Garzey's Wing Anime Review

Quick Review

• Reviewer: Marc
• Review Date: 2000-06-25 (updated 2013-08-16)
• 0.5 stars out of 5 (?)

Garzey's Wing may be written and directed by the creator of Gundam, but that doesn't make it any less of an interesting idea written and directed so badly that there's almost nothing left to watch. Despite some tactical cleverness here and there, the bright spots are few and far between. Worst of all is the English dub--adding insult to injury, the badly-translated dialogue is so awkward that it takes effort just to decipher what's being said.

If you're absolutely enthralled by unusual fantasy war stories, or are interested in seeing what certainly deserves a place among history's all-time worst dub writing, then you might want to try Garzey's Wing. Otherwise, it's a major waste of time.

Read the full-length review...

Full Review

• Reviewer: Marc
• Review Date: 2000-06-25 (updated 2013-08-16)
• 0.5 stars out of 5 (?)

Hey, look, it's a magical girl story where the main character is a guy and there's way more fighting and dirt! Actually, Garzey's Wing is more like a fantasy war story with a creative twist, but that doesn't matter, because it's bad. Really bad. Garzey's Wing ranks among the worst anime I've had the displeasure of watching, and the promising ideas involved make it all the more painful.

You might think with Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino credited as creator, writer, and director that it would be hard to go wrong. And, indeed, there are a number of clever ideas sprinkled throughout the story. Most are along the lines of battle tactics--holding lanterns on long poles to spring an ambush early or various creative fighting styles with a primitive form of gunpowder. The abrupt shifts between Chris' fantasy self and the real world capture some of his disorientation and should make for a distinctive twist.

Sadly, "should" is the operative word for the entire series. It's so badly written and directed that no amount of clever ideas could even come close to saving it, and the interesting storytelling devices are lost in the mire. It's as if Tomino came up with a bunch of neat ideas but all he did with them was write out a long list of scenes that are individually devoid of flow and tied together awkwardly at best. The pacing isn't just bad, it's nonexistent; the scenes are choppy to put it mildly, and more often than not they jerk past too quickly to even get a handle on what's happening.

As for all those clever ideas (and the rest of the story, for that matter), you can tell they're in there, but the execution is so poor (both visually and in terms of writing) that I needed to actively work at just figuring out what was going on. It's a shame, because I could easily imagine how half-decent execution could have taken the exact same scenes and ideas and turned them into something watchable, and there's honestly nobody to blame but Tomino, who has no excuse.

Even the characters are almost completely uninteresting. Chris' predicament and the spectrum of suspicion to worship of the people around him should be interesting, but just plain aren't. There is a grand total of one character that I had any interest in, and that was our hero's cute fairy sidekick, Falan Fa. In a bit of a twist, she's in the same situation as Chris, drug unwillingly into another world. Her spunk and reluctance but eventual determination to be helpful makes her somewhat interesting, a big step up from the rest of the muddled cast. If only the series had been about her.

Now, to be completely fair, some of the blame is shouldered by the atrocious English dub. The cast isn't the problem--their voices fit and they emote passably well. But no one, and I mean absolutely no one, could have taken those lines and made them sound anything like acting. The first few lines are so awful, I thought to myself, "You've got to be kidding--it must get better." It doesn't. Heck, the dubbing could have used some subtitles itself--it sounded like they completely forgot to have a native English speaker go over the translated dialogue and do things like correct the grammar or make it intelligible to someone other than whoever wrote it. I'm serious--some of it is so bad it took effort just to decipher what was being said. Perhaps the mangled English could have slipped by in subtitles, but it's painful to listen to in the dub, and it ruins what little writing quality there may have been. For that reason, although I haven't seen the sub, I can guarantee that it's better. It certainly couldn't be worse.

At least the visuals aren't quite as ugly as everything else. The character designs and art are satisfactory, although the backgrounds are overly simple. A few of the action scenes are animated reasonably well, but most of the rest is choppy and, more importantly, badly directed. That's the real problem--the way many of the scenes are executed, the onscreen action lurches by too fast to get a handle on it. (I don't know if this was added in the dub, but they go so far as to point out what's happening onscreen on much of the time. Worse, it's necessary.)

The sole bright spot is again the fairy--most of the bits of character animation that actually look good involve her. There's a very good sense of her scale, and a lot of her simple actions (flying around, hanging on to things, drawing a map) look natural.

The only other thing to mention is the music, which is about on par with the writing--almost nonexistent.

In all, Garzey's Wing is an interesting idea written and directed so badly that there is almost nothing left to watch. Despite some tactical cleverness here and there, the bright spots are few and far between. Worst of all is the English dub--adding insult to injury, the badly translated dialogue is so awkward it's hard to understand. If you're absolutely enthralled by unusual fantasy war stories, or are interested in seeing what certainly deserves a place among history's all-time worst dub writing, then you might try checking Garzey's Wing out. Otherwise, it's a major waste of time.

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Related Recommendations

If you want to see more equally bad fantasy, you might check out Panzer Dragoon. You'd do better to try The Heroic Legend of Arslan, Record of Lodoss War, or some other half decent fantasy series, though.