Blu-Ray Review: Garo (The Animation) - Season One, Part One
By: Mithrandiel
WARNING: Spoilers Ahead!
Note: We were provided a review copy courtesy of FUNimation.Garo, otherwise known as the "Knight of Light", is a symbol of hope for the kingdom of Valiante. The most powerful member of the order known as "Makai Knights", Garo dispatches demons, known as "horrors", and preserves the security and peace of the realm...but what happens when this legendary hero takes the form of an unstable 17-year old boy? León Luis, born while his mother burned at the stake for cursing the king, has been brought up by his father and fellow Makai Knight, Zoro. Through rigorous training, he has inherited the mystical armor of Garo, but the anger within him rages like an uncontrollable inferno. Does he have what it takes to control this flame and use it to protect the kingdom? Or will his anger devour him and everything he holds dear?
Box Set Review
I'll review the box set first because, well, there's not much to say about it. The packaging is fairly standard, with 4 total discs: two DVD and two Blu-Ray. The extras are slim - commentary on episodes 9 and 11, and an added bonus of episode 13, "Daybreak". My guess is it was included to tease part two of season one. Clever.The cover art on the box is striking, and it definitely piqued my interest when I first saw it, but other than that, it's not like the beautiful limited edition Eden of the East set.
The set's full value is $65, but is currently selling on Funimation for $49. I would invite you to read through my review of the series below, but the short version is this: stream it. If you're paying for FUNimationNow to stream My Hero Academia anyways (which you absolutely MUST, as MHA is amazing), you might stumble across Garo to help kill some time. Here...let me explain.
Anime Review
In our podcast not too long ago, my colleague Archmage used the term "junk food anime" to refer to some of the shows that were sub-par. Sure, they look nice, and they might even be entertaining, but they lack any real substance. At first glance, that's what Garo looked like it was going to be. A flashy action/coming of age story that would see our character through iterative stages of development as he grew into a proper hero. Nothing revolutionary, but perfectly respectable.Well, I was wrong; but not in a good way.Garo's flaws are numerous, but let's start with our central protagonist: León. At the start of the series, he's a 17 year old kid with some serious anger and mommy issues. At the end of the first arc, he's still a 17 year old kid with serious anger and mommy issues, AND he just destroyed half the kingdom in a fit of rage. There is absolutely no growth in the central character over the course of 12 episodes. In fact, in order to control his flames they have to seek out a rare artifact to keep them in check, rather than just, I don't know, teaching him to calm down and not be so angry all the time.Flawed characters are great. When you meet a character with serious issues like León, you can see paths forward. You can envision what a mature and developed version of that character could be. Sure, there are roadblocks along the way, he might think he's ready and fails, but he still takes steps to improve himself and even in those losses, there are small victories. León offers no such development. Even when he's royally trashed by the Black Knight just over halfway through the series, he's still obsessed with becoming more powerful, and then his interest in the Black Knight just diminishes entirely (a point I'll get to later). Overall, Garo is a weak central character and extremely 1-dimensional. Maybe this changes in episodes 13-24, but even if it does, at this point I have no investment in the character at all. When a character could die and the audience wouldn't care, you're not doing it right.
Ok so the central character is a bust. Surely his companions offer some spice to the series? Not so much. His dad, also known as Germán Luis, is a womanizer who takes great joy in telling his son about all the other women he's slept with besides his mom. So, that's a nice healthy relationship. Germán further complicates the series by trying to make it into a comedy. There is certainly a time and place for comedic relief, and on rare occasions he does it well, but most of the time Germán is trying to interject comedy where it really shouldn't be.Perhaps most interesting, however, is the fact that his former lover Anna was burned at the stake apparently has no impact on him whatsoever. In the opening scenes he's supposedly imprisoned while the execution is taking place, but makes it there in time to save León. Why couldn't he save Anna too? What sort of relationship did they have that he could have a child with her and not care enough to even have the slightest bit of remorse in her death? Sure, maybe he was devastated after the fact and has moved on - but they don't even show the grieving process. This anger and sadness seems to have been transferred entirely to her son, who never even knew who she was. A frustrating character to say the least.The other main character is the young prince of Valiante, Alfonso. While León is 1-dimensional in terms of his anger issues and desire for strength and power, Alfonso is the classic white knight. He can do no wrong, is thoroughly righteous, and really should be the hero after all since León is apparently incompetent. The recurring theme among all of these characters is that they don't do anything surprising. Everything they do is thoroughly predictable.What's probably the most frustrating thing about this is that there's so much potential in the dynamic of these characters. Alfonso and León would make excellent rivals if they were developed properly and set to oppose each other from the start. Instead, there's an awkward buddy-buddy vibe between the two until Alfonso realizes that León is out of his mind and really shouldn't have Garo's armor. Similarly, Germán could be grappling with the guilt of being unable to save his beloved while balancing the challenges of being a single father. Instead, he gleefully attempts to seduce any female in his vicinity, and when scolded by his son, simply shrugs with a sheepish grin as if to say "I can't help myself! I'm a terrible father!"
The villains aren't much better. I don't want to go too much into it, but Mendoza is basically Claude Frollo from Hunchback of Notre Dame - rejected by the Makai Knights for his inhumane experiments, he vows revenge on the order and manipulates the king. Bernardo, the Black Knight, sides with Mendoza because his agenda conveniently fits with his worldview. Octavia...well we don't know all the details by the end of part one, but I'd be surprised if her story is much different.
These characters are all placed within a story that struggles to form a cohesive plot. Garo vacillates between episodic plot points and brief arcs, never really finding its stride. At the start we are introduced to Anna as she's burned at the stake, and the dramatic birth of young León. Mendoza is set up as the bad guy, and the premise is that German and León are on a journey to the capitol to achieve revenge. There's a very brief explanation of horrors, but nothing on the belief system within the world of Garo, which could have been an interesting piece of world-building to see. These knights all seem to represent various Gods of their world. What are they like? Is there a creation story? Who's Zaruba? What greater dark power lurks over the horizon? A shadowy figure who must not be named, perhaps. Sure, some of these archetypes may seem boring, but when you're world-building these are important questions to ask and answer in order to draw viewers in. The plot moves in fits and starts, and clumsily stumbles through some flashback scenes along the way. Things get particularly messy at episode 7, which had me going back to make sure I hadn't missed anything.Then there's the animation. I will say that I appreciate the lack of drawn out transformation scenes. With a series like this one, it could easily fall into Saint Seiya or Ronin Warrior territory, where a solid 5 minutes is taken up by various transformations through the show. No, the armor snaps on quite quickly and the battles are smooth as well. However, that's where the animation stopped impressing me. They certainly invested a lot in the battle scenes, which were brief compared to the series overall, and as a result some of the basics (movement, backgrounds, etc) suffered. The horrors that they battled were... interesting. They're reminiscent of monsters I'd stumble across in Dark Souls: part horrifying, part ridiculous.Overall, Garo is a disappointment. If you're looking for a story about a young man donning mystical armor to battle evil, there are many, many other series that do it much better than Garo. If you're looking for a "junk-food" series to kill time while you're waiting for this season's latest episodes: again, there are many other shows that could fulfill that niche.I would say Garo is best consumed much like you get that occasional yearning for McDonalds: you know you're gonna hate yourself afterwards, but sometimes it's an itch that only a show like Garo can scratch.
