This anime threw me for a loop with the first episode. It was completely unexpected and doesn’t have any real bearing on the main storyline. Ga Rei: Zero is a prequel to the manga Ga Rei. The first episode makes a little more sense with that in mind.
The story follows a group of Vanquishers as they put down various spiritual disturbances like zombies, ghosts, and what they call Category A’s: people possessed by a fragment of the Nine-tailed Fox demon. Category A’s are people who come in contact with a Bane Stone, a crystallized fragment of the Nine-tailed Fox. It gives them superhuman healing and other abilities.
The anime focuses on the relationship of Kagura and Yomi, both raised as Vanquishers. Kagura moves in with Yomi and her adoptive father after her mother dies. Kagura’s father is one of the most powerful Vanquishers and is always busy. Kagura is in a deep depression until Yomi becomes her adopted older sister.
The show has excellent character development of Yomi and Kagura. You really feel for them. There are a host of other characters that are only sketched out, like Yomi’s betrothed, but they are mostly forgettable. There are a few yuri elements here and there with Yomi and Kagura.
The show is violent…very violent. People are dismembered as only anime can do. The violence is all the more horrific against the sweet scenes between Yomi and Kagura. The series kept me guessing. I was honestly surprised with how it ended, but any fan of the manga already knows what goes on.
The animation combines 2d animation and computer generated animation for some of the largest demons. The demons seemed out of place compared to the zombies and Category A’s. The animation on the whole is top notch. The sword fight scenes are particularly well done.
Ga Rei: Zero is a solid anime. Yomi and Kagura are interesting characters. I was able to really feel for them. The pacing for the show is odd; most of it is a memory that catches up with the first 2-3 episodes. It lacks the fanservice of High School of the Dead (thankfully), but it does have some.
I would have never guessed Pocky was fuel for fighting demonic entities. That explains some things about Japan.
Ga-Rei Zero was the biggest surprise of the season for me. I’ve read the manga, which while not really great, is quite pleasant. So I expected something similar from the anime, forgettable supernatural fighting series with some drama on the side.God, was I wrong.Ga-Rei proved to be a great tragic series, with main characters you can actually care for. I normally don’t like tragedy that much, I’ve seen too much bad shit in real life to find amusement in the suffering of fictional characters. But if it’s done that well, it goes past simple amusement. Even if it wasn’t a terribly deep show, it still managed to move me quite a bit. I didn’t really like the series structure at first, but as it progressed it turned out to work really well. The viewer is shown what exactly happened to put the characters in the positions they are now, while still being left wondering where they’ll go from there.Characters were good too, especially Yomi, but I can’t help but think that Kagura was a bit undeveloped. Well I guess showing her character develop was the point of the series, but still.All in all, I think it was a great series. And I completely agree with your PS.
Yomi was the best character of the series. The pacing of the show put me off for the first several episode before I got used to it. It felt disjointed. The mark of a good show and characters is when it draws the audience in completely. I think Kagura was partially undeveloped so the audience will have someone to project themselves into in addition to her developing into her own.