Gad guard

For my first attempt at a review I'll be reviewing a series I've had on my backlog pile for a while and just got around to watching as it's fresh in my mind.

Gad Guard is a mecha anime that revolves around a teenage boy who works as a courier in a rough neighbourhood, (night town) in a bid to be able to earn enough money to buy back his family home in daytown. It is never stated outright how it was lost but presumably after their father’s death they could no longer afford it/had to sell it to pay off debts.

The series starts very much as you’d expect, Hajiki is in school and one of the main characters transfers in and being from daytown is fairly naive of how things are in that area, to the extent of being shocked when her belongings get raided when left on the street. Due to fates hand, or perhaps misfortune he comes into the possession of a GAD that transforms into a “Techode” he names Lightning after his father’s plane and winds up over the course of the series being coerced into using it to find more Gads for a mysterious woman named Catherine and fight mechanical monsters called A-Techodes which are the manifestations of human greed which are also created from a GAD

Along the way he encounters other users of Techodes, Arashi a martial art’s dojo owners daughter and the for mentioned transfer student, Takumi a self-proclaimed defender of justice, Aiko the daughter of the richest man in the sector and Katana who seems to bounce between an anti-hero and the series antagonist.

My views of the series are a bit tepid at best, I wouldn’t say the series is bad by any means but I wasn’t enthralled either.

This is probably because I didn’t particularly care for the characters or find them that interesting. Hajiki came off as too obedient and simply followed orders most of the time, even stupid ones that put him in harm’s way for no real reason other than GAD hunting, which isn’t even his job.

Arashi is air headed to the extent that common sense like leaving your belongings on the street will get them stolen is a shock to her. He’s the main love interest for Hajiki but ends up being ignored for half the series and treat as a pest for another quarter to a third, and is only implied until the last few episodes.
Takumi is a loud and opinionated self-proclaimed defender of justice, probably just me but I hate those characters, so I’ll admit, that’s probably just my bias.

Aiko simply lacks much character development, but she is practically a minor character who’s there to tie plot together with her father being a primary GAD collector.

And Katana, so much potential and so much waste, he’s the typical character with a tragic past, but the problem is his motives and actions clash when he’s not just being a dick for seemingly its own sake. He finally seems to understand companionship by the end but that’s the way these series always seem to go. But sadly he’s just a trope with little to no uniqueness.

The GADs themselves are your typical plot device with unknown origins, a small rock or ore that is believed to fall from space and has mystical powers, a basic idea is given on what they are but there isn’t an in-depth explanation. While this is a commonly used trope it needs to be done very well for it to be that interesting whereas in this case it’s unfortunately more a plot hook than a key point and is never really explained until the final episode, and that wasn’t even reason Hajiki was there which detracted from it a bit.

The plot itself is again not bad, but hardly ground breaking; it primarily consists of people trying to acquisition GADs by whatever means necessary, which is what fuels the plot for about the first 18 episodes. It wasn’t until the series finale that things got particularly good, yes, it defiantly wins points for actually having an ending that wraps things up well without killing everyone, but I happen to think that a series that doesn’t really get particularly great until ten hours in is lacking.

Other than the characters being bland once I got past the slow first episodes I didn’t find myself wanting to just turn it off so all in all I’d give it a 6 or 7 out of 10, it’s fairly average for the most part and doesn’t really have anything memorable but the finale played out well which earns it some points. Far too often do anime fail to wrap things up in a bid to leave it open for another series, but loses some on it being slow to take off.

Oh as a side note I'm open to pointers to improve my reviews. After all the better they are the more helpful they are.