|
The brief Readers Digest condensed
description of this would likely describe this as the following.
The Terminator, with more of what we want, more girls, guns and
machines -- Just no time travel… and human skulls laying on the
ground. Minus the fact that the Gall Force series is almost as
old as The Terminator series, both share the man vs. machine
conflict, as well as other similarities. For those that don’t know
anything about Gall Force (such as me before doing some research),
it was the answer to the 80’s Sci-fi super-boy craze, instead of
guys marching around in mechs, it's babes blasting bots! Now who
doesn’t like that?
 Taking
a look at the world outside, we see an apocalyptic wasteland
similar to what you would see in The Road Warrior. (Hey, they’re
both based in Australia) Humans are reduced to living in ruined
cities now that years of war have scattered debris along every
inch of pavement. Enormous monuments of concrete are on the verge
of crumbling and threatening to fall. Obviously, some serious stuff
has been going down over the years. We follow the story of Sandy
Newman (who’s related to Professor Newman) as she and her team,
Score, Norton and the little Rhea run about and cause general
mayhem.
A rather fierce and lethal human
creation known as the MME, have invaded earth. With the aid of
most of Earth’s nuclear warheads, they nearly extinguished human
life on earth. Will we ever learn? The remnants of humanity fled
from earth, settling on Mars during this time. The MME had used
most of our nukes against Earth, and we used the rest against
them. Little do the humans know that a few warheads have been
saved… for each other. And that is where Episode one begins.
Sandy and her fellow freedom fighters have been given the task to
find and activate these warheads and use them against the MME
citadel, the house of General GORN and the MME’s control center.
Needless to
say, they’ll be getting into plenty of fights along the way.
Episode two
is a different story, during a blazing skirmish; Sandy is captured
by the MME. To make matters worse, Mars has given up hope for
regaining Earth, so they decide to blow it to hell. Using a ship
built around a plasma cannon, they would shoot down upon the MME
citadel, destroying it --along with most of Australia. However,
the MME have plans of their own, and it isn’t too honorable. The
third and final chapter involves Mars going out and taking action
against the MME. Unfortunately, the MME have control over 75% of
their systems. Oh joy. Never the less, that doesn’t stop them
from sending dozens of warships to Earth.
In the midst
of the coming battle, Sandy fumbles across a mysterious girl who
pleads eagerly to stop the fighting. Apparently, she’s an
android, plus, she knows how to shutdown the MME. But, it’s not an
easy task, go figure. The action begins to boil down as the Earth
forces move in on the MME citadel with full force. Supported by
orbiting warships flinging meteors down on the Citadel, the humans
punch through. Sandy, lucky enough to survive the fight, takes
Score and Norton with her inside the Citadel through a damaged
wall. Inside lies a dizzying cybernetic labyrinth. Will they
ever find GORN, will they be able to stop the MME, or will they be
reduced to a reddish bio-jell.
Obviously
the creators were expunging excess mental waste when they put
together Gall Force. Earth Chapter has a fresh storyline, though,
some people who haven't watched Gall Force before will probably have
a hard time staying interested. But, I’m not one of them, so
thumbs up! The story really kept me intrigued.
Being
released several years ago, Gall Force shows its age in this DVD.
While there are few technical issues with the disk, the overall
image quality due to its age can be a bit of an eye sore for
some. Gall Force dates CG animation by a decade, so everything is
cell animated, and it shows. The crisp clarity that we see in
newer anime isn’t present here. As well, the standard old school
“repeating scenes” are used rigorously. In the end, animation
comes out average with other productions from its time.
Audio, while
it’s nothing to get excited over, I was more or less impressed
with what was offered. For as long I can remember, I have had a
deep hatred of English dubbing. I usually listen to the Japanese
soundtrack and leave the English dub to rot in its own parallel
hell, far away from the one I’ll soon visit. But, I was in a good
mood, and as a result, I discovered that not all English dubs were
fit for dung beetles. To my surprise the English track used a
touched up audio track, and sounds cleaner than the original
Japanese source.
Extras include a picture gallery,
trailers, and a nifty little synopsis from the earlier Gall Force
series. If you haven’t seen the earlier Gall Force series then I
strongly suggest watching the synopsis first, it explains a lot of
things that are unexplained during Earth Chapter. Looking at the
menus is quite an eye treat. They are well designed, especially
the main menu, it takes a while for it to get started, but before
you know it Sandy appears clad in full battle armour. Storm
clouds also move about in the background, and menu transitions are
done with a bright solar flare. I guess I can’t stop stressing
the fact that the menus look really, really good.
Looking
back, Gall Force: Earth Chapter was an enjoyable experience, but
isn’t the best thing I’ve seen. In order to truly enjoy something
like this, you would probably need to already be a Gall Force fan,
or at lest watching Gall Force diligently. Never the less, it was
a great three hours for me, and will most certainly be a
spectacular three hours for fans! |
Version 2.0
