Gatchaman Crowds: Embrace

What on earth was going on to leave this on the cutting room floor?

Gatchaman Crowds is a show with an almost comical amount of flaws, but by far the biggest was the finale. The story, already on a long nosedive since the first act, finally hit rock bottom and dug just a bit deeper. Everything built up was waved away, and the few remaining threads of interest cut short. The last few minutes, especially, were a new height in aggravating bafflement.

No wonder then, that exactly those last few minutes are what Embrace fills out. I won't assume anything about the production, whether it was not ... being able to get a double-length timeslot, or some pacing disagreement, but whatever the case the version of Episode 12 that aired was the wrong one. I can't give Embrace too much credit, after all it didn't fix the rest of the show's problems, but it did fix the one most significant.

----

The bulk of the new footage in Embrace covers an additional confrontation with Berg Katze, interposed around the final scenes of Gatchaman Crowds. While I don't want to spoil the ending of the series proper, it doesn't make a lick of sense. Embrace successfully rectifies this, by way of adding a proper climax to the story, rather than what was in the aired version. Aside from a few more, calmer scenes to close off the rest of the characters' stories, that is about all that is added.

----

And I am at an absolute loss as to why this wasn't the aired version. Not only is it far more fitting as a conclusion, removing the additional footage leaves a ridiculously huge plot hole. I would say that Embrace is not just the better version of Episode 12, but the real version.

Gatchaman Crowds itself is still a very poor show, but at least this alternative finale makes it a tiny bit less so.

So, are we gonna be seeing more of Katze Berg? I know that the 2nd season is still far ahead, so I gonna cut to the chase as I make my 1st lousy review.


Story

So what we have was something that is connected to the parent anime, so therefore this 1 off special can be considered as an extra episode. Plotwise, there isn't much to say something that connects to the parent anime, the only consultation here was about Katze Berg as we see him........or her being absorb by Hajime. So I guess it is safe to say that this 1 off special is all about ... Rui, Katze and Hajime, since it does revolve around them, so my score for this category is a 5.

Art

What I like about the illustration was modern bohemian style that has been applied to every aspect of the anime, so my score for this part is very good 8.


Sound

I gonna give it a 7 since I like the opening, closing, the action them and the voices of Hajime, Rui and Katze since the inflection was well suited for their character.

Character

As much as I like Hajime, Rui and Katze, I very disappointed that director Kenji Nakamura has sidelined the main characters for the latters, it was suppose to be Sagane, Utsutsu, Joe, paiman and OD who were suppose to be the main characters, unfortunately he overshadowed them with the mentioned 3, so a 3 it is for this part.

Enjoyment

For the most part, this special was quite annoying, tbh, but seeing what happen to Katze did provide me with some sort of enjoyment, but barely so I'm gonna say that I'm giving this category a 4.

Overall

I still can't say if this anime from season one up to the upcoming season 2 would qualify as a remake of the 1970's anime or a spin off of the live action movie Gatchaman. But from the looks of it, it seems like a series of it's own, Now I aware that the review I'm making is for this special but like I've said this is connected to the parent anime so technically it was part of season 1, well anyways it was still worth watching.............but only barely.

Btw: overall- it is a 4. utsuutsu shimasu