Gakuen Senki Muryou

The world is about to be turned upside down for Hajime Murata. First, a strange alien ship appears over Tokyo, and then a mysterious new transfer student arrives at his school wearing an ancient school uniform. His name is Muryou, and with his arrival, everything begins to change. Students suddenly begin to display amazing psychic powers, a giant white guardian keeps appearing in the skies over the city to fight off gigantic alien creatures, and men with threatening weapons are haunting the shadows of the school grounds.

With all these strange events taking place around him, Hajime is determined to figure out the truth about a world he thought he already knew. This is his story: a tale of aliens and humans, starships and spies, and friends who are often more than they appear. Join Hajime as he uncovers the mystery of Shingu: Secret of the Stellar Wars!

(Source: RightStuf)

Subaru, Muryou Main

Miyazaki, Issei Japanese

Murata, Hajime Main

Nojima, Kenji Japanese

Moriyama, Nayuta Main

Park, Romi Japanese

Moriguchi, Kyouchi Main

Sugita, Tomokazu Japanese

Murata, Futaba Supporting

Kugimiya, Rie Japanese

Morihata, Shun Supporting

Mineo, Harumi Supporting

Asano, Masumi Japanese

Moriyama, Atsushi Producer

Satou, Tatsuo Director, Script, Storyboard, Original Creator

Mima, Masafumi Sound Director

Sokuza, Makoto Episode Director

Reviews

Jan 30, 2010

zawa113

Recommended

Underrated and overlooked gem, it’s the type of sci-fi that’s relaxing to watch and anyone who likes slower paced sci-fi should consider giving it a shot.

Plot: 8
The plot can be a bit tricky to pin point, half the time it’s going all sci-fi on you with aliens and intergalactic police, the other half of the time it’s going slice of life with students on you. They’re both interesting parts that actually mingle pretty well with eachother. Upon going through this series a second time, it becomes more impressive that there really aren’t any wasted scenes either, they either go to plot or to characters. The ... balance between these segments is good too and leans a lot more towards sci-fi as the series goes on.

Characters: 8
This series could be considered to have two mains as defined by the series: Hajime, whom the story is told from, and Muryou, whom the series is more or less named after. These two aren’t particularly interesting though, they’re not bad, but they just kinda feel...there. Hajime takes everything a bit too laid back for me, like everything and everyone is normal, and even though Muryou is the main mystery in the series, he’s just a little bit dry. The rest of the cast is all great fun though with varying quirks and personalities. They make the series worth watching and show up in both the more slice of life segments and the sci-fi segments. Both adults and children characters are interesting and believable.

Presentation: 7
The good part is the animation, which was one of the last cel drawn series, it just has that nice hand-drawn feel to it we don’t get quite as much today. Given that Madhouse animated it, it also looks and moves well. The soundtrack on the other hand....well, it’s like someone stole the soundtrack to an elevator and the track had precisely one and a half good songs on it. The soundtrack is pretty awful, it really interferes with the OP and ED, they’re damn near unlistenable is you ask me, but they don’t really disrupt the rest of the show either, so I suppose I can give it a pass, but it’s pretty crappy if you ask me.

Overall: 8
It might not be for everyone, but people who want more laid back slice of life need look no further and people who like slice of life who don’t mind sci-fi mixed in there should check it out.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Aug 2, 2009

pokemotion

Recommended

An incredibly underrated series that was considered to be another copy of Evangelion. Shingu was actually origionally released to be 40+ episodes, but since the following seemed to be small the company that origionally released it cut it down to only 26 (which explains how the ending felt slightly rushed, but it still made me wanting more).

Story:
The story development had to be my favorite part about it, it was told by the veiwpoint of Hajime who befriends a new kid at school who's a little more than what he bargined for. At first I thought it was going to be the average superficial plot, ... but it ended up being quite good--especially at the end, but I won't give that away.

One thing I liked the most was the almost comical way Hajime told his story, I loved how the charters would stop and say "Why are you talking to yourself?" or something along those lines while he was giving his narration, the series played it off very well.

Art:
I usually don't take the time out to watch an older series, but the art didn't bother me at all because I thought the story was just too amazing to let that stop me from watching it.

Sound:
I didn't really notice it at all, but at least it didn't detract from the series in anyway. The opening and closing theme songs were a little cheesy and very 80s anime, but what else was I going to expect? xD

Character:
The characters in this are simply amazingly portrayed. Muryo stands to still be my favorite character in any series by far, only because he was described as not being able to tell if he was daft or a genius. Because the series was cut short, some of the character development had to be left out obviously, but the series did an incredibly job of bringing out unique and refreshing characters in the series--even the ones only seen a few times were interesting.

Enjoyment:
10/10. Enough said.

Overall:
It's the kind of series that's really easy to get through and doesn't crap out or have any filler episodes to fill in the gap that people call the "middle of the series". I loved it, and it left me feeling that the story really wasn't over at all even though the series had ended.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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May 15, 2009

PKAmmoTroop

Recommended

Shingu is one of those animes that comes along rarely that does what it intends to do and does it well. Shingu tells an interesting story and does it in a way that's enjoyable to watch, and somehow relaxing. Except for a few scenes Shingu doesn't resort to cheap tricks to suck the viewer in to the story nor does it try to play with the viewers emotions. It just tells a story, and not too bad a story at that.

Shingu has a wonderful old school feel to it, from the anthem solo at the opening to the wonderful jazz arrangement by Yuji Oono at ... the closing everything in between is a delight. The art is well drawn but not overly detailed and the background music is mostly well done jazz. The characters have the old school wide eyed look and one of the main characters is a mystery superbeing whose facial expression rarely ever changes from amusment. The characters have no problem with breaking the 4th wall and speaking directly to the audience (which usually precipitates another characters saying "Who are you talking to?"

There's even narration by the main character as was seen in older anime and each episode ends with the narrator saying something like "all these questions will be answered in the next episode" which also is another old school touch.

For all the old school qualities this is definately a 21st century anime. The concepts behind the main plot seem simplistic at first but give it time, as the episodes continue the plot and various subplots get infinately more complex. Another plus is that Shingu is unabashedly Japanese. I'm growing tired of anime that try to position themselves in a generic location. There's no question that this story takes place in a small Japanese costal town and it's refreshing to catch glimpses of Japanese culture.

I recoment this anime for anyone that's getting tired of the same old giant-robots-save-the-earth story, this one is fresh and refreshing with comfortable familiar feel to it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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