Gungrave #1: Beyond the Grave Pioneer 100 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles Released: 07/06/2004 Reviewed: 05/31/2005

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It's not often that you see man junk in anime. In fact, barring any Akira Toriyama related romps of thinly veiled homoeroticism, there's not a whole lot I can think of (aside from that one episode of Now and Then, Here and There). This is probably for the better. Judging by how much of my time I spend watching anime to see the naked bits of the gender I'm sexually attracted to (i.e.: No time at all) then the chances of my desire to see a giant man's presumably giant meat stuffs is similarly nil. Or less than nil, 'cause a man's gotta put up a good front!

If you're familiar with the Gungrave videogame then I'm sorry. For those not in the know, Gungrave was a PS2 game released somewhere in the 2002-era. It featured a large man in a trench coat that carried around a menacing coffin and two equally menacing handguns. The main drawing point of it was that character designs were done by Yasuhiro Nightow, of Trigun fame. "Beyond the Grave", as they called the large fellow, was a pixelated man who made it his purpose to kill other pixelated men. On occasion he would fight what some gamers might consider a boss character, but the mishmashed blobs of polygons were barely distinguishable from any other grunt or foot soldier in the armies of evil. Grave also had access to a variety of special moves involving our beloved character flailing around like an epileptic, but it was entirely possible to play through the entire game without needing them. In fact, as was the case with me, it's entirely possible to play through the game without realizing they were there. Suffice it to say, the game was unmitigated crap.

Gungrave: The Anime seems to start out with Grave in a similar position. Still large, although less pixelated. He retains a strong violent instinct, but it'd seem the flow of bloodthirsty mafiosos has dried up. He's now graduated to killing creepy looking spider aliens (featured left). Don't get me wrong, I hate spider aliens as much as the next guy, but we've seen this kind of thing a million times before. Plus, I really don't understand what the point of killing aliens is if you don't have a giant robot to do it in. Where's the fun in that? So I was notably underwhelmed by the first episode of Gungrave, which was a bit too much like the spitting image of its videogame forefather. That is to say the show was horribly melodramatic without an ounce of substance. The legend of horrendous game-to-anime conversions is superceded only by the legend of horrendous game-to-live action movie conversions (Super Mario Brothers: The Movie notwithstanding). Despite a preponderance of sad chicks looking off center, I was not thoroughly convinced by Gungrave.

But just like how the baby eater must go through the task of finding the perfect rock to unearth his delicious meal, so too must Joel and I forage through the despair and hopelessness of the first 20 minutes of this show to get at the wonderful juices underneath. Inside of Gungrave's skull lies a series of flashbacks that are infinitely more entertaining than the show proper. The other three episodes on the disc delve into Grave's past. Years ago he was just a young man named Brandon, member of a gang that fools around with street fights while their leader macks on beat chicks to try and further his "rep". Well, I guess it's commendable that one anime out there includes a gross, disgusting looking woman? It's better than man junk, I suppose. Episodes 2-4 are not only better, they don't look like they were painted entirely with two shades of black and gray. If you can make it past that positively lugubrious first episode, Gungrave actually has a lot going for it. I hope you're lucky enough to have a friend like Joel tell you thirty times how much he wants to see this show. Lord knows I'm not eloquent enough to convince you. The only thing that concerns me about Gungrave is that eventually the tales of the group of innocent street kids becoming hardcore killers is going to come to an end and we're going to have to go back to aliens and man junk again. Hell, I'd rather have more fatties than deal with that.