Site Index | Blog What's New? Review List Stuff Review Outline Why Hate Anime? Wheat RoD: The TV Haibane Renmei Teen Titans Chaff Akira Legend of the Overfiend Black Heaven Sometimes, not often mind you but sometimes, I find an anime that I genuinely want to like. I give it every single chance I can. and really really look for positive things about the series to keep me watching it. Inevitably this turns out to be futile. I tend to not review anime like these; they depress me. It happened with Witch Hunter Robin (which, as it turns out, I really do like, but I didn't realize how much until watching Chrono Crusade), it happened with Big O, and I'm about 90% certain it'll happen with Wolf's Rain (we'll see). Sometimes the premise of an anime is just so appealing to me, or one character really stands out, or the first episode is really cool. Whatever the case, I want to be impressed by these shows; I want to love them and review them and stick them happily in the wheat pile. I didn't get far enough in the series to meet this character, but I assume s/he is annoying as all get-out. Grenadier was introduced to me as "Trigun with tits," which is an accurate enough portrayal of what it is. Now I didn't like Trigun, and the main reason I didn't like Trigun was the main character irked me so much. But I figured if one were to replace that infuriating character with a nice smile and a pair of breasts the rest of the series might go smoothly. So I went into Grenadier very optimistically. I really really wanted to enjoy Grenadier. I tried very hard to find things I liked, and pulled down three episodes over BitTorrent (it isn't licensed, so I have no objections to pirating it) so it'd have plenty of time to grow on me. But... well... I'm disappointed. In the end it's just another mediocre show with annoying little quirks that make it hard to watch. What a waste. Characters: Standard "the entire cast is pitiful except one character" score, exactly like Trigun. To Grenadier's credit, though, the one character I really liked is the main character, which is great because she gets the most screentime. Rusyuna, ladies and gentlemen, is adorable. "Vash with tits" is a fairly competent knee-jerk description of Rusyuna; she's a happy-go-lucky gunslinger who wanders around helping people and causing trouble. Her personality is half goofy/innocent/lovable and half dark/tormented/brooding. Unlike Vash, however, Rusyuna manages to pull off the transitions gracefully. Her gimmick is to "win without fighting", so the first thing she tries when facing an opponent is to give them a big friendly smile. Not all foes are receptive to this strategy, however, and when pressed she has no qualms about grabbing her gun and going to town. Where Vash is just stupid and embarassing, Rusyuna is charming and lovable. Where Vash is angsty and depressing, Rusyuna is introspective and thoughtful. Vash's personality clashes like oil and water; Rusyuna's is like heads and tails on the same coin. Unfortunately the rest of the cast isn't so endearing. Rusyuna's "sidekick" is a swordsman named Yajirou (whom she affectionately calls "Ya-chan"). He meets Rusyuna in the first episode while Enter the generic mysterious masked villain! running from the bad guys and after seeing her in action decides to follow her around. Yajirou is a very awkward character; for one thing he's a pervert (of course) and that joke gets really old, really fast. For another, he never does anything useful. Rusyuna is guaranteed at least one lovely "give you my smile" scene per episode as well as one fairly entertaining shootout. Yajirou, on the other hand, never puts that sword of his to good work (or at least he didn't in the first three episodes). He perpetually shows up on the scene too late to get in on the action, and doesn't seem to serve much function in the plot. On top of that, his voice is particularly obnoxious. The villain of the series is The Jester, who is so completely and utterly devoid of originality it isn't even worth talking about him much. Dark and mysterious yadda yadda yadda uncanny source of power blah blah blah masked villain with a hoodely-hoodely-hoo. Get this: we find out in the third episode that he is a *demon* of some sort. Isn't that just shocking? Story: I am underqualified to talk at length about Grenadier's plot, so I'll just comment on the story for the second and third episodes. Rusyuna and Yajirou arrive in the country of Tara, where they run into a pack of bounty hunters who are after an "Enlightened with golden hair". Since "Enlightened" apparently means "knows how to use a gun" and Rusyuna has the goldenest hair in the world, they open fire on her. She quickly dispatches them all (without killing them of course), after which Yajirou discovers a flier which reveals that there is a bounty of three thousand gold pieces for Rusyuna's capture. The two get split up after that; Rusyuna runs off to follow the bounty hunters while Yajirou goes to town to get something to eat. Rusyuna quickly discovers a valley *in which are strewn the ruined remains of the bounty hunters* and is attacked by a huge monster. Her weapon has no effect on the monster's armor, but she manages to break his mask, revealing it's really *a little boy in a mech*. By this time Rusyuna is gravely injured so she tries to negotiate her way out; her foe responds by dropping her into a river. "I can see your... dirty pillows!" Rusyuna is found by a local village girl named Toko and taken back to town to recuperate. While she's recovering she explains everything to Yajirou, and both are shocked to learn that the monster she fought was *really the boy-king of Tara, whom everyone loves dearly*. One thing leads to another, and Rusyuna gets sufficiently pumped up to storm the castle of Tara by herself and kill the villains if necessary. She barges in and is quickly outgunned and overpowered. It's only then that she remembers that she has to win fights with her smile and not her gun. In the end, the *monster-boy-king is returned to normal, the kingdom is saved, and The Jester