Gestalt

60 minutes
English/Japanese
English Subtitles
02/13/2001

Why is it that everytime I try and watch Slayers I get sidetracked? I'm putting the disc into my player and all of a sudden my Mega Man game says, "Screw that, would you rather watch six episodes or play me for awhile?" all of a sudden it's two in the morning and I'm scrambling to watch something so I can have a review to write at work the next day. It's crazy I tell you, my Playstation is possessed. So after trying to decide on something where my only criteria is "Really really short" I came upon Gestalt, of course, it didn't end up being that short when I realized The Internet Movie Database didn't have a listing for it. So I spent another forty minutes or so typing one up for their approval. Net result? After a long night of Mega Man, Shoujo, Crab Alfredo (don't ask), and iMDB submissions... I think I got about two hours of sleep. At seven in the morning my alarm wakes me up and I give a shout of "It's time to make some kah-ray-zee money!" in my most gravely black man voice before I stumble down to the shower and try to decide which is more important... washing my hair or shaving my face.
I went with shaving.

That didn't actually happen when I watched the show two days back, it was a few years ago when I watched Gestalt for the first time. I left it in for a few reason. Yes indeed I did put the listing for Gestalt on iMDB and I did indeed eat Crab Alfredo and play Mega Man. But more importantly, I was very tired when I watched this show and my judgment was slightly circumspect... and I enjoyed this a lot more last time than I did this time. So it's with great pleasure that I reveal to you, my "Question Girl" in her first appearance. I didn't want to use her yet, because her shading sucks, but it seems that if I ever want done I have to do it myself. I certainly can't trust SKABS.

Why the question mark girl? Because I've realized that I really don't like fantasy anime in pretty much any circumstance, so instead of just outright wasting it in everything I write I'll just waste it, but give it a grade that won't make fans feel bad about liking it. If you like fantasy anime, you'll probably like Gestalt. It has dragons and tinier dragons, and like fifteen dark elves (which the cast members are shocked about every time they see them). Some dark elves are voiced by very annoying dub actresses who will remain unnamed, but I definitely do not care for.

It's also got Ohri/Ori/Ohiri depending on how people wanted to spell it... 'cause I've seen 'em all! That's not what's annoying about her, it's those stupid text boxes she uses to talk with that bother me. You want to know the main reason I don't play Final Fantasy games (Besides the fact that they're boring as sin)? It's because I have to read a freaking novel while I'm doing it! I don't know about you guys, but that doesn't sit well with me. That's also one of my main reasons for not watching anime subtitled.

And now those tricky Japanese are trying to make me do it anyway! The text boxes seem cute at first, quickly get annoying, and go away just as you're about to break your TV from frustration. How do they get banished? Well Ohri has a curse that can only be broken by TOTALLY making out with a priest that looks like a girl. This is gross, but also a staple of Shoujo-type anime, pretty boys making out with mute girls. At least, I think it is...

Brother Olivier is that girl-man of a priest. For whatever reason he finds he has the desire to go to the forbidden island of G and find out exactly why it's forbidden. On the way he totally makes out with slave-girl Ohri, totally evades a dark elf magic using girl like twice and totally gets stuck in some stupid country where another dark elf is causing trouble and keeping the king alive via some sort of telekinetic Weekend at Bernie's farce. Oh yeah, and there's some seriously blatant CG going on when the spells get cast. That totally pisses me off. You know what else pisses me off? Unfinished shows.

But Gestalt totally sucks, in my opinion. I could see why some people would like it, and it's not the kind of show that I would yell at someone for liking. There's just so much stuff in here that they probably didn't put in for people like it. Everyone under thirty years old in this show looks like they've been taking too much estrogen... fantasy anime just annoys me 9 out of 10 and this isn't really any exception. To make matters worse it's fantasy-Shoujo which is like ten times as bad. Why does god look like a bishonen version of Jesus? Questions like this and more are never answered by the unfinished Gestalt, but that's okay because they're not exactly the kind of ones keeping me up at night anyway. Though I'll never understand why there's a god named, of all things, Gestalt. Is this symbolism? I hardly think it matters.