Anime Studio Evaluation #3: Gonzo

It’s so easy to see how crappy GONZO is these days but back in the early 00s they were perceived as a god-like studio full of amazing ideas and good budgets. And yet if you look at what they’ve made, almost all of it is unwatchable. Poorly scripted, badly directed, stuffed with excessive fan service and terrible CGI models.
1998: Blue Submarine No.6
1999: Melty Lancer
2001: Zaion, Samurai Girl

Some titles had something interesting going on, like the gender jokes in Vandread (2000), where men and women live separately and need to co-exist again as means to fend off a common enemy. If they had focused more on plot and theme exploration, instead of silly ecchi moments and terrible CGI battles, this could have been a great series. But they didn’t. Because it’s GONZO.

They are given titles with infinite potential and a pre-existing fanbase such as Final Fantasy (2001), and they don’t know what to do with it. It was one of the worst promotions of any videogame franchise ever. But that’s the thing with GONZO. They don’t give a shit.

They are paid to make terrible infomercials, leaving them incomplete, and hope someone else will pick them up later on for a remake or a continuation. This was the case with Hellsing (2001), a lukewarm tease for people to go read the manga, until Madhouse made a proper adaptation.

They made the first season of Full Metal Panic (2002), it was a complete mediocrity, and then left Kyoto Animation to make way better sequels. The moeblob studio made better action, than the studio that is all about the action. Yes, they are that bad.

Many were constantly defending the studio by claiming the only problem was the CGI. If you ignore it, most of the shows are fine. No they are not. Yukikaze (2002) was an exception, the CGI they used was amazing for its time, the aerial battles were spectacular, the concept of the alien war was looked into, there was no fan service, and all the characters were mature adults. It was still not a good series because the script was an unfocused mess of ideas with no character chemistry. It was all mechanical, dry, and lifeless. It was not the CGI, it was the people making this shit not knowing what they were doing.

Which is why one of their best series is Gravion (2002), a generic mecha with not much of a plot, heavy on erotic humor, and characters who are caricatures. It was poking fun at the stereotypes of the genre and had a bloody good soundtrack. It’s fairly forgettable as a whole, but as dumb fun it was honest and self-aware of its cheesiness. It was good as trash entertainment.

When they kept expectations low and focused on simple stories with emphasis on characters instead of god awful CGI then they were producing decent series. Kaleido Star (2003) was family oriented, but it also had likable characters and was motivational in telling children to chase after their dreams.

But that’s the thing with GONZO, they didn’t want to do basic stuff. They always wanted to chew more than they could swallow, and the result was producing dozens of series, full of great sci-fi ideas that were never used properly, CGI that felt very off-putting, and lots of done to death fan service bits that were there simply for increasing the sales by shredding the dignity of characters who had the depth of a plank.
2002: Kiddy Grade
2003: Gad Guard, Last Exile, Chrno Crusade
2004: Burst Angle, Desert Punk
2005: Trinity Blood, Black Cat, Solty Rei

And yet most people didn’t realize all that. They were mesmerized by the adaptations of very famous works. Hey guys, look, it’s the modernized version of all time classics. They have robots, take place in space, and have magic trees. Just don’t pay attention to how they are stretched to last way longer than they need to, how they over-complicate the plot so it can become a convoluted mess, or how fancy colors and mechanical backgrounds add nothing to the actual show and are more like distracting you from what is going on. They were offending the source material by making it look shallow and stupid.
2004: Samurai Seven, The Count of Monte Christo
2007: Romeo X Juliet

Another thing most people didn’t realize was how ultraviolence does not make a show mature. Gonzo made some of those as well, which were considered deep and meaningful, when they were just shock factor and are now forgotten because once the thrill is over and you never cared about the characters, you also have nothing to remember the show for.
2004: Gantz
2005: Basilisk, Speed Grapher

Bokura No (2007) is an odd exception, since lots of people still remember it and still consider it of the best anime of all times. It was just misery porn about children suffering and dying. What was even the message of this bullshit? Children must die so some cosmic horror will not blow up the planet just because? And this is just one of countless dimensions? Who gives a shit if one of them gets destroyed? Who gives a shit is a billion planets blow up? They are countless, it doesn’t matter. This show is terrible.

If there is one anime that is totally worth it, it would be the one that goes against everything they are known for. Character-centric, no schlock action, fan service, shock effect, or untapped sci-fi. Welcome to the NHK (2006) was the one and only time Gonzo went against its stereotype and made something you would expect from Gainax. A critique against escapism and the dark side of anime. Very optimistic and goes in circles, but still more meaningful that everything else they made combined. This is their best work, not that torture porn about kids suffering.

Anyways, Bokura No and Welcome to the NHK was their best moment. After that they began having major economical problems and barely manage to stay afloat by producing effortless bullshit to this day. As a whole, they only have one great show, and two more that are ok but nothing amazing. They failed hard on the Sturgeon test and are thus an awful studio.