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| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
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| Watch | 7 | 6 | 7 | 6 | 6 | 6 |
 Ggultra2764
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[series:636#1552] |
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This was a bit so-so for me. Pretty much, Gate Keepers is a light-hearted sci-fi action/ comedy focused on a group of high school students with the ability to open gates into dimensions for various abilities and are part of a government organization tasked with fighting robotic alien threats called Invaders. Much of the humor for the series is supposed to come from the campy feel of the alien-fighting and devices that AEGIS has on them, the ridiculous activities and forms of the Invaders and the behavior of the characters. Unfortunately, I wasn't finding myself laughing very often at the things going on through out the series, meaning I guess I couldn't find myself suckered into the campy humor that Gate Keepers was giving off. While the characters do get reasonable fleshing out, I couldn't find myself caring for many of them as they tended to have stock character archetypes for their personalities you would see all too often from high school anime and made them seem kind of bland and the Invaders are your typical group of baddies wanting to take over the world. The visuals for the series are standard for an early 2000s anime title with its scenery and character designs. The show makes use of a decent number of animation shortcuts with still shots, speed stripes, reused frames and camera tricks to simulate movement and there is some mediocre use of CG animation used for a number of scenes in the show that stick out quite prominently from the regular animation used for the series Overall, I found myself feeling rather indifferent with Gate Keepers considering I couldn't get into the campy humor and the show's archetypal characters. Unless you can find yourself getting immersed in the show's campy humor, I don't imagine you can find yourself enjoying the show all too well like I experienced. Last updated Thursday, January 31 2013. Created Thursday, January 31 2013. | ||||||||
| Buy |
 Forbin
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[series:636#1573] | ||||||
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Drama : Med/High Comedy : High Action : High SciFi : Med Ecchi : Low Hey I'm a sucker for Comedy. The campy 60 style jokes. The slightly ecchi and hardly any of that. The animation team of Gonzo. What can go wrong? This is like the Sean Connery James Bond meets Gatchman. I loved it. While the plot is INCREDIBLY WEAK, (Ok a super secret organization that all the Police know about? Yah right), the action is good, the slight love triangle developing and that Shun calls Ruri, snot nose. It's a smile and a laugh fest. The characters keep thinking, 'these things only happen in Anime' when they are an Anime. Hehe. This thing is one big Cliche. It's just walking a fine line between Cliche and Parody. You have the headstrong hero; The childhood girl friend; The girl who is a big ditz (and pretty useless); The super strong girl who just is looking for love; The miko (I still don't understand her); The librarian striving for recognition; and the child who wants a family. Add Big Boss and Specs and you have the full set. But they play this anime with a straight face and that keeps it from parody. It's a definte buy. The plot develops a little late (Episode 8 I think) but it's really good. In fact it touches on just what lurks in people's hearts. The enemy was a bit lamely explained but it's plausible. What's funny is that I kept going, this is GONZO, so how come we don't see any panties? Around episode 20 that all changes and you see at least 3 per episode. I guess this is the anime that GONZO decided to become Pantsu oritentated. (Cough Cough  Kiddy Grade)I LOVE how they tied the beginning and the end together and this shows very good planning. None of that lets bring in the clones crap. Last updated Tuesday, October 25 2005. Created Sunday, October 09 2005. | ||||||||
| Rent | 7 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 7 |
 Jan-Chan
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[series:636#967] |
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Gatekeepers, the original series, is a 32 episode series in which a team of teenagers have been tasked to defend Japan from the alien invaders through the use of their mystical gate abilities. The setting and feeling of series is of the late 1960s, at a time in history when B-rated camp was very much the vogue. And I believe that the series tries to mimic not only the setting, but also the cinematic values of that time. It is a simple story of a bunch of innocent teenagers, who have a strange ability to defeat the enemy, and how their adventures take them to strange places and how their relationships change over time. This is just a good teenager adventure story of good guys fight the bad guys, and it works at this level. Gate Keepers 21 is a six episode OVA drawn from the storyline of the original which takes on a darker and more cynical attitude to the invaders. The main character is an unhappy, unemotional detached teenager, alienated by a shallow materialistic society for whom she is no great love for, and in the absence of any purpose, she has settled on the destruction of the alien invaders as a personal challenge as well as an income opportunity. In short, it projects a very bleak and scathing assessment of our current society. The OVA series ends in an improbable burst of contractions that appear to .. (sorry - edited for content plot spoiler). Both of the series share a common enemy, the alien invaders. Strange non-corporeal generals of an unknown origin have the ability to distort the corrupted souls of those petty and materialistic humans who inhabit the world and transform them into robotic black-hat, dark-sunglasses soldiers whose sole purpose is to destroy a damaged world. Under the guidance of a red hat soldier, the black hat soldiers are able to transform in different objects that have to be defeated by the Gatekeepers. The earlier subbed version includes all of the original footage, while the just released (Geneon) dubbed version takes the liberty of cutting about five minutes off of each episode, which I found to be a bit disappointing. The original team of gate keepers consists of three guys and five girls. Of course, all of the girls have some measure of interest in the lead guy, who is too nice to do anything other than secretly love one of the girls with whom he had attended kindergarten with. About half of the episodes address the dynamics of the team of teenagers and how they get along, punctuated with those episodes when everybody charges off to defeat the enemy. I feel that the series actually works, because it does not try to anything more than tell a fun story and be entertaining. I have purchased both the dubbed and subbed versions of the DVDs, because I like having it in my lending library, but I will have to give it a RENT rating out of honesty. This series is simular in flavor to, but is not as good as Sakura Wars (TV version) Last updated Sunday, October 05 2008. Created Wednesday, September 24 2003. | ||||||||
| Unevaluated |
 dhrachth
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[series:636#962] | ||||||
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I watched the first couple episodes and really didn't like it. I didn't care about the characters and it just seemed like a lot of running around and fighting to me. Maybe it gets better later on, but somehow I doubt it. Last updated Thursday, September 11 2003. Created Thursday, September 11 2003. | ||||||||
| Unevaluated |
 Stretch
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[series:636#628] | ||||||
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I left Gate Keepers "unevaluated" because I have only seen episodes 1-3, which by all accounts are considered to be pretty good. It's where the series goes from there that is the real question. "Animetric" gave it four stars, describing it as "fast-paced, entertaining and fun". On the other hand, "Anime Meta-Review" felt the series started off well but wound up as "a tangled mess of half-baked ideas and stories". "Anime Jump!" gave it a grade of "C", feeling that it had employed only tried-and-true concepts without taking any risks with new ideas. Actually, there is one unusual thing about Gate Keepers--it is set in the past. It's a sort of alternate history, and without going all the way back to the Samurai era, the only other example of this type that I can think of would be Sakura Wars. This series dares to mention World War II, or at least states that the first "invaders" appeared in 1945. Personally, I found the charachters to be interesting, with a lot of attention being paid to their pasts, but the invaders themselves seemed difficult to take seriously. They've been described as looking like armies of "Men In Black", wearing sunglasses and bowler hats. In a way, the series seemed like it was designed for children--the box the VCR tape came in even contained a couple of AEGIS I.D. cards to play with. 9/03 #60 Last updated Thursday, February 14 2008. Created Tuesday, September 02 2003. | ||||||||
