just throwing numbers around. Reira was one of the few demons who suffered through that fate without being overly hateful toward the world. While unable to move, feel, smell, or taste, she could only see and hear the surrounding area for 1,000 years. Suddenly, Reira is told that if she does not kill Gash and Kiyomaro, the only two people who treated her kindly since she was rescued from this fate. She takes the risk and is prepared to turn to stone, but she isn't taking it gracefully. Her body is shaking with fear. No one can blame her. Finally, Gash angrily snaps at Patty, gets up close enough to attack her, but instead of hitting her, he grabs her wrists and holds her arms down to avoid any attacks on her part. She is forced to hear Gash ask her how she could possibly treat others like trash, force peaceful humans to bloody their hands, and psychologically torture demons to kill their friends, all just for the sake of Patty's own revenge. Finally, she is forced to shut up and listen, and instead of retorting violently or selfishly, his words have reached her. Tears have fallen from her eyes. Patty sinks to her knees and starts feeling the weight of her numerous crimes. She comes back to help Gash and Kiyomaro battle the most powerful demon Zophise has under his command, and she's ecstatic to be fighting for the right cause for once in her life. In fact, when she destroys the villain's macguffin powersource, she screams in arrogant taunting, not because she feels she's won, but in order to get the enemy to focus on her, and be too busy killing her while the heroes recover. Her book is already burning at this point, and as she falls down toward the enemy's attack, fixed to sever her clean in half, we hear her thoughts of vague pride in her recent actions and shame in how she lived most of her life, knowing that the only way she could atone for it was with death. Gash saves her at the last minute, of course, but this victory is not the end of her character's impact. While fading back to the demon world, Patty says "Please Gash-chan, when the fighting is over and everyone returns to the Demon World, could you get along with Byonko? I'm fine. I did awful things... but, Byonko, that child gave it his all, so please don't leave him out in the Demon World." Patty's final words aren't an apology for all the things she's done, or asking if they can still be friends or if she did a good job. She knows, or at least thinks, that she's already done too much to ever be forgiven. Her final request is that they at least forgive Byonko, a kindhearted, but cowardly demon in Zophise's ranks who Patty often bullied and peer-pressured into committing some of the more heinous acts. Gash angrily retorts that Patty and Byonko are both friends of his, and Tio and the surrounding friends happily agree. Patty, forgiven and redeemed, passes away not smiling, but crying and shaking with emotion, muttering "Thank you, Gash-chan" as she vanishes. She went from a character I hated to someone I sympathized with. Her actions were inexcusable, but that's when I realized that all of these demons, good, bad, heroic, villainous, selfish, righteous, are all children. Children with power, placed in a world without such power. When Patty realized what she did was wrong, it's like seeing a child sincerely experience remorse, empathy, and self-loathing for the first time. She isn't a perfect hero nor a truly irredeemable villain, but whether Patty was committing acts of good near the end or self-serving evils near the beginning, her actions and motivations remained human. Why do I bring this up? Because Patty isn't a main character. She is not a Vegeta, or a Hiei, or a Prince Zuko. She is one minor character in the grand scheme of a large narrative who comes in and serves her purpose in the span of about 30 episodes, or 50 chapters of a 150 episode/322 chapter series. In this time, this supporting character has more depth and humanity in her than anyone in the entirety of Bleach or Fairy Tail. "The human characters are all boring self-inserts who use the personality-lacking cute "mon" creatures to shield them from any real fights." Utter lies. This is the one Mon series I like BECAUSE it doesn't let the human partners get away with such things. In Pokemon, it's almost seen as an impossible train of thought for anyone to make a Pokemon use a potentially fatal move on an enemy human. Even villains don't make their Pokemon use Hyperbeam on the human characters. Gash Bell? Not so much. By the end of a lot of the major fights, the one who is injured and ready to collapse is not Gash, but Kiyomaro. Villains target the weaker, human characters all the time to end things quickly. It's further from a Pokemon battle with humanoid demons instead of Pokemon, and closer to a Fate series Holy Grail War. A lot of the times, the humans attack the other enemy humans and demons themselves. It's not exclusive to villains either. Gash has attacked enemy book holders to protect Kiyomaro. And in the manga, Kiyomaro is so injured and beaten at one point that he is unrecognizable. If it weren't for the magical powers they had at the time, he would have died. |
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Spawn29
Posts: 551 |
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I'm getting so sick of Shonen anime and it seems like most of the anime market has been Shonen for over a decade. I feel like most anime these days are aim to kids and teens. Most of the anime that everyone talks about for the last 15 years is Shonen. It seems like Seinen is dead in Japan and America's current anime market.
