Posted in: Anime, Crunchyroll, Review, TV | Tagged: Crunchyroll, Gachiakuta

Gachiakuta Just Another Shonen Fight Anime for Angry Kids: Review

Gachiakuta is being hyped as the "New Coolness" in action anime this season, but it's still all the same Shonen tropes we've seen before.

Every anime season has one series that gets touted as The Big Anime that defines the season, perhaps even becoming the Next Big Franchise. This summer, it's the dystopian shonen action manga Gatciakuta. It might have come closer to earning that title if it weren't a collection of too many of the same old tropes, including the mean-spirited ones.

Gachiakuta features one of those extremely elaborate and convoluted pieces of worldbuilding in a dystopian world of the rich elite above and the forsaken below who live in shantytowns. Hero kid Rudo is one of the shantytown tribespeople who is an outcast even amongst them because his late father is an accused murderer. When he's framed for the murder of his guardian, he's thrown into The Pitt, where the world tosses out all its garbage.

Instead of dying, Roc wakes up in a toxic wasteland where rampaging trash monsters try to kill him, and people are living there who think he's one of the elites who dump their garbage on them. Roc's rage at everyone everywhere treating him like crap erupts in a display of his – what else? – superpowers that lead him to be recruited into the Cleaners, an elite squad of superpowered combatants, where he'll be trained to use his powers so he can work his way back up to the Sphere where he grew up to get revenge on everyone there, including the assassin who framed him.

"Gachiakuta" is Angry Kid Shonen 101

Roc is a variant of the lunkhead Shonen Manga and anime hero, a hothead who wants to punch things. In Gachiakuta, he's the determined kid hero who's angry becaues everyone treated him like crap but he'll learn to punch things to protect people instead of revenge. This series is part of the new wave of anger-driven fight and action anime that has a grotesque high-concept hook in the lore and superpowers. This time, the hero is out for revenge, and the themes are the same ones that manga and anime have been preoccupied with for decades now: class warfare, xenophobia, and the lack of empathy causing rifts between people.

The evil people are comically, sneeringly evil, as in most anime, but this might be due to having the same editors laying out the plots and characters in the original manga across the industry. The animation is as slick and epic as we've come to expect now, and if you've seen it all, this might not feel as new or cutting edge as the hype would have you believe. Even the rage at the world's injustice feels like old hat. This is all to push the sales of the manga since the anime is a faithful adaptation, so it's all of a piece. If you think this review is a bit grumpy, maybe it's because we really have seen this story before under the new clothes.

Gachiakuta is streaming on Crunchyroll.

Gachiakuta

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Review by Adi Tantimedh

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7/10

Another dystopian action anime featuring a relentless lunkhead Shonen hero who won't stop fight that's being hyped as the "New Hotness" this season, but the themes of rage, revenge, xenophobia and class warfare are all too familiar considering anime and manga have been doing them for decades not. Even the anger feels like old hat. If you like your fight name with some punk rock anti-authoritarian high concept and slightly gross superpowers, Gachiakuta will give you want you want - just don't expect anything new.

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