Gibiate

I WATCHED THIS ANIME SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO. My brother gave up on this anime at episode 1 and told me, "Gibiate? More like jebaited with hot trash!" I pushed through per episode, hoping I’d get something good out of it. It did not even turn out to be the kind of “so bad it’s good” anime. Let me tell you all about this dumpster fire. Art 1/10: There's like 5 or more art “styles” in this anime. If that isn't enough to send a cluster of red flags for your brain, then I'd also mention the naturally terrible mix of these art styles. Perhaps it'sbad directing or just plain incompetent decisions. Aside from the notably sloppy "fight scenes", everything really is horribly static for a show that is supposedly financed significantly. Normally, I tend to be more forgiving for animation in this form (I was fine with Fairy Gone for example). But there are way more options to keep the lesser furnished aspects to a minimum or at least not obvious. Also, perhaps each art style could have worked a lot better if any of those were given singular focus. What happened to the budget allocations for this thing, just thrown around for whatever? I'm absolutely horrified how this was even given a pass. Characters 1/10: The characters were SO STIFF. Granted, it's not the first show to have an Gen X meets Modern Generation concept, but Gibiate handles this terribly. Very awkward character dynamics. Some jump in dialogues were excessively slow, like it felt like the camera would painfully teeter to one character to tell the viewer that "Hey, this guy is speaking now!!" Please. And what's to like in a set of either boring, annoying