Finished Gaim and while great I feel like it's less than it should be.
I feel like the main theme of the story is "what is strength" with Gaim & Baron representing the 2 main views.
Baron a man who had his home destroyed by the Yggdrasil corporation See's that strength is CONQUEST, to crush those in your path to accomplish your goals. He hates this concept of strength yet believes it to be an undeniable fact of this world. That the strong will crush the weak, and so he decides that he must become the strongest, conquer all in his path burn the world asunder and from those ashes create a new world where the weak won't be preyed on anymore.
Gaim (& Mai), see strength as PERSISTENCE, the ability that even in the face of overwhelming force to continue on, to keep the memory of your town alive & Keep dancing, even if the festivals are gone, that even if you life's at risk, and you fall to despair, to get back up again and fight on.
And so the final battle is Conquest vs Persistence. Can you create better world by continuing on, or must you take it by the reigns and make an entirely new world free of original sin. Which strength will dye this new world.
With each of Gaims power ups coming from him persevering at his lowest moments, the death of Hase, the Ark Program/Yuyaa's death, & the realization the overlords would never help, he persisted through and gained new strength in it. (Kinda weird that helheim has such a clear bias for Gaim, Baron got absolutely no hand outs.)
Speaking of other characters, if Baron & Gaim represent strength, then Mitchy and maybe Yggdrasil as a whole represents weakness. Yggdrasil are as DJ Sagahara put it "confined to the rules",They Bend to helheims strength, in an attempt to preserve what they have left to "stay where they feel safe", only to lose it all in the end. Even those of them who they crave power have no fiber, no belief behind what that strength means, just strength for strengths sakes, they have no color to dye the world with and so the golden fruit slips through their hands.
So there's a strong thematic core to this story but there's just parts which make it feel weird.
Mitchy's decent into villainy feels too sudden, he goes from trying to preserve his friendship & happiness to "welp guess I gotta kill Gaim now" in a near instant, makes it feel less like he cares about his friends and more like it's only Mai he cares about, which feels less interesting.
The villains felt lackluster, Takatora & Mitchy being the only interesting ones, but they're not the main villains they're more like misguided heroes trying to save the world. The rest of Yggdrasil as I said prior don't have any depth behind their villainy/want for power, which while possibly intentional, makes them very uninteresting. The overlords fair slightly better, they are a warning of the trajectory our world is on, that might makes right and as such an extension & personification of Helheim & it's affects on humanity. Ultimately they feel more like a necessary plot pillar rather than interesting characters themselves, which is a shame as half the show had them as the main threat.
Then there's the ending, Gaim had been set up as becoming on overlord, the forbidden fruit giving him the power to save the world but also make him a monster the world would spurn even as he saves their lives, and he continues on despite what that sacrifice would mean to him, because it's the right thing.
but then he just becomes... a dude with white hair, who then fucks off to another planet, and he can come back anytime he wants to protect humanity from threats. Maybe there's supposed to be this idea that humanity will hate him for the power itself but there's no indication his friends would, and as established in the final episode he can come back anytime he wants.
1: make him look like an actual monster, justifying his self exile even from his friends, and only coming back to the planet to save it from world ending threats.
2: make it so he can't come back to earth, meaning he can't come back to his friends even though he wants to, and he has to leave because he'd tempt humanity with his power and make them hate him.
Also Mai being forced to suffer the same fate as Gaim is like kinda weird, she didn't ask to be a part of this, let her go back to dancing pls
In the end Gaim has a strong thematic core focusing on it's core characters but with villains who fail to be interesting or entertaining
Maybe on a rewatch I'd like it more and see more of what it was going for, but as of right now it feels like less than it should be.
I feel like they just couldn't lock in/10
ellievsbear
theartofmadeline
andulkaphoto
origamiaround
pixelskylines
stormborns
