Gunslinger Stratos ep 12 [ Final Impression ]

Gunslinger Episode 12 is the finale of the series and with it, seems to tie itself a nice little bow. Every plot point touched in the show comes to fruition in this final episode, though we could’ve probably seen a bigger epilogue for every single character, but even the plot points brought up in the last five minute are given a conclusion in the last 2 minutes.

We see an epic fight between Tohru’s in the first half, and ultimately it suffers from the same problem the rest of the series does: the animation is rather stale. Each scene has a low quality lack of shading and weird anatomy of the faces in at least one shot, even the moving and touching scenes seem to feel lifeless because of it.

We see eventually black!Tohru is the victor, but mostly because of the intervention of the Kyoka’s and the power of badass shields. White!Tohru basically can’t just let the power go because everyday people are starving in his world. Touche, I say to him, but Black!Tohru still has a point: at least they aren’t fucking disappearing and turning into sand you dumb shit. Black!Tohru uses this chance to fire his gun and destroy the energy cube they’re fighting over, and this severs the connections the worlds have to the year of 2015.

Eventually we see the little girl from the future again, and she reveals she lost her name. Tohru, at her request, decides to name her Miki. They promise to meet again in the future and then totally prove me right, by being off a generation. First we see a heavy cheap out of what the future will be by Kyoka asking if Tohru will try to become the freakin’ President and he agrees, and they all basically foreshadow this means world peace. End result? Tohru is Miki’s GRANDfather, so I was totally right. It’s father’s day bitches, and I was correct.

We do see epilogues for characters and a ton of stuff, but I’ll be blunt. While Gunslinger Stratos has content that is interesting and did have the makings of a genuinely interesting show, it’s basically Black Bullet. It’s a show I could watch and get through. The only difference between this and Black Bullet is the latter was far prettier and this dude a huge favor for Black Bullet. Gunslinger was an action packed laser fight and they brought nerf bullets instead. It could’ve done with so much more character development, world building, even more epilogues and generally it just needed more.

Was this show bad? No. It was more like a harmless filler in the anime season. It was the midway point between good and bad. While some found it confusing I found it to be a little droll, and ultimately I just wanted one thing and I got it: Being right about Miki. Would I buy this show? No. Did it connect to me on an emotional level? No. I’ve heard people knock shows like Tokyo Ghoul but the appeal of that show was more emotional. Anime nowadays, to feel successful, has to really appeal to something inside of us.

That’s why despite the polarizing nature of Madoka Magica to some people, it is extremely popular. That is why even though I hate ‘Now and Then Here and There’ for it’s heavy misogynistic cringe worthy scenes, it is a forever classic, because it touches people. When people are moved, an anime becomes a classic. When people end the series going, that was passable, nobody remembers it. And unfortunately for Gunslinger, I think it sits dead in the middle of becoming eternally forgettable.