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Old School Anime Review - 'Gall Force: Eternal Story'

A Perfect Example of Bad Storytelling if Ever I Saw One!

By Greg SeebregtsPublished 5 years ago 7 min read
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I've been a huge anime fan for years now and that's not likely to change. My preferences haven't really changed all that much over the years. I've seen hundreds of episodes from various series and most of the time they've been very enjoyable. Obviously, there were a few duds here and there but that's true for any genre.

With that in mind, I thought I'd try something a bit different and start reviewing some older anime titles... Unfortunately, I probably picked the worst series to start with!

I've been holding off on reviewing today's title—Gall Force: Eternal Story—for as long as I could. That's how bad this anime is. It's bad enough that I've only seen it twice—once after finding it on MyAnimeList and once in preparation for this review.

*sigh* This is going to hurt, let's get started.

A quick word of warning: there will be spoilers ahead!

Where did 'Gall Force' start?

So Cheesy! - Fantasyanime.com

The Gall Force meta-series got its start in the Model Graphix magazine in Japan as a 3D photo novel (kind of like a comic but with photographed models instead of illustrations). The photo novel set up the animated films which were released later but links between the original novel and the OVAs have been questioned as there are a number of contradictions between the mediums.

Released in Japan in 1986, Gall Force: Eternal Story was produced by Toru Miura, Mitsuhisa Hida, and Nagateru Kato. It was written by Hideki Kakinuma and Sukehiro Tomita and directed by Katsuhito Akiyama.

Gall Force: Eternal Story was released to the western market in 1996.

What's the story?

"Everyone is so over-the-top that it's hard to take this seriously at all!" - MyAnimeShelf

Okay, so a war has been going on between two alien races; the Solnoids and the Paranoids.

A Solnoid ship, the Star Leaf, and her crew—Rabby, Patty, Eluza, Rumy, Pony and Catty—are forced to leave a battle with a pilot called Lufy and head for a newly terra-formed planet called (and I swear I'm not making this up) Chaos.

Little do they realize that there's a plan between the governments of both sides and they're caught right in the middle of it. I'll have to come back to this in a bit because it ties into the ending—which I'm going to have to discuss in detail—and that's confusing enough as is.

What works in this OVA? Not much!

A Nice Art Style - zerochan

Well, the art style is your typical mid-80s stuff; bright colors, big, silly hairdos, and so on. There isn't much about this OVA that works but credit should be given its due and the art and animation is very nice to look at.

The music is for the most part okay and the same can be said for the action scenes. Most of the action scenes are very fluid and easy to follow but there are some cases where that isn't the case.

What doesn't work? A whole lot!

Someone take that gun from the 12 year old! Please! That is so irresponsible! - Anime Diet

Where do I start? Oh brother, there's a lot to cover in this section.

Let's start off nice and easy, there is no character development. You meet these seven women (because apparently the Solnoids are all female which makes one wonder about the reproductive process...) and basically watch them yell gobbledygook at each other.

They make decisions with little to no motivation as far as I could see and, perhaps worst of all, the viewer doesn't care about them. The whole time I was watching this I found that I wasn't invested in the characters at all.

This is the one of the cardinal sins of storytelling; if your audience doesn't care about the characters, they certainly won't care who wins in the end.

The writing is laughable and the performances are so blank slate that you may as well be looking at slabs of concrete. Everyone sounds so bored and it really damages the viewing experience.

Oh, and don't even get me started on the unnecessary references to classic '80s action movies!

Plot Problems: The Worst Thought-Out Plan EVER!

One of the Dullest Sounding voice casts I've ever heard! - Nyaa

The Alien ripoff angle to the plot brings about a whole host of problems.

Remember that plan I mentioned before between the two races' governments? The plan, as I understand it, is to create a third race which will stand between the two sides as a way to end the war peacefully. So, essentially they want to use the planet Chaos as an experiment to procreate and birth a new species, or at least that's what I think is happening. It's not explained very well and it only comes into play about an hour in—at which point there's barely anything left to watch.

When this plan is introduced near the end of the OVA, we learn that neither side's military is aware of this plan—wait... WHAT? Let me get this straight; both sides want to end the war and a plan is developed. That I understand but nobody thought to tell the military personnel on either side?

It's made clear enough that this is an experiment. Have the decision regarding the ceasefire depend on the success of the experiment. Tell the military people not to interfere—and there you go. You have a temporary ceasefire and a possibility of peace with the military of both sides there to ensure success.

This is, by far, one of the worst thought-out plans I've ever seen in an anime! Oh, and how did the two governments go about starting their experiment? You're going to love this: they ripped off Ridley Scott's Alien!

A Bad Alien Ripoff

"I heard someone's been stealing my thunder!" - The Hollywood Reporter

Remember the Star Leaf? The Paranoids launch a pod of some kind which lodges into the side of the ship. This is, of course, where OVA becomes an Alien ripoff. The pod holds some sort of alien organism which infects two members of the crew while they search for the thing before being blown out of the ship with what I think is a rocket launcher. Mind you, this thing's origin is never really established; it's used once and then it vanishes forever.

While we're on the subject of the alien organism, this thing looks absolutely ridiculous. Say what you like about the Xenomorph looking silly but at least that alien was threatening. This thing just pops up a few times, infects two of the girls on the Star Leaf, and bugs it out of there before getting blasted into the void.

This thing has zero buildup to it and no presence. You know when and where it'll pop up and who it'll snatch. There's no tension or fear of this thing. If you've watched the Alien films, then you'll know that the alien leaves its host by exploding through said-host's chest. How did the OVA handle this part of the Alien mythos? Badly... very, very badly.

Worst. Plot Twist. Ever.

The worst plot twist I've seen in years!

The parasite that the alien infected the two women with turns out to be a child. Both sides (the Solnoids and the Paranoids) decide that they should have the kid and start killing other. Things escalate when Chaos's self destruct sequence is started.

The child and one of the members of the Star Leaf's crew are sent off to a nearby planet and Chaos blows up destroying both fleets and killing the two members of the crew who stayed behind.

The planet turns out to be Earth and it turns out that the two survivors were apparently the very first humans. Yep, the story was set in the distant past all along.

Hang on a second, if this is the distant past and those two survivors were the first humans wouldn't that mean that we—modern humans—are simply byproducts of thousands of years of incest?

*groan* I can NEVER UN-know that!

Final Thoughts - Is Gall Force: Eternal Story worth a watch?

So is Gall Force: Eternal Story, with all these issues, worth watching? All I can say is that if you want to watch it, go ahead. I can't, in good conscience, recommend this OVA. It's got some good stuff going for it but there are so many problems with this anime that it's just a drag. The characters are unlikable and have little to no personality, the story is full of plot holes, and the pacing is atrocious!

With a run-time of 85 minutes, this was probably the worst-paced anime I've ever seen and that's saying a lot!

The worst part is that this could've been an absolutely fantastic anime! There were some interesting ideas; forgetting the whole incest thing, the idea of humanity being the result of some alien experiment is a good one—albeit not very original.

Going back to the original question, my personal opinion is that the problems are just way too many to ignore. If you're looking for a good science fiction/space opera type anime there are better titles out there so unless you really want to watch Gall Force: Eternal Story, I'd say skip it.

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About the Creator

Greg Seebregts

I'm a South African writer, blogger and English tutor; I've published 1 novel and am working on publishing a 2nd. I also write reviews on whatever interests me. I have a YouTube Channel as well where I review books, and manga and so on.

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