When I picked up Gaiarth at a tiny hobby shop at the 99 Ranch in Colma (before it closed and got replaced by what I assume is a furniture store), I didn’t expect much out of it.  My first reaction was that it was probably going to be a stinker.  But the cover art had decent quality, and it was licensed by AnimEigo, which, to my knowledge, has never had a bad anime under their belt.  The tape was also still shrinkwrapped and had a “For Screening Purposes Only” sticker on it.  Yup.  I bought a promotional video.  I thought it’d be a movie, but turns out it’s episode 1 of a 3-episode OVA.

We begin our tale with Longshot, starring in Mojo’s latest fantasy epic… Oh wait no, that’s just my assumptions based on not having any audio.  Headphones on…

The episode starts out unpromisingly with an ass shot of Ital, the main character of the series and most definitely a guy.  A tanned guy with long blonde hair.  I checked the box again and confirmed the only warnings were of “mild profanity and violence,” no nudity.  I immediately thought “all is lost!”

This guy couldn’t get any more blatantly “pretty-boy,” with the exception, of course, of holding on to a stoic older guy and being framed with rose borders.  Thankfully, this is not a generic shojo.  It’s just a generic post-apocalyptic vaguely medieval not-quite-steampunk fantasy.  Wait, what did I just say?

Ital has been living peacefully with Randis, a “War-Roid” that raised Ital since he was a child.  So he’s a bit of a father figure to him.  Together with a bunch of animals, they lived in peace and trained to fight in the Big War.  Literally, that is the only name this war is referred to as.  The Big War.  Not to be confused with B-anime Big Wars, which was surprisingly watchable.

Like I was saying, they lived in peace.  Until an evil robot from the Republic attacked!  Randis tries to fight this prick back and fails spectacularly.  Blatantly ignoring advice from the Evil Overlord’s List, the enemy looks at Ital and laughs as his forces march away.  Because hey, we just pissed off a kid that looks like a main character and gave him reason to take revenge on us.  What could possibly go wrong?

Predictably, Ital vows to kill the man that killed Randis and leaves his peaceful home.

VERY shortly after the “I’m leaving home” montage, Ital is thrust into the next act, where he does something impressive and saves a girl that’s obviously going to be his romantic interest.  It’s like a budget RPG in fast forward!

While scouting out the next area, Ital comes across a band of junk-hunters, because, let’s face it, Gundam ZZ happened.  They also have some of the dumbest vehicle designs I’ve ever seen.  They transition between jet mode and ostrich mode, and are apparently sentient.  Ital runs in to warn them of a Republican trap (too easy to even bother making the joke) and, naturally, does so by leaping onto the vehicle of the only character wearing pink armor.

Said junk hunter is Sahari, the one girl with a character design that screams “I’m important!”  Like I said, this is pretty much a budget RPG.

Surprisingly, Sahari is NOT the leader of the junk hunters, nor does she appear to be particularly skilled.  So props for not being cliche AND setting female lead roles back a decade.  Oh wait, this was made in 1992.  So it’s pretty much up to par.  Carry on.

Ital saves the group from running straight into an electron cloud, whatever the hell that’s supposed to be (aside from “bad thing everyone knows about except the viewer”), and he gets himself trapped in some old ruins.  There, he finds another War-Roid and (mostly) fixes him.  Because apparently Randis taught him how to fix him, and War-Roids are all similar enough.

The War-Roid’s name is Zaxxon, and no, he is not THAT Zaxxon.  He’s a more powerful and far more badass War-Roid than Randis, AND HE HAS AMNESIA.  Robots with amnesia, people!  Together, they make it out of the ruins and trek to the nearest town, where they are promptly arrested and sent to Warlock, the War-Roid ruler and protector of the town.

Hey looks like a final boss, but he’s actually a good guy.  Go fig.  While Ital gushes over Warlock (apparently, Randis told Ital a lot of stories about how badass this guy was), a bunch of pompous human politicians make fun of Ital because that’s what anime politicians do.  They look down on people and shout how wrong the main character is even though we all know he’s telling the truth, and respond to whatever he has to say with some variant of “why should we listen to what this kid says?”  The “execute him for no real reason” option was not taken, surprisingly.  Warlock says they’re free to go, and the politicians back down because they’re spineless bitches that rely on Warlock’s protection

Back in town, Ital is reunited with Sahari and recognizes her immediately despite the fact that Sahari didn’t take off her helmet until after they were separated.  But y’know, fuck it.  We have to run through Disc 1 in 50 minutes.

