Gatchaman Crowds Insight – 12 [END]

Staying positive while bleeding to death is one of Hajime’s specialties

This is an original anime so there shouldn’t be issue about trying to cram in the right amount of manga chapters, make up a random ending, or say “to be continued” with a shot of the whole cast laughing as the camera slowly pans up to the sky.  However, given the mess of season’s 1 ending and how season 2 was already proving to be much worse, I was dreading the results.

Thankfully, the finale wasn’t too bad! In fact, it’s a hell of a lot better than most of the episodes this season. It’s more composed and coherent, calmly wrapping things up instead of shitting the bed and throwing last minute ideas at us. All the challenges each and every character has gone through up until now played a part in allowing the Gatchaman crew to successfully combat against the atmosphere and allow Gel to be forgiven. It was a natural sequence of events and not a contrived asspull for shock value. In fact, I’d dare say this finale was better than season 1’s spazz attack of a finale…which is hard to admit since I thought this season was a huge step down in almost every regard.

“Hi, we’re here to give these DEATH THREATS TO GEL to help Hajime get better!”

 As Hajime says, the enemy was “everyone”. Even the Gatchaman crew were guilty of going with the flow and not properly thinking things through. It’s just such a tempting thing to do. When everyone showed up with flowers and thank you messages to Hajime, I thought that was a very sweet thing to do. Heck, I might do it too if I weren’t so cheap (flower money could buy me cake!). But that too is a form of going with the atmosphere cultivated by the sheer shock of seeing a bedridden Hajime. This is precisely why they give everyone a month to decide before voting on what to do with Gel. Otherwise, people would respond automatically with their peer pressure-induced answers. First reactions are often emotional in nature, and it takes some time to properly think about which course of action is correct. By correct I don’t mean morally sound, but something that personally resonates with your unique sense of self.

Take Rizumu, for example. He doesn’t follow the crowd, he thinks carefully about his actions and what they mean. However, this leads to many people being terrorized by his extreme ideals. Doing what you believe to be right after a lot of thought doesn’t necessarily mean you will end up doing something “good.” But at the same time, he isn’t evil either. He is content when the votes are cast and people no longer act like apes, as seen by him smiling and walking away once X tallies the final ballots. Sure, he was proven wrong, but it’s a pleasant surprise. It’s like going your whole life being firmly convinced all cupcakes taste like dirt and then one day someone proves you wrong by giving you a cupcake that’s the most delicious thing you’ve ever eaten. Holy shit, cupcakes are actually really good and this is kind of awesome! Rizumu sees that he was wrong about society, but that’s okay because it means he doesn’t have to terrorize people anymore to fight against the usage of Crowds. Society is ready. He can eat cupcakes in peace for the rest of his life!

So thinking and coming to your own conclusions is great and all, but sometimes it leads to weirdos like Rizumu doing all sorts of damage. Likewise, going with the atmosphere is bad because it cultivates groupthink and makes people do things they wouldn’t otherwise do. Gatchaman Crowds always has a ball of a time tackling these grey morality issues where no one way is correct. Kuu-sama or Crowds….both have positives and negatives. Therefore, a mix of the two is needed.

When showing the fireworks video, Tsubasa offhandedly notes that there’s a “good atmosphere” going on in the headquarters. There is still some need to agree with others and band together for certain causes. This is why some Kuu-sama remain, as you can never truly extinguish mankind’s desire to go with the flow. You can’t spend a painstaking time thinking over what cupcake flavour you want, right? Sometimes you have to just be capricious and pick whichever one you happen to lay eyes on first! …Gosh, I’m hungry. Sorry about all these food metaphors. Anyways, Kuu-sama and Crowds co-existing is the most natural course of action seeing as humanity will always flip-flop between the two on a case-by-case basis. Much like how Hajime accepted the evils of BK in season 1, Japan has to accept the two creepy, humanoid monsters roaming around that represent two sides of one coin.

Just like Hajime indeed :>

All in all, I think the method for banishing most of the Kuu-sama was a clever and natural ending for such a show. Society learned an important lesson and started to think…although not entirely. Some Kuu-sama remain, the vote for Gel to stay was by no means a runaway victory, and some people will quickly revert back to their ways when a new bandwagon appears for them to hop on. A nice, subtle way for the Gatchaman team to defeat the “villain” and help update the world. It’s not the most exciting finale, but I’m just relieved it didn’t go nuts trying to add a whole slew of new elements. It’s a shame the first half is just one big recap, especially since I already guessed it was Hajime pretending to be Gel during the first run of the battle. This was nothing new for me so I basically just texted for the whole first half of the episode out of disinterest. Well, better too slow than too rushed, I suppose.

Final Thoughts

Here’s a quote from me in our episode 1 tag team post of Gatchaman Crowds Insight: “I’m way beyond rational thought at this point as I’ve dove completely into a pool of endless optimism and excitement”. These are the words of a poor, naive soul too removed from reality to be able to foresee what would happen. For the first 1/3rd or so of the series, I was hyped to the high heavens. This second season looked to be everything I wanted and more, with a shiny new co-protagonist and a story focused even more on superheroes using social media to save the world. Rizumu was a hammy villain, but his opposition brought up important loopholes to the CROWDS system that needed to be addressed. It was a direction I was more than happy to tread in.

Unfortunately, the whole CROWDS things became little more than a footnote to a story about Gel, politics, and the dangers of going with the flow. Rizumu showed that people can’t be trusted to have choice, and then Gel slowly (and accidentally) further proved Rizumu’s point by having society keep making bad decisions until an army of tri-coloured maneaters took over the planet. Seriously, you know you’ve screwed up when your votes lead to people being eaten by helium-voiced, eyeless terrors. Gel becoming president was the point where I started to grow weary of the show. At this point, we were bashed over the head again and again with the most obvious of messages. The thought bubbles were blatant enough, but then it got worse as Kuu-sama appeared and started eating little girls who didn’t want to play kickball.

He’s cute when he doesn’t do dumb stuff

Sometimes bad stories can become bearable with good characters, but the cast of season 1 were largely absent. There was no respite from this horror for me. My favourite characters had rotating cameo appearances, but that was about it. Instead, I had to see the ever despicable Tsubasa and Gel hog all the screentime. It just didn’t work out. The show became a mess. Giant plushie things eating people when they don’t go with the flow is the most idiotic way to depict peer-pressure I could think of. Gatchaman Crowds dropped the ball…and dropped it hard.

The finale tries to fix it all and somehow does a good job tying it all together. Going back to my words of optimism in my episode 1 post…I must say I’m incredibly disappointed. I wanted to like this series more than anything, and I was crushed when I realized just how trashy it had become. I stopped looking forward to it. Writing about how I didn’t like something I thought was a show I resonated with made me grow even more bitter. How could my favourite director screw up on his second attempt so badly!? I’m so disappointed that Gatchaman Crowds Insight is such a joke of a show, spitting out ideas like they’re meaningful when it’s all just garrish metaphors lacking substance. I can’t recommend this show to anyone. What a terrible mess I’ve had to wade through…I feel like I’ve had to break up with a man I was deeply in love with because I found out they were an abusive jerk. I’m heartbroken.

This is how I felt watching the show…