Gilgamesh isn’t a new series but its one of the series that I will be finishing soon. I’m watching the Geneon release dubbed. So far, we have the standard impotent male lead. The strong female lead, and some type of Daddy clone/brother complex. Let’s catch up here.

I was pretty excited about this show because the previews off of other Geneon releases. I enjoy a “dark” anime every now and then. Geneon’s previews made the show out to be more than it was, sadly.

The fact of the matter is that the show doesn’t progress much at all for the first three disc. I wasn’t particularly impressed with the animation either, although the fighting scenes were very well animated by comparisons. The small color pallet didn’t bother me (mostly black/gray), I did say it was a dark anime. That is dark figuratively and physically. One other thing, I do like the cover art on the DVD cases that I have seen.

These are our main characters:

Tatsuya Madoka: What we have here is another male lead that has no balls, at least for the first twenty or so episodes. We find out early on that Tatsuya is actually the clone of the main antagonist, the professor. That is a new development at the time it is revealed, but they really don’t take off with it. I didn’t expect Gilgamesh to break any new ground in the character arena. Originally I had high hopes for the story, still crossing my fingers after five discs.

Kiyoko Madoka: Kiyoko is Tatsuya’s older sister. If Tatsuya doesn’t have any balls it’s because his sister must be holding onto them for him. For the most part Kiyoko is the assertive one and the leader of the two. She shows her big swinging brass ones more than once by confronting the “widow” Countess Werdenberg. Still, she wouldn’t be an anime lead female character without her share of insecurity. Plus, she appears to have something of a brother complex. Of course, her brother is a clone of her father….so what’s that make it?

Countess Werdenberg: (aka the Widow) At first I didn’t like the Countess. There isn’t much depth to her character for the first part of the story. Very stern, emotionless. She appeared to simply be a rich widow who happened to be involved in the Twin X issues at Heavens Gate. Every once in a while she shows a bit of emotion, as when she kisses Tatsuya. She apparently, had a thing with the “professor.” Over the course of the series my view of her went from “does she ever wear anything that isn’t black” to “Oh yeah, talk dirty to me!”

Toru: He is probably the most minor character of the group of Werdenberg’s children. As a matter of fact, I’m not even sure his name is Toru. Aside from the fact that he seems to have a more heightened sensitivity to his environment than the others, he hasn’t played a major role in any of the episodes as of yet (we’re talking 20 episodes here!).

Fuko: Fuko plays more of a role that Toru and Isamu, if only, because she seems to like Tatsuya. Apparently, she has this sneezing/runny nose problem around guys she likes. I didn’t find that at all cute, nothing moe about it. Overall, a bland but likable character.

Isamu: This guy is the ad hoc leader of the Widow’s childred. He is also the most stoic of the bunch. They make an attempt to add mystery to his character. It is clear by the end of the 5th volume that he has more going on that the story has lead us to believe up until that point. Nothing new personality-wise here either. He has a history with Fuko but I’m not sure it will play a role in the large plot.

Basic story:

The brightest minds in the world are assembled at a facility called Heavens Gate. Something that happened there causes an event called “Twin X” or “XX.” We start the story well in the future (well I’d say ~14 or 15 years) after the event. The world is eclipsed in a crome/silver field of which nothing substancial is reveal yet. What we are told is that there exist children born from that time who posses a power of which the source is something called dynamus. Early on the groups of primary charactes in the series are divided into seemingly good guys and bad guys.

The line doesn’t blur, much, through the course of 20 episodes. However, there is evidently more to the story than simply good guys versus bad guys. The “bad guys” are changed out frequently. For the most part, if a new character is introduced then they can automatically be put into the bad guy or gray area [possible bad guys]. There is only one main antagonist in the series and he is the “professor,” and the leader of one of the primary bad guy groups who happen to call themselves Gilgamesh (hense the series title). Then again, we don’t really know who the bad guys really are at this point. So, this “professor” may not be all that bad a guy. He may be down-right likable, who knows.

Volumes 1 through 3 didn’t really keep my attention. Kinda of the way watching paint dry or waiting for water to boil doesn’t keep my attention. Or American Idol, Top Model, or FOX News. I actually only kept watching because there was nothing else to watch, but with volume 4 things began to get interesting. I actually looked forward to disc 4 because the preview of the next episode intriged me.

Then came volume 5, now we’re getting somewhere. Episodes 18,19,20 have the standard fair plus we start to actually get a plot moving. There always was a slow progression of story; however, this time we get what appears to be a full picture of the happenings in the past, who the characters are, and what initiated the state of the world as it is.

I’m actually looking forward to vol 6. What we know from episode 20 is that Kiyoko may be dead. (one of the few attractive character designs in the series) It appears Tatsuya isn’t taking it too well. It looks like there is a Tatsuya goes ape-shit scene in the next volume. This show has the chance to redeam is meager startup and possibly end rather well, or it could crash and burn, flame out completely, and leave a big gapping hole. I do hope I don’t waste my time here.

Update 7/18/06: playing around and updated this post. Nothing but background coding.

Update 7/28/06: Template update screwed up formatting for IE, (firefox Opera were OK).