Sahari treats Ital to some food, introduces him to the old man they sell junk to, and sells his gun and laser sword off for a shitload of money.  I had no idea Roll Casket was in this series.

The old man is also, well, an old man.  Cue the obvious jokes.  We need filler.  Speaking of filler, obligatory shower scene!

All is not lost!

By the way, shower scene + boy raised naive = obligatory walking-in scene.  Surprisingly, Sahari doesn’t go the tsundere route.  She turns around, calmly and politely asks him to get out of the shower room, and Ital silently complies without even looking embarrassed.  I don’t even know how to react to that.  It’s so… off-script.

Since, I have to remind you, we’re in a rush for some reason, Sahara asks Ital to join her as her partner…. completely skipping the part where he’s invited to join the junk hunters and going straight into recruiting him as her travel companion on some journey.  Considering she just sold off the only two weapons he owned, I wouldn’t consider it.

Meanwhile, the old man works on Zaxxon and tries to upgrade him.  While Zaxxon’s mobility and right arm are tuned up, the Beastmaster (the enemy robot guy from the start of this episode) attacks the city, and Ital and Zaxxon leap into action.  But not before Warlock and Beastmaster have a spell-off (did I mention the spells they cast RHYME?  That’s just freaking awesome) and Warlock dies from the old overloading-with-energy-until-you-burst trick.  Enter the second string.

Ital holds off the Beastmaster while Zaxxon follows Warlock’s last words and downloads all the information he needs, including some memories of his old life.

Up to now, we’ve been beaten over the head with the theme of the story.  Humans put War-Roids like Warlock in charge and had them rule over the humans because the War-Roids were stronger.  They became meek and helpless, fully expecting the War-Roids to lead them.  Beastmaster is actually just a general serving under the big baddie, who wants to punish humans for becoming so complacent.  I say the enemy has a point.

The point is, Ital and Zaxxon fight together, representing the lost way where human and War-Roid fought together.  And it’s by fighting together that they manage to defeat Beastmaster where a lone Zaxxon failed.

Ital does get the final hit in, but honestly, Zaxxon practically soloed Beastmaster.  It kinda ruins the moral when the main reason the heroes won was because of a War-Roid.

Beastmaster is finally defeated, and the people rejoice.  End episode 1 of 3.

Honestly, I think I’m going to consider hunting down the last two episodes.  I was actually pretty entertained.  And the AnimEigo dubbing wasn’t half bad.  The voices may have been crappy, and there were more than a few delivery issues, but considering the era and how much worse it could have been?  More than passable.

Cheez: -4
Sure, it uses a lot of fantasy and RPG cliches and it’s rushed as hell, but it was just so… not bad.  It’s like it had a lot of good ideas that had to be condensed into three episodes and operate on a low budget.  All things considered, it was probably as good as it was going to get, which is more than I can say about a lot of B-anime.

Pleasure Rating: Damn Good Watch
I was expecting this to be mediocre to terrible.  It turned out to be flawed, but oddly unique.  Cliche and unique at the same time, and not specifically a deconstruction?  Impressed me.

Rewatchability: 3
I probably wouldn’t actively watch the whole thing again, but it has its moments, and a respectable number of them deserve another look.  But really, it’s just moments.  The characters are all boring for the most part, at least in this episode.

Music: Infectious
The music is honestly pretty lame.  There’s a lot of cheesy electric guitar reefs here and there, but the opening and ending themes deserve a mention.

Marketability: 2
There’s very little that’s visually appealing about Gaiarth, and it doesn’t have any strong characters to fall back on.  The music is also incredibly cheesy, with only the opening and ending songs that make it worth listening to.

Overall, Gaiarth is pretty well done.  It has all the elements of the average B-anime, but it manages to do the best with what it has to work with.  I actually want to watch the remaining 2 episodes if I can come across them.

Gaiarth is a lot like what would happen if Iria: Zeiram the Animation were executed a lot less successfully.  Of course, the tradeoff being that Iria gets no significant nudity time.  It’s also not like it had a lot of untapped potential; it has some original ideas, but it’s more or less at the upper limit of where you could take said ideas.  That alone puts it head and shoulders above most other B-anime, but I have yet to see if it breaks through to the next tier and join the likes of the Maze OVA.