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'Magical God of War Goshogun' is one of the less well-known giant robot TV series for kids to have come out of Japan in the 1970's and 80's. Chances are you've never heard of it, even if the series has been aired in an English dubbed, and probably heavily edited version called 'Macron 1'. But the good news is that you don't need any familiarity with Goshogun's obscure roots to enjoy this spin-off film.

Now, animation from way back in 1985 with it's origin in an almost-unnoticed cheesy robot series may not sound very tempting at first, but give 'Goshogun: the time étranger' a chance, and you'll probably enjoy it quite a lot.

The story centers around French-born Remy, the only woman in the Goshogun team of heroes. We follow her through three distinct moments in her life when she came face-to-face with imminent death. As a little girl, she was trapped in a pit for several days, where she heard a voice telling her that she might as well give up, since she was fated to die there.

As a young adult, she and her friends get stranded in a strange Muslim desert town, where each member of the Goshogun team receives a prediction that they would die in the following days. Remy would be the first to die, with only two days to go until her death. And with no way out of the town, and the locals insisting that these announced deaths where the predetermined fate of the Goshogun team, from which they could not escape, the outlook isn't exactly rosy. And as an older woman, Remy gets into a car accident on the day of a long overdue reunion with her friends, and ends up seriously injured and in coma, with the doctor granting her only roughly two more days to live.

The film jumps back and forth between these three time periods, with most of the screen time devoted to Remy's adventure in the spooky desert town. The non-chronological narrative seems a bit jumbled at first, but the film actually does a good job of telling all three different stories simultaneously as well as presenting their common theme of triumphing over despair and the refusal to abandon hope even in the face of impossible odds. These strong themes are carried out very well, and make the film really quite touching, as a whole.

The characters are a likeable bunch, with Remy being a very sympathetic heroine. Neither a helpless airhead, nor a rock-hard tough gal, she's a very human character, and it's hard not to feel something for her efforts to keep struggling against the menaces. While she's being threatened with physical demise all through the film, it's really her will to live, her hope for survival and her faith in her friends that are being tested. And it works well - a touching bond of friendship and mutual trust is evident between the Goshogun gang. And then there are some nice little personality touches from the other team members, such as Bundle's penchant for the sophisticated things in life, Killy's attempts at writing a novel and the big guy with green skin who wears a track suit with a penguin on it.

The only real let-downs are the dated visuals who betray the film's age. While it doesn't look bad overall (in fact, you can tell a decent amount of care was put into the visuals), and features some inspired images, Goshogun looks distinctly retro in it's character designs and animation quality. If you just happen to be a fan of early eighties retro anime you'll have no problem with this, but most viewers will be used to slicker-looking modern efforts, and may find the visual to be a turn-off.

They shouldn't, though. If you can put the lack of superficial eye candy aside, the quality plot and character strength make for a rewarding viewing experience. The scenes of the Goshgun team's battle against the dark forces in the desert town which form the meat of the film provide a good deal of suspense, gloominess, and action (Muslim zombies, spooky illusions and even a giant purple panther are out to get them) but the scenes of Remy's childhood and sick bed are equally important as they make the emotional impact that much stronger.

Goshogun definitely deserves a look for handling a daring story very well, providing strong characters, and telling a touching tale of hope and individual strength. The film has plenty of pleasant surprises in store for those who'll give it a chance in spite of it's age and obscurity.

As with Patlabor 1, there's a facade of misleading marketing around this film. There's a picture of a big robot on the packaging, and any teaser will probably promise you a non-stop mecha blasting fest. This is, simply put, a shameless lie. Patlabor 2 is a political thriller (often likened to a Tom Clancy novel with good reasons), and a very slow, brooding, talky, philosophical one at that. Big robots just happen to exist in it's setting, but their presence in the film is so slight you'll hardly notice them.

What you will notice, however, are some wonderful visuals and music, and a story that asks the viewer many daring, insightful questions about the world of today.

The plot centers around a few terrorist attacks on Tokyo taking place in the winter of 2002 (note that the film was made in 1993). Most of these attacks are really fake, or harmless makebelieve-attacks, but they're enough to create panic and to cause the established sense of security to crumble to bits. Captains Gotoh and Nagumo of the Special Vehicle Units try to unmask the man, and especially the ideas behind these staged attacks. Everything points to a certain Yukihito Tsuge, who's an old familiar of Nagumo.

What makes this film special is the way we're given insights into Tsuge's beliefs through the dialogues. The viewer is directly confronted with some very powerful questions. The state of being that we call "peace" in the western world - just how peaceful is it really? How fragile is it, and how much do we deserve this relative 'peace' compared to the prices mostly others pay for it? The film is rife with such questions, and they leave a considerable impact on the viewer. I daresay Patlabor 2 is worth it's price alone for being confronted with such thought-provoking issues set to some of the most beautifully haunting images and music ever put on screen.

