English Dub Season Review: Gleipnir Season One

 

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Shuichi was a normal high school student until his body underwent a monstrous transformation. He saves a girl called Clair from a burning building. She later confronts him about his secret monstrous side and together they search for more monsters and the gold coins that grant them special abilities. They end up getting into the hunt for gold coins while trying to find answers to Shuichi’s mysterious monster form and Clair’s sister Elena who killed their parents as a monster. The two meet Elena who admits to being responsible for Shuichi’s monster form before she leaves them.

They try to gain allies but realize that the group they’re in is too weak to beat the other monstrous groups. Therefore they have the group give them their coins, but instead, the group gives the coins to Elena who’s been in contact with one of their members. They fight but a specter of a former friend of Shuichi and Elena’s interrupts them. It forces Elena to remove her existence from Shuichi’s memories again. The two move forward with an ally to head back into the mountains again to start their hunt for the alien coins.

 

Our Take:

Gleipnir had an interesting start with the mystery of Shuichi’s transformation and Clair looking for her sister. However, this anime is slow and it doesn’t conclude on a satisfying end. The anime merely ends on the promise of Shuichi and Clair trying to end the game even though they’re late. What’s even more frustrating is that the anime introduces one of Shuichi’s former cram school friends as the big bad they need to defeat only to introduce him in the last three episodes.

For starters, Shuichi and Clair take the idea of becoming one to a whole new level. Shuichi’s mascot monster form allows anyone to get inside him. Clair gets inside of that mascot form to control him. During that time they’re able to see each other’s memories and emotions. At first, I expected Clair to manipulate Shuichi given her introduction, but surprisingly their relationship was more wholesome than expected. They rely on each other emotionally and make up for each other’s weaknesses in the hunt for the gold coins.

Clair makes the hard calculated decisions and Shuichi is more soft-hearted of the pair. Her plans are pretty good at getting them out of sticky situations. Shuichi’s mascot form helps in the physical parts of the search since he has a keen sense of smell. They even switch roles in their dynamic as they continue the hunt for the gold coins. For example, Shuichi shoots a vengeful survivor from the group battle to ensure that they don’t go after Clair while he’s on the phone with her assuring her. Meanwhile, Clair doesn’t want Shuichi to end up like her and Elena. Their relationship was good even outside of the coin hunt. The anime does have the occasional scenes of normalcy. Like when Shuichi talks about wanting to see a movie and the two get food at a convenience store.

Then there’s Elena, Clair’s sister who is a former friend of Shuichi’s. The anime doesn’t waste time in her introduction as a murderer with the scent of blood on her clothes. The anime gets right to the point with her encounter with Shuichi and Clair at the beginning of the show. It’s obvious that she has feelings for Shuichi given her jealousy when she realized that someone was inside Shuichi’s mascot form in their encounter. Then she realizes that it’s Clair and calms down. It speaks volumes of how much she cares about her sister and even gives her another gold coin. The anime goes into her role in blocking off Shuichi’s memories to prevent the specter from killing Shuichi.

One of the surprises that the show has is the gold coins. The gold coins are actually aliens and the alien that gets out of the vending machine is partially responsible for the hunt for the gold coins. He has the ability to grant a special ability in exchange for a gold coin. Furthermore, if a person gives him a hundred gold coins, he’ll grant them a wish. He doesn’t do anything malicious. If anything he’s like a tool, and it is up to the person to decide on how to use his abilities. He considers humans to be really helpful and it’s based on his meeting with the first human who met him.

The alien started the search for his friends after meeting Honoka, a former friend of Shuichi and Elena. The two come up with the alien granting special abilities to the collectors as a reward with the vending machine. The game does have an obvious consequence with the hunt as more people joined the hunt for the gold coins for the rewards. The tragedy over the lives lost in the hunt hits Shuichi when his classmate goes missing.

The minor characters like Koyanangi and Sanbe have interesting backgrounds and abilities. They bring different goals and philosophies to the hunt which help vary up the players in the search. However, the anime makes it abundantly clear that the strong and cunning will survive the hunt. Especially since they have to hike up the mountains where the spaceship crash-landed. The setting changing from the town to the mountains was a good touch. the characters literally have to enter a lawless environment for the hunt.

The last three episodes dumped a lot of exposition and a new character who’s already collected a hundred coins, Kaito. He’s a former friend of Shuichi and Elena before the friend group cut ties with each other after his actions. The most frustrating thing about his character is that he murders their friend Honoka because he thought she killed their other friend, Aiko. It turns out that she actually committed suicide and Honoka was trying to cover it up. The miscommunication in that friend group later leads to his guilt and later role as the one who guards the alien spaceship. The execution was okay, but we don’t get much about his background which makes it hard to understand his motives.

Overall the anime has a few good points, but the episodes didn’t have enough space to fully fit the story. Hopefully, there’s a second season to really conclude the story.