Garo: Vanishing Line

Corruption looms over the prosperous Russell City, where manifestations of negative emotions called Horrors cause chaos and mayhem. The Makai Order is the last bastion of hope against these unholy creatures. Using several small businesses as fronts, they deploy powerful Makai Knights and magical Makai Alchemists to combat the Horror threat.

Within this secretive order, the highest rank of Golden Knight has been bestowed upon a large, powerful man named Sword, granting him use of the Garo armor and blade. He alone knows of a plot that threatens the entire Makai Order, with his only hint being the phrase “El Dorado." While fighting a Horror, he encounters Sophia "Sophie" Hennis, a teenage girl whose brother's disappearance years ago is also linked to the same phrase. The two agree to work together to uncover the truth behind "El Dorado" and the disappearance of Sophie's brother.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Sword Main

Seki, Tomokazu Japanese

Gina Main

Koshimizu, Ami Japanese

Luke Main

Shimazaki, Nobunaga Japanese

Hennes, Sophia Main

Kugimiya, Rie Japanese

Zaruba Supporting

Kageyama, Hironobu Japanese

Waitress Chiaki Supporting

Takahashi, Chiaki Japanese

Prostitute Supporting

Oka, Junko Japanese

Ricardo Supporting

Kaji, Yuuki Japanese

Busty Woman Supporting

Fujita, Masayo Japanese

Nero Supporting

Matsuoka, Yoshitsugu Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Ootsuka, Manabu Producer

Ogawa, Takahiro Producer

Noda, Fuko Producer

Reviews

Nov 13, 2023

ArchangelEST

Recommended

Garo is a rather overlooked and underrated show that quite surprised me. Good production values and plenty of fun action should be up the alley of a lot of people.


Animation / Art / General Visuals - 8/10
-----------------------------------------------

The visual quality is very good across the board. Action scenes are high octane with good animation, mixing and matching more traditional anime and some subtle 3D. Art style is detailed and expressions on point.


Sound / Music / Voice Acting - 8/10
... ------------------------------------------

Sound and voice acting is great, with the Soundtrack especially worth noting. A lot of heavy metal bangers that fit the show perfectly. Whether it's some gun blasting action or sword swinging, or riding a jacked up bike, the music hits hard.


Story - 7/10
-------------

When it comes down to it, the story isn't anything super notable.

A young teenage girl, searching for her lost brother, accidentally stumbles into a world of demon like creatures who come to be from the negative emotions of humans. She is then saved by a mysterious knight, who turns out to be from an order that eliminates said demons - or horrors - from the world. Any civilians who witness such things are brainwashed to forget.

However, the girl and the knight who saved her have something in common, a certain keyword relating to their lost siblings, so they join up to solve the mystery.

The show follows a fairly episodic approach for a lot of its runtime. With our protagonists dealing with one horror attack after another, all the while the main mystery slowly develops on the side.

Eventually the story focuses on the main situation and they along with a few other characters go to solve it.

Ultimately the main story is kinda weak. With the main villain and their motivations somewhat lackluster. Secondary villains are similarly rather underdeveloped and boring.

Still, things are pretty solid overall, and works just fine as a justification to get some action done.


Characters - 7/10
---------------------

There isn't really a singular main character in this show. Both the teenage heroine and her protector, the magical knight, share most of the MC burdens, though additional secondary characters get enough screen time as well.

The girl is a pretty standard teenage character with not much to make her stand out, other than her internet skills, and a persistent attitude. Luckily she's quite likeable, despite being largely useless, and acting like a damsel in distress more often than not.

The magical knight, or Garo, the namesake of the show's title and the other main focus, is quite different. A proper macho man, who enjoys big boobs and big steaks at the diner. He's more jacked than The Rock, and takes care of business in the most straight forward manner imaginable. Using his fists or sword.

Secondary characters feature a brooding magical marksman ally, as well as a woman who employs everything from spears to magic, to gatling guns, and her big pair of boobs to get the work done.