The animation is definitely finely-crafted (there's a scene where helicopters swoop over the city who's smoothness has to be seen to be believed), but it's biggest strong point is the way it's all been directed. Slow, sweeping shots of the intricate semi-futuristic cityscape are the order of the day, with many other impressively beautiful shots.

But it's the music that really stole the show for me, with a wonderful use of mostly gentle and haunting melodies. The soundtrack is a true masterpiece, whose tunes will remain with you for a long time after viewing the film. It adds a dimension to the atmosphere that really can't be described very well on paper, so I'll just say it's powerful and beautifully-crafted stuff. The image of snowflakes drifting down onto tanks stationed all over Tokyo while a soft, ghostly melody plays in the background is a good example of the sort of moment where Patlabor 2 shines.

It doesn't shine all the way, though. There are a few flaws to this film, which make it hard to recommend to everybody. The talkiness, for one thing, sometimes really goes over-the-top. Instead of showing you what happened, a pretty important development is sometimes only mentioned in a conversation. This makes it difficult to keep up all the time, especially as the viewer is sometimes assumed to be an expert on political powergames; -"Some minister has just done something or other, and then this and that happened" -"I see... that means so-and-so plans to do yakkity-something..." Dialogues like that pop up a few times in the film and manage to be pretty unpleasant. Likewise, there's no gentle introduction to Patlabor newcomers, so it's recommended that you've seen at least the first Patlabor movie before tackling this. While the few scenes of how the regular Patlabor cast have gotten on with their lives are fairly unimportant, being at least somewhat familiar with them is a welcome help in following a sometimes overwhelmingly complex film (I mean that in a good way, though ^^).

Patlabor 2 will never be suited to general public tastes, as it's simply too complex, talky and basically 'different' for anyone just seeking some escapist fun. The DragonBall and Akira crowd need not look into this until they've learned to stop referring to the anime medium as 'ménga movies' while mistaking it for a slew of violent cyberpunk slop which they consider 'kewl' or 'kickass' or whatever. Same to the general Hollywood crowd who'd freak out at the idea of a film demanding efforts from the viewer - Patlabor 2 demands lots of efforts, but has something special to reward you with.

Patlabor 2 serves it's doses of food for thought raw, and it takes some effort to swallow them. But I'd say that effort is well worth it. For the unique, powerful atmosphere alone, this is more than worth a look. I guess "haunting" is really the most suitable word to describe Patlabor 2's superb feel. It literally does haunt you, with questions about the state of the society we live in that you can't possibly turn a blind eye on (in fact, after the attacks on America in September 2001, Patlabor 2's messages have become ironically up-to-date in their relevance). And a film that achieves such effects so very well deserves to be seen and to be praised. And then there's -that- music. Absolutely brilliant, it makes this film a must-hear as well as a must-see.

This 2-part video series is the last installment in the vast Gall Force saga, which began back in 1986 with the 'Eternal Story' theatrical movie. This told the tale of how the human race was created more or less by accident during an all-consuming space war between two alien races. While the two warring races still made some attempts to avert the certain doom that their constant conflict was leading up to, it was already too late for them. Their last move before they died out completely at each other's hands was to entrust the future to their creation, the human race, and hope that they at least would succeed in building up a peaceful future. Mankind, however, repeated a large part of the mistakes their ancestors made and drove itself to the brink of ruin in a Terminator-esque war with the advanced machines called MME, who had been created by the humans to begin with. The 'Gall Force: Earth Chapter' videos show how the human-MME conflict eventually ends in a victory for mankind, and peace is established, at least for the time being.

Fast-forward to some 200 years later, and we see mankind living in crowded dome cities, while the Earth's surface is too ravaged to allow for survival outside of the cities' confines. Life in the cities itself is only superficially pleasant, it would seem. The first episode takes enough time to show that all is not quite perfect in these apparently civilised and peaceful cities (it's stated that giving birth is about to become forbidden to combat overpopulation). The real problem, however, is a shadow that secretly looms over mankind and prepares to strike a devastating blow. The only one to know of this menace is Catty, the android left over from previous conflicts who has been with mankind all this time. Just as all hell starts to break loose for real, she gathers five select women and allows them to escape into space and away from the city as it goes up in flames. A sixth woman joins these five fugitives, who are by now the last surviving humans, as everyone else has perished in a major catastrophe. Our heroines then have to survive several more attempts from mankind's enemy until they're out of harm's reach.