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16935 |
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Really? Most anime for the past decade is Shonen? Seinen is dead? Huh. Could've sworn I've seen a plethora of titles that are not shonen. Must have been hallucinating. |
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Spawn29
Posts: 551 |
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Well it's true since the most popular anime in the last 15 years have been Shonen and most newer anime Shonen. Look at titles from 2000-now like Inuyasha, Naruto, One Piece (It came out very late 1999, so I consider it to be a 2000's anime), Digimon (Same with One Piece), Bleach, Love Hina, Vandread, .hack//Sign, Zatch Bell, Yu-Gi-Oh, Death Note, Shaman King, Zoids, Eyeshield 21, Samurai Deeper Kyo, Immortal Grand Prix, School Rumble, Fullmetal Alchemist, Neuro, Gurren Laggan, Soul Eater, Black Cat, D.Gray-man, Black Butler, Future Diary, Haruhi Suzumiya, Luck Star, Rosario + Vampire, Fairy Tail, A Certain Magical Index, Fate/stay night, Sword Art Online, Attack on Titan, Kill la Kill, Akame ga Kill, Mob Psycho 100, Toriko, Assassination Classroom, My Hero Academia, KonoSuba, Seven Deadly Sins and Keijo.
All of those titles are very popular or were very popular in the 2000's or in this current decade. Sure you get popular seinen titles sometimes, but most of it is buried by Shonen. Meanwhile the other adults like Ajin: Demi-Human and Joker Game got overshadow by stuff like My Hero Academi and Mob Psycho 100. Heck even in 2007, Kaiji and Shigurui got overshadow by stuff like Lucky Star and Gurren Laggan. Even some of the newer sienen anime like One Punch Man, Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, Tokyo Ghoul and Re; Zero still feel like shonen to me. Shonen titles are fine at times, but I feel like the market has too many of them. What about the anime for the grown ups? In the late 80's and 90's, you mostly had seinen titles in Japan. Do people just stop liking anime when they turn 17 or 18 in Japan? Does the industry not care about them? I hate when to sound like a Nostalgia Tard, but I do like it in the past when the industry was not scared to take risk and give us really creative and fun titles instead of doing action shows for kids & teens, shows with moe girls or harems situations with no quality. |
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louis6578
Posts: 1862 |
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Since I've decided to watch every anime I thought was interesting to see/rewatch in chronological order of release, and I went from the 60's to 1995 so far, I'd love to see this mass of seinen you claim existed in the late 80's. OVAs aside, it was mostly kids shows or shounens. The closest things to seinen that come to mind for me are some UC Gundam anime, Bubblegum Crisis (which could be argued s more Shounen), and a couple of films.
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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All I have to say on the topic of Gash Bell is that the musical stylings of Victoreem, insofar as they concern melons, are an almost transcendent joy.