All in all, all are quite likeable and don't have any particularly annoying traits.


---

Total - 8/10

---

Garo is a surprisingly good anime that seems to have gone largely unnoticed. It doesn't really break any new ground, but it has good fundamentals, decent enough of a story, good characters, and production values. Tons of high octane action and a badass soundtrack to boot.

If you're into contemporary, magic and monster filled anime that features plenty of blood and guts flying about as heavy metal blasts, this is a show for you.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by ArchangelEST (138)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

Aug 28, 2018

CarelessForce

Mixed Feelings

Garo: Vanishing Line is a fun anime with fantastic style that unfortunately just lasts too long.

The visuals are great, the concept entertaining and the soundtrack is so good, it's the best part of many scenes. However, the many episodic side stories mean it's all repeated too often, allowing it to go stale before the end.

Once the show starts to get boring, it's a lot easier to notice the poor writing and inconsistencies, as well as more difficult to forgive them.

There's a lot of fanservice in this but it's all western-friendly, only adult characters. The humour isn't great but it does keep the show from getting ... too heavy, it also has quite a lot of flashbacks.

This would be a brilliant show if it hadn't been drawn out into 24 episodes, I recommend watching at least the 1st one, but due to the series' length, it does get tedious in places.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by CarelessForce (5)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

May 6, 2020

ktulu007

Not Recommended

Garo is a franchise I've talked about once with Honoo no Kokuin. It was a sub-par, tryhard dark series where every "twist" was painfully obvious. Maybe this one is less profoundly stupid and manages to be a sentai show for adults that actually respects its audience's intelligence. 


Story:

Sophia Hennes is an orphan who just wants to find her brother. He disappeared one day with the words "El Dorad" left on his computer screen. Sophia goes to a famous psychic hoping for a clue but, like all psychics, he's fake. He's also a monstrous horror who tries to kill her. Which is almost as bad. Fortunately for her, she's rescued ... by the mysterious Sword who transforms into a golden knight on his motorcycle and slays the horror. He also happens to be looking for the secret behind El Dorado. Which sets the pair on the same path. 

This has the exact same fundamental flaw as the other Garo series. It wants to have a lot of excessive violence and some sexual content thereby making it for older teenagers or adults but it's written at the level of a children's series. Every single twist is exceedingly obvious far before it happens, but the series always acts as though it's doing something shocking. We all knew who King was the moment he sent his people to bring Sophia unharmed to El Dorado. We also knew who was using Sword's name the moment you talked about the corporation responsible in connection to his back story.

I don't know whether the writers are inept imbeciles who think they're being clever because they couldn't figure out the obvious twists or they just have very low opinions of their own audience. 

Vanishing Line also has the other hallmarks of very childish writing with monsters of the week, one dimensional antagonists and being adverse to taking any real risks. Which also results in it having a kind of shit ending. Seriously, the most surprising thing to happen in the series is when we see the three identical chefs take off their hats and glasses and they look different. Which doesn't matter since they have so little personality that they could be one character any way. Plus it happens at the very end, so we never even get to see anyone else react to it.

I also want to briefly mention the "noble sacrifice" scene. Because it's pretty bad. See, there's a point where one character is forced to sacrifice himself to protect Sophia. Which is really obviously going to happen because they give a speech that's a really clear flag for it, but that's not the issue with it. The issue is that about ten seconds after it happens, reinforcements show up and the writers act like it was a noble, necessary move even though they could have literally not done anything and the reinforcements would have gotten there in time. Also, the reinforcements approach Sophia from behind even though they clearly establish that there's a sheer cliff directly behind her. Because of course no one was editing this shit. 

Characters:

So, all our characters are one note clichés. The one thing that separates this cast from the cast of that other Garo series is that two of them are really obnoxious clichés. Mainly, Sword and Sophia. Sword is that type of protagonist who loves to party and have a good time but he comes through in the end. Which is always an obnoxious archetype just because every character like that acts really annoying in any situation where their life isn't directly in danger.

