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In a time when the world was still young a battle between
the eight gods and Gestalt finds Gestalt banished to the earth.
Father Olivier, aware of the legend, commits to travelling
to the island where it is presumed that Gestalt still resides.
Not surprisingly his holy order does not take kindly to having
its priests just wandering off, and sets Suzu, a dark elf,
on his trail to get him back. Luckily, for Olivier, the slave
girl he inherits turns out to be a powerful sorceress...
Gestalt is an anime (sort of) series directed by Osamu
Yamazaki, based on the comic series by Yun Kouga, who produced
the better known Earthian. The show is a comedy/fantasy
which uses many elements of slapstick, especially visual gags.
In fact it has one of the best visual jokes I've seen in an
anime.
Gestalt
is an odd hodgepodge of styles and themes. At times it hints
at fan service elements, at others a parody of RPG games.
The nubile Ohri, who becomes Olivier's accidental slave girl,
being unable to speak, converses with the priest though text
boxes much loved of computer games. Though this shouldn't
come as a great surprise as one of the show's producers was
Enix, purveyors of the excellent Final Fantasy series,
and any players of the series will recognise not only the
pop-up boxes but also many elements of the fight scenes.
The
show unfortunately has a single and important problem. Although
the DVD has pasted together the first two episodes of the
show into a feature, that's it, there were no more made. This
means that not only does it stop just as you're getting into
it, but also the story reaches no conclusion.
So,
what we have here is the beginning of the story which covers
the meeting of Olivier and Ohri and the Holy Order hiring
Suzu to track him down before he reaches the island of G.
They do at least reach a Kingdom where Olivier decides to
fight against what he sees as injustice, which obviously becomes
just an excuse for comedy and fighting.
In terms of animation the show is surprisingly satisfying,
a bit old school but good none the less. Character design
is also good with some nice use of bold primary colours which
helps set the light hearted tone of the show.
On
such a short run you would not expect that many extras could
have been generated and you would be right. What you get is
an art gallery, a screenshot gallery a bunch of trailers and
the DVD credits. Audio is stereo English and Japanese with
subtitles.
If
you want to know how the story ends you'll have to track down
a copy of the original manga.
I
guess my biggest worry with this disc is its price. For only
two episodes, and few extras, nearly twenty quid does not
look like good value for money. What there is of it is entertaining,
but I leave it up to you to decide if you're willing to pay
the price.
Charles
Packer
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