Gunparade March: Operation One (Coll)

Rating:
Summary: A great series. Please support it!
Review: "Gunparade March", if you do some research on the title, was based on a Playstation game by SCE (Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc.) that came out in 2000. If you dig a bit further, you should find the series's review and how, because of the attrition from fighting the "Genjuu" beasts, teenaged students are now being called up to fight in HWTs (just think of these as the generic mobile suits in the Gundam universes) with Atsushi Hayami supposed to be a trump card in the war.

When I first read that review of the series, the first thing that came to mind was "Not another giant robot series with the main character, a teenager, discovering that he has some mysterious power or ability that lets him defeat his enemies."

Very happily, "Gunparade March" failed to live up to that expectation.

Don't get me wrong, though; there is combat in the series - and they are done well - but those scenes are not in every episode. The series is more about people living their lives as best they could when these monsters can appear out of nowhere and attack them as well as the high school students who, when the bell rings, have to jump into their HWTs, go into combat, and oftentimes, die in the process. In other words, it's a series that has a great deal of interpersonal relationships involved.

A minor spoiler; a favorite and very sad scene of mine has a TV news anchor read the names and ages of those young kids who died in the day's fighting, and people passing along simply walk along as if they didn't even hear. Great emotional impact, I thought, with dusk and the rain falling, and the voice reading what seemed to be a never-ending list of names.

All in all, this is a great series that I highly recommend. I'm only giving four (actually 4 1/2 :-) stars to this disc as it, according to Media Blasters's website, carries the first four episodes, which provides the introduction to the storyline and characters. You don't really see why someone like Shibamura Mai (one of the main characters) would volunteer to join the armed forces as a pilot - at least, not yet.

The disc is also expected to have extras like a clean opening and production notes as well as an offer for a HWT figure - none of which I'm rating here.