Anime: Rhea Gall Force

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[br] PROLOGUE [br]This is the fourth movie in the long Gall Force series and the first of the second story ark (don’t get confused here). It doesn’t really stand alone as it is directly followed by the Earth Chapter movie trilogy. It would be a mistake to be reviewed separately from the following trilogy, since they practically share the same scenario, characters, graphics and even have direct story continuity. They must be viewed as a uniform movie quatralogy in order for their beauty to shine properly.
[br]By extension, you could even say it is a mistake to be reviewed separately from all the other Gall Force movies because they all belong to same, ongoing scenario. Please redirect to the review of Gall Force - Eternal Story for a full review that expands to the several movies of the entire series.
[br]This review involves this story ark alone. The ratings represent ONLY these four movies.
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[br] ANIMATION & SOUND SECTION: 6
[br]Definitely outdated today but very good for an 80’s production. It doesn’t stand a chance next to the famous Appleseed or Patlabor series in the mecha department. Even the characters are drawn in a very mediocre way. If some scenes and music themes deserve attention, those would be the enemy robots and the human military leaders, who are essentially the villains in the story. All the focus was given to the bad guys and not the good guys, so you simply wait for some action to happen and find most peaceful time and interaction between the protagonists to be boring.
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[br] STORY SECTION: 6
[br]Typical story, if seen separately from the whole series. The series consists of one-hour long episodes (or movies, if you prefer). Its genre is science fiction and war drama. (spoiler alert!)
[br]The setting takes place in the near future, where humans discover alien technology on the moon (descended from the civilizations of the previous story ark). The cold war (USSR still existed when the movies were made!) drived the two sides to typically use this alien technology for the creation of superior weaponry, when in fact, it was supposed to teach people how to live in peace. When artificial technology came to be, the machines, typically, rebel against their creators and a terrible war between West and East escalates to almost total extinction of life on the planet. The survivors make truce and try to organize themselves in order to deal with the problem. Half of them plan to destroy the machines and rebuild the planet, while the other half plan to leave the doomed Earth for another planet and nuke everything on it while leaving. The protagonists are teams of now befriended warriors and scientists, who fight to protect the civilian population until the final solution is made.
[br]The story has a few twists but it is generally predictable and straightforward. It is reminiscent of several robots-versus-humans scenarios and is very typical as a whole.
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[br] CHARACTER SECTION: 5
[br]The series focuses mostly on the story and not the characters. There are seven women who are present in all the different time periods of the story. From them, only one stands out. She is a kind-hearted leader type (kind-hearted people are always the leaders in anime!), who has guilt over her father for being the creator of artificial intelligence and thus indirectly responsible for everything. All the rest of the men/women/ robots are supporting cast that don’t truly have a personality or mature. But even she has little presence over the story. Generally speaking, there are no memorable characters.
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[br] VALUE & ENJOYMENT SECTION: 5
[br]It is simply too reminiscent of many other series/movies. It lacks characters and originality to be considered good to watch, much less re-watch.
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[br] VERDICT
[br]The accused is found … NOT GUILTY! … He failed to provide us with an interesting work but his family has many wise things to teach us.
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[br] SUGGESTION LIST
[br]The Terminator movie trilogy. (medium) Same story, cooler action. [br]Cassern. (very good) It’s a Japanese movie with real actors. Same premise, better graphics, atmosphere and story.