First Impression – Gunslinger Stratos: The Animation

Are you ready for this?! I don’t really know…

 Soo are you excited for this or not so much? I will say compared to the other first batch of shows this was kind of weak and I can’t forget to mention Urabutcher is involved, but just as a planner so I don’t expect his usual OMG PEOPLE ARE DYING trope or will he put some of that into Gunslinger Stratos? I guess we will see…

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What is Gunslinger Stratos?

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Urabutcher’s formula for creating anime! CRAZY!

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Best classroom ever! Just check out that view.

Every time I see these super high tech anime worlds it makes me want to live there and I can see why Urabutcher was pulled into this as a planner because the world of Gunslinger Stratos has tons of tech elements pulled from Psycho Pass, which isn’t a bad thing at all in my book! Soooo where does this series even come from? For starters it’s a Square Enix arcade game that came out back in 2012 and there was also sequel that came out recently for windows called Gunslinger Stratos: Reloaded, both are also based on a concepts by Urabutcher so again we can see why he was pulled into the Animation version, but could you tell it was his creation or not really? I mean as far as a “planner” goes I have no idea how much involvement that gives him other than him creating the storyboards, character concepts and bios written for the character or did they pull everything from the video game? Since I have not played or seen the game before I can only hope that it’s not as terrible as Blaze Blue, instead I would love to have something on the lines of Persona.

Pew Pew or Ewww?!

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Awww yeah these two characters.

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Twintail LOLi best character.

Oh hey look this series also has a tooru! I wonder if is related to Tor from Absolute Duo? Anyway Mr generic main character suffers from Dude-I-saw-a-cute-LOLi-in-a-dream Tooru Kazasumi that lands him and his not-a-romantic-partner-I-dunno-maybe-someday friend Kyouka Katagiri who I fell in love with instantly because she is voiced by Hisako Kanemoto who is always awesome. I only wish that she was the main character! Side characters include sounds-like-Yuki-Kaji-who-loves-his-sister-more-than-life-itself Kyouma Katagiri who sports a pompadour from Space Dandy! I don’t really care for him at all but I do love his omg-kick-ass-personal-Black-Bullet-LOLi Shizune Rindou who is voiced by Kana Ueda aka Rin from Fate/Stay Night and wow she is SOOOOO damn tiny! Maybe she is a rare micro LOLi? So out of the main cast who do you like? I just like Kyouka and Shizune for now. So we have the main cast! I just want to know who the hell is the Tooru look a like? Are they going to say that the one dressed in all white is the REAL tooru? I kind of hope that is the case or will they simply swap places? Either way I want to see what happens next and I want to know why there are two different worlds and which world is the real world? I have a sneaky feeling that the crazy gun filled world is the real world, but we shall see!

Extra Gunslingers

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Again best character.

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This version is way better than the other.

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Mechs are awesome thou…

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mmmmmmmmm

End thoughts

Besides the high tech world of Gunslinger Stratos I kind of enjoyed this and some of the characters are quite interesting so far, but the overall prodution was quite dull and boring for the most part and I know a few people will not be crazy about the character designs! Personally I don’t think they are crap or anything amazing either; however I am more interested in the outfits they get later on! I do remember them being a bit cooler looking from the previews or do you they are still going to be terrible? I will say for a first episode they did an alright job of breaking how things work or did they? I suppose the who reveal about the other world needs to be explained along with the whole PVP stuff happening. One last question to ask do all of the main characters have an evil clones running around underground shooting people? We did see the main cast fighting copies of themselves and now I can’t wait to see the evil versions of Kyouka and Shizune, but are they really evil? I guess we will see…

Preview

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Next time on zombie YuriKuma~

About

Is huge anime fan from Florida! who loves to watch anime and also enjoys drawing and collecting pictures, my favorite genre of anime has to be Mecha, there is just something awesome about giant robots beating the crap out of each other! Other than that type of show, I love a good comedy or action series :D
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13 Responses to “First Impression – Gunslinger Stratos: The Animation”

  1. skylion says:

    As far as I know, Planning was for the video game, and not the actual anime. Again, no one paying Uro for the full cour. And look at the money they saved. They put it into the animation! Only they didn’t…The Psycho Pass ideas feel like his first draft of that show that got re-written to the show we now know.