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Spawn29
Posts: 551 |
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There is nothing really Shounen about Bubblegum Crisis if you ask me. Sure it does have humor in it, but it handles more darker and mature themes compare to shonen stuff like DBZ and Pokemon. There was a lot of seinen titles back then since late night TV didn't exist until the late 90's. The OVA market was one of the most popular market at the time. Here is a bunch of seinen titles from the late 80's up to end of the 90's: 3x3 Eyes A.D Police (Both versions) Armitage III Angel Cop Battle Angel Alita Bio Hunter Black Jack (The OVAs are consider to be seinen while the manga was shounen) Black Magic M-66 Bride of Deimos Berserk Bubblegum Crisis Captain Harlock (This one did came out in the 70's, but it had other versions later on) Cockpit Crying Freeman Cowboy Bebop Devilman (Same with Black Jack) Demon City Shinjuku Dominion Tank Police Getter Robo Armageddon Gall Force Genocyber Ghost in the Shell Golden Boy Golgo 13 Goku Midnight Eye Grave of the Fireflies Gunsmith Cats Hi-Speed Jecy Initial D Iria Kite Legend of Galactic Heroes Lily C.A.T Lupin the Third (This one did came out in the 70's, but it had other versions later on) Macross Plus Master Keaton Metal Skin Panic MADOX-01 M.D Geist Ninja Scroll Outlaw Star Perfect Blue Psycho Diver Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise Riding Bean Riki-Oh Serial Experiments Lain Shin Megami Tensei: Tokyo Revelation Spirit of Wonder Twilight of the Dark Master Vampire Hunter D Violence Jack Wicked City Yawara! That's all I can list down on the top of my head, you can find more just going on Google. Most of these may have not been good, but they still exist. Yes shounen anime exist back then too, but I feel like the industry back then still care about the adult market and try to mix it with titles aim to kids and teens (Like DBZ and Sailor Moon). Not to mention shounen titles like Fist of the North Star, Bastard!!, The Guyver (Before it was Seinen), Venus Wars, YYH, Ushio & Tora, Ranma 1/2, City Hunter, Jojo and Patlabor feel like that they written for everyone, not just kids and teens. That's why titles like YYH, Jojo and City Hunter was enjoy by a lot of the older anime fans via fan subbs in the 90's while Pokemon was mock by older anime fans in the late 90's. I don't like most modern shounen titles because they feel way too water down for kids & tenes and don't want to take risk for darker themes like something such as Rokudenashi Blues did. Last edited by Spawn29 on Sun Jun 25, 2017 6:29 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 23795 |
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@ Spawn29 - louis578 did say "...OVAs aside...". By that I assume he was asking about seinen TV shows. Take the OVAs off your list and it becomes substantially shorter. He also specified seinen shows from the "late 80's" which would reduce your list even more.
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Spawn29
Posts: 551 |
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Okay, but The OVA market was one of the most popular market at the time as I said before. Most anime fans watch stuff on home video since it was the most popular thing at the time. It seems like during the end of the 90's and the 2000's started, it seem like TV was more popular and the anime fans got younger. So that's why I feel like we had more Shonen titles and less stuff for adults as time went on. I'm not sure how it happen, but I do think the success of Naruto and One Piece help during the start of the new millennium.
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23795 |
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I would argue that the rise of late night TV anime (and I'm not sure when that happened) substantially increased the number of seinen titles relative to shonen titles. Note, I'm not comparing sales figures or ratings, just the number of titles produced in each category every year.
Also, you claim the the OVA market was "one of the most popular" at the time. Are you sure about that? What is your source of info on that? I'm not necessarily disputing it because I genuinely don't know. |
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Beltane70
 Posts: 3891 |
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If I remember correctly, late-night anime started airing around the late-90s or so.
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louis6578
Posts: 1862 |
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Here in the states? I believe it was 2001. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23795 |
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I was referring to Japan and I'm pretty sure Beltane70 was, too. The advent of late night anime TV in Japan is an incredibly significant event in anime history. The titles produced to go in those slots were not aimed a children at all. As a result, much more non-shonen material started to get made. This is why I find Spawn29's contention that there is more shonen relative to seinen titles in the 2000s to be bizarre. |
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Spawn29
Posts: 551 |
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Well it's mostly true since OVAs was mostly produced at the time. In 1990, you had 42 OVA's and 20 new TV shows. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1990_anime Even in the US, most anime brought over was direct to video titles since they were popular as well. ADV, CPM and other companies release the most popular titles that were big in Japan too. It's not like anime fans in the 80's and 90's was living under rocks having no idea what was popular and new. |
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