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Description:
Gasaraki continues to offer high-quality animation and interesting mecha designs, along with an extremely convoluted plot, nattering dialogue, and icy, uncommunicative characters. These three episodes feel like a long digression. Military tests of the Gowa-manufactured Tactical Armor suits or TAs end in disaster when a "biologically enhanced" pilot runs amok, tearing off the heads of other mecha. Only Yushiro can subdue him. With both the military and other members of the Gowa family after them, Yushiro and Miharu are caught in a cruel pincer movement. Revelations pile up, as the patriarch of the clan discloses that his eldest son, Kazukiyo, has been conspiring with renegade military officers and right-wing radicals. The illegal bio-technical experiments are part of their plot to seize power and return to the ancestral ways of their "warrior clan." Numerous references are made to (the) Gasaraki, to the Kugai (the ancestral mobile suit that looks like cross between a Noh demon costume and an elaborate mecha), and to the fact that Yushiro and Miharu are "Kai," but no one explains what those words really mean. "Disembark" ends where "Ties" began, with Yushiro and Miharu once again on the road to self-discovery, with neither the viewer nor the characters appreciably wiser. Unrated; suitable for ages 12 and up for violence, largely restricted to machine versus machine, as well as occasional profanity and grotesque imagery. --Charles Solomon
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