(re)watching gachiakuta now with my long-term weekly anime crew. i watched the first season as it aired and dropped it in the hat right afterwards... and it won last week's poll. my previous recs haven't all gone over so well; i know my adoration for surrealism that plummets into mindfuckery, toxic yuri and slower-paced stories places me firmly in the minority in any group of anime fans. i still kinda feel bad for subjecting everyone to revolutionary girl utena, serial experiments lain and the first episode of manyuu hikenchou.
gachiakuta, however, is none of those things. it's a shōnen fighting series with a cool scavenger punk-meets-inner city bent and an arrestingly spiky art style. kei urana-sensei's worldbuilding, character writing, sensitive treatment of traumatic subject matter and utterly unbothered sense of pacing left scuff marks on my soul. so far, everyone else too seems to be enjoying the story; i'm grateful.
can i talk a bit about black representation in anime? it's rare and it's not great. given the infinitesimal african diaspora demographic there and the flood of american media disrespect for us, this is understandable. so i always find it refreshing to see black anime characters whose blackness passes without comment. gachiakuta so far has three. all of them are badasses who just... happen to be black.
one of them, the unhinged masochist jabber wonger, became one of my favorite villains ever after i heard his english VA zeno robinson's performance. no shade, ever, on his seiyuu yūki shin-san—who came in already packing heat on grounds of sheer insanity—but robinson? this fucker brought a panzer tank. there is no contest. hear this for yourself.
with yūki shin:
and with zeno robinson:
oh, and did i mention the english dub absolutely slaps? in general?