This new story arc actually starts out quite promising. The character designs in the first episode look a lot more polished than in previous Gall Force efforts, and enough time is spent on setting the stage to make things look interesting. When the sudden and brutal destruction of the city is triggered off, it's a very dramatic sight to behold (the music score is quite memorable as well). Just for good measure, every single other human being is killed off in a disastrous chain reaction as well before you can say 'apocalypse yesterday'. It works, but that's partly because a detailed account of an apocalypse can hardly -not- be somewhat gripping. And unfortunately, the second episode undoes a lot of the first's merits by being completely and utterly godawful.

For starters, the second half of the series looks as if it was beaten with an ugly stick. Terribly crude character designs, choppy movement and a color palette so poor and limited you might as well be looking at a Space Invaders arcade screen all make episode 2 a real visual travesty.

The plot doesn't exactly improve matters either. It's partly a lot of very boring talk between the characters where they slowly spin out theories as to what exactly has happened in the first episode. Alas, the viewer already knows that mankind is completely wiped out, and who's responsible for it. And any viewer with half a brain will already have a good idea of the how's and why's behind these events as well, so watching the girls having a long, dull talk that contains very little relevant new information is a right bore. Alas, when it's not chewing-the-fat scenes, we're treated to very poor carbon copies of the events in the very first Gall Force movie, only greatly watered down and much more poorly done than they were there. There's that same Alien pastiche (which was above-average in 'Eternal Story' and is downright rubbish here), the same loudmouth fighter pilot that gets stranded with the others, and several other re-threads of familiar ground. It's much too predictable for it's own good. A possible excuse is the Gall Force plot element that things happen in a constant cycle of events (for example, each story arc's cast share the same physical characteristics and personality trait, so that you always have the black girl with lavender hair, the whiny green-haired kid and the brawling blonde with a Mae West hairdo - it's just a shame they're rarely developed beyond just that), but layering it on -this- thick simply reeks of poor plotting and blatant re-hashing.

It all culminates in a somewhat frustrating open ending. The one thing that does make any impact with these videos is the empty sense of waste at the end. The whole previous Gall Force series showed a struggle to preserve mankind, and with it a possible last hope of some peaceful future. All of these efforts, however, have only been rewarded by the complete annihilation of the human race, save for our six heroines, who're supposedly sent off to a better place. And that's it. Complete destruction with one last shard of remaining hope is a powerful way to end any tale (especially when you consider how desperate the struggles have been throughout all the previous Gall Force films), but it's just a little too unresolved to really work here.

It's really a shame about the very poor second episode dragging this installment down so much. For those who've seen the previous Gall Force films, this is worth watching once to catch the full story. In fact, those familiar with Gall Force can tell that a lot of the shortcomings in the plot actually make sense as typically Gall Force elements. There's aforementioned theory of a constant cycle of events that serves as some kind of 'excuse' for the near-exact similiarities with the events of 'Eternal Story'. And endings that involve complete destruction, but with the hope that the cycle will start again somewhere are also a fact of life in Gall Force. But these excuses unfortunately just aren't good enough in the end. It may be because the viewer's already grown familiar with these typically Gall Force elements over the course of the previous films that they don't work anymore here. Rubbing it in and dragging it out this blatantly one more time is just needless, especially if it's done as poorly and with as much tedium as in that abysmal second episode. It's hard to believe, but they've managed to even make the good elements of Gall Force outstay their welcome with 'New Era'.

For the affictionado only, then. And even those are advised to handle 'New Era' with care. Apart from getting to see the last chapter in the Gall Force story, there's little to enjoy here, even for the die-hard fan (you may be better off watching only the first episode and leaving the rest up to your own imagination after that). It's a shame that with such epic scope and grand, dramatic themes, the Gall Force series as a whole is always dragged down by flaws that stick out so painfully. 'New Era' takes this trend a step too far - digging through the rubbish to unearth the good elements will be beyond the efforts of most viewers this time.

One last knee-jerk nag about the English dub, which is hilariously bad. The acting's so-so, but with a dub script as poor as this ("heyyy, tell me where the databank is located, huh, will ya?" - I only wish I was exaggerating), anyone'd have a hard time. The translation hits especially choppy waters when the plot begins to involve a genetically-created sub-category of humans called the Yumans. Presumeably, there'd be no problem in Japanese, but in English, there is absolutely no way to differentiate between the words 'human' and 'Yuman' in spoken dialogue, no matter how much the actors try to over-emphasize the 'h' (which sounds bloody silly). As a result, large lumps of the dialogue make absolutely no sense whatsoever (a scene where everyone argues whether or not Yumans are evil is a real head-scratcher). Mistakes in the translation also destroy the references to Greek mythology that are scattered throughout the story by pronouncing everything wrong. Clumsy handling of katakana-transcriptions is a possible cause, which means a small, but interesting detail has been lost. Although this probably won't be amazing no matter what language you watch it in, the English dub's wretchedness stands out so obviously that it deserves a warning label of it's own.