    Well it has Shizune and Space Dandy….feels like the show should have been about them…

    • Foshizzel says:

      Yeah the plot for the first episode feels ripped out of a video game like a quick tutorial level.

      Yeah I think those two are far more interesting as a pair right now.

  2. Highway says:

    The character design for this is pretty bad, imo. Looks like they ripped off Hagure Yuusha, with those round faces and flat hair.

  3. BlackBriar says:

    Standard formula for an action show in my opinion with an alternate world setting for a twist. However, I can easily say the first episode of Gunslinger Stratos is better than that of Infinite Stratos. The alternate world where the lead meets himself feels like a plot used in “The One” where Jet Li faces off against his murdering doppelganger who wants to use his death to increase his own abilities.

    • Foshizzel says:

      I can easily say the first episode of Gunslinger Stratos is better than that of Infinite Stratos

      lol well that is easy to do.

      Yep I have seen the ONE it was crazy and it plays into the whole “clones or copies” vibe that Gunslinger is going for and I am curious to see what happens when the others meet their copies.

      • BlackBriar says:

        Yeah, I liked the movie as well and it was one of the few times Jet Li plays a bad guy. This could mean seeing copies/doubles of the entire cast. The other movie I recall Li playing the villain is The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

  4. zztop says:

    I’ve seen the Gunslinger game at a SEGA arcade in Shinjuku. It looked pretty fun.

    • Highway says:

      Man, where’s THAT Kyoka in the show? That character looks much better than the moon-faced girl with clingy hair that the show has.

    • AllenAndArth says:

      i want this game…
      although the anime was basically: “What Is this? What is my life?Kyoka is hot”

  5. Irenesharda says:

    Well, it’s an interesting premise to begin with. We have two worlds that seem to exist side by side but know nothing of each other. We have two MCs we are the same person but on opposite ends of the spectrum. One who is an underachiever and never wants to draw attention to himself (seriously, he wants to be a fluffy sheep. *roll eyes*), never wants to stir up trouble, and the other who is outgoing, an expert fighter, and accepts a challenge with ease.

    I don’t really care for any of the supporting cast of yet, they all seem like generic archetypes so far. You have the tough loli who’s jealous of her guy’s sister, you have the jealous, tough older brother who doesn’t think the guy his sister’s interested in is any good, you have the tough upbeat girl who is interested in the MC, and you have the MC who is a normal school boy who wants to stay out of trouble, even though he has all the potential in the world.

    I did get a chance to read the premise to the original game, and the series looks to be similar. So, pretty much we have two parallel worlds, one where freedom runs rampant, and one that has no freedom at all. The two worlds are merging and the governments from both engage in Operation: Stratos, and send fighters into the past of 2015 in order to affect the future and thus allow their world to survive and the other world to be wiped out. In the end, it’s basically a fight for survival of parallel worlds being fought over by teenagers and young adults.

    Also, we have a little girl who is in trouble, who seems to be trying to send a message to Tohru, and she’s always surrounded by ravens.

    I know in Western culture, ravens usually symbolize death and foreboding, I’m not sure if they mean the same in Eastern culture?

    But anyway, I’m pretty sure I know how this is going to end, especially with this little girl who keeps writing complicated calculations on the ground. But it’ll be interesting in seeing the journey of how they get there.

  6. d-LaN says:

    Gunslinger Stratos -The Animation- is one of the anime that I have been keeping an eye on since its initial announcement. My hype did not let me down yet for this one.

    So far Gunslinger Stratos have been pretty enjoyable even though I question Tohru and Kyoka logic of bringing a paint gun to a real gun fight. I’ve seen quite a lot of complains abt the faces/overall art style, but honestly I have no problem with them when they aren’t being QUALITY. The budget also doesn’t seem to be that high, or at least when compared to previous A-1 series.

    Also, going from what I’ve seen of the promotional materials everyone has their own alternate counterparts. Although the purple haired loli is an anime original character.

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