is sent back to wherever he came from*. Rusyuna and Yajirou embark on their next adventure. Not a bad plot in and of itself, so why only one hamham? These two episodes mirror the first almost exactly. Quick shootout scene with minor villains, big fight with a monsterous villain, some obnoxious banter from Yajirou, boobalicious reload, speech about "winning without fighting", defeat the villain without any real violence, happy ending with rainbows and sunshine. Grenadier is shaping up to be a series in which every story is the same, and then they're throwing generic demons with mysterious powers into the mix? No thanks. I don't want to sit through twenty-six improvised reasons for Rusyuna to take a bath. Animation: Nice artwork, bad animation... for the most part. The characters in Grenadier are all pretty cookie-cutter. Yajirou could be any swordsman from any medieval Japanese anime, for example. Koto could be just any random "NPC" from any anime (she reminds me a bit of Makoto from Street Fighter 3). This isn't to say their bad or ugly, just sort of bland. The villains are mildly interesting but only for a few moments until you realize they're there to stand around and talk rather than, like, kill people or rape puppies or whatever villains do. Thankfully, one character does look interesting, and that is (of course) Rusyuna. Starting to notice a pattern here? Although her eyelashes are a little creepy and her bosoms are laughably exagerated, Rusyuna posesses a visual style and flair all her own. She alone stands out in a series full of blank paper dolls. The face that got me through three episodes. Where Grenadier really falls on its face is the animation... or rather, what little animation there is. This is a series dominated by panning still shots, single-frame fight scenes, and scenes where the camera is pulled so far out they didn't have to animate the character's mouths when they speak. Indeed, two of the characters in the first three episodes wear masks, so the entire time they're talking you just see a solid still image of their face on the screen. The one section that is very well animated is when Rusyuna, er, reloads her gun (heh, see below). However, this same stock animation is used in each episode. Her reload is akin to the Power Rangers morphin' time; once you've seen it the first time you've seen it every time. (Although for obvious reasons it takes a little longer for this particular animation sequence to get old.) Culture Shock: Though it takes place in medeival Japan (or at least a world that resembles it closely) Grenadier is a pretty straight-forward gunslinger anime and it's not that hard to get the hang of. In fact, it's not even Grenadier's fault that I'm giving such a low Culture Shock score; it's completely the blame of the fansubbers. Note to fansubbers: listen guys, I'm very impressed that you speak an exuberant amount of Japanese, and I love your attractive fonts and the fact that you provide the service that you do. Dorkboys like me all over the western hemisphere would be lost without the mountains and mountains of free anime you provide. But you guys have got to learn that a translation job doesn't end after you've taken all the words from one language and transformed them into another. Grenadier was full of these little quirks that gave me the impression the translators decided to only do the job halfway. Here's an example: partway through the first episode a random samurai grunt exclaims, "Aniki!" The helpful subtitles translate this as "Aniki!", with a note at the top of the screen that reads "Aniki means older brother but can also mean boss in some circumstances." Obviously this is one of those circumstances, or there wouldn't be any use for the note -- so why not just translate "Aniki!" as My apologies for the filesize, but as you can see this is just not the kind of thing you can show with a single screenshot. "Boss!"? You basically just made me read a foreign word and two lines of text just to arrive at the word "boss". If that was the purpose, why not just use "boss" in the first place and cut out the middleman? Another: partway through the second episode Rusyuna (who is recovering from injury) says something that offends Koto, who scolds her thusly: "Rusyuna-san! If you say such strange things, I'll get angry!" Yajirou intervenes on Rusyuna's behalf and explains she's saying "strange things" because of her wounds by saying "You must have gotten hit in a bad area. Maybe you need a little more sleep." To which Rusyuna responds, "I guess it's true after all! It seems I hit my head really hard anyway," followed by nervous laughter. That entire conversation probably sounds wonderful in Japanese but it looks really poor in English. It's a sure bet when Grenadier gets licensed and an official English translation it'll go more like this: "Rusyuna! Why must you say such hurtful things?" "You must have whacked you head pretty good. Maybe you should go upstairs and lay down?" "Oh, I guess you're right. I must've bumped it harder than I thought!" The nervous laughter can stay in tact. I do appreciate the fact that these fansubbers are catering to a subculture of people who want the broken English nuances in their subs, but that isn't what this website is about. So points off. You guys, I'm disappointed to have given the review I did. The things in Grenadier that are good are Link Official Site (Japanish) very good... notably its star. This is a series I wanted to follow all the way to the end, but I'll just plain be unable to do so. The inane formulaic stories and snorefest cast drag its merits down too far. In addition to being "Trigun with tits", Grenadier is "Trigun with heart". It's definately noteworthy for that. I suppose it's worth mentioning that I've had the opening credits song from Grenadier on an endless loop the entire time I've been working on this review; it's that good of a tune. Just one more thing I'll miss about the series, lost amidst a torrent of things I won't miss at all. Overall Rating:

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