Sophia is one of those optimistic child hang on characters. They don't do much on their own, but they're always by the protagonist's side and providing motivation for them. And those characters are annoying unless they're well developed and given depth. But depth is a fully foreign concept to this series, so that's never going to happen. 

Art:

MAPPA's artwork is mostly pretty decent. The biggest issue is that some of the action sequences are over the top to the point of being incoherent. Just a bunch of blur-lines clashing against each other. But the monster designs, character designs and backgrounds are all pretty nicely done. And most of the action sequences are basically acceptable. 

Sound: 

The acting is passable. Vanishing Line is one of those anime where the complete lack of character depth results in performances that are a bit mundane but where you can still tell that the actors are better than this. Kugimiya Rie, Shimazaki Nobunaga, Koshimizu Ami & Seki Tomokazu are all skilled professionals who occasionally take roles in rubbish because they have to make a living. The music is a bit shit. Maybe not inaudibly horrendous but it's certainly the worst I've heard from MONACA. 

Ho-yay:

The closest we get is Sophia's friend hanging onto her a bit. Which she does while talking about boys so either she's trying to get a sense of whether Sophia is into boys or she's just at that age where boys temporarily don't seem gross. It's hard to tell with a generic friend character who happens to be shallower than a spilled thimble of water on an unseasonably warm day. 

Areas of Improvement:

Know your audience. If you want to write for adults, you can't make all your twists this obvious. You can't make your characters this trite. Well, you technically can but it'll be a shit product. 
Develop your characters. Honestly, even a good children's series will have better characterisation than this. 
If you're going to have a noble sacrifice, make it matter. Don't cheapen it by having reinforcements show up so quickly that it renders the act pointless.

Final Thoughts:

In many ways, this has the same problems that plagued the other Garo series I reviewed. Same childish writing. Same shallow, trite characters. What makes this one a bit worse are that it has annoying generic characters, its music isn't anywhere near as good and the action sequences aren't as strong. Which is why I'm giving Vanishing Line a 3/10. And I'm honestly tempted to go lower. But I don't think I can quite justify it. 

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by ktulu007 (661)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

Everything is a lie

by RokkanShojo

50 Entries · 565 Restacks

Seki Tomokazu Anime

by LeonhartAugust

50 Entries · 5 Restacks

Anime With Black Characters

by Cassiebabbii

50 Entries · 5 Restacks

North American Anime & Manga Releases for April

Here are the North American anime & manga releases for April Week 1: April 7 - 13 Anime Releases After War Gundam X Collection 1 Blu-ray Animegataris Complete Co...read more

Apr 5, 2020 10:06 AM by ImperfectBlue | Discuss (0 comments)

North American Anime & Manga Releases for February

Week 1: February 5 - 11 Anime Releases Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card-hen (incl. Prologue - Sakura to Futatsu no Kuma) Part 1 Blu-ray Deadman Wonderland (incl. Akai K...read more

Feb 4, 2019 9:26 AM by Sakana-san | Discuss (4 comments)

	Poll: Garo: Vanishing Line Episode 24 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Mar 30, 2018	91 replies	by guntz_au »» Sep 21, 7:47 AM
	Poll: Garo: Vanishing Line Episode 4 Discussion Stark700 - Oct 27, 2017	35 replies	by BaronLukis »» Aug 10, 7:10 AM
	Poll: Garo: Vanishing Line Episode 23 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Xeogran - Mar 23, 2018	55 replies	by Hisoka2107 »» Aug 16, 2023 2:11 PM
	Should i watch this or the 2014 series? Kitsune_089 - Aug 7, 2021	4 replies	by Max-OG »» Jan 24, 2023 10:11 AM
	Poll: Garo: Vanishing Line Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) Stark700 - Oct 6, 2017	145 replies	by Duck67 »» Dec 1, 2022 5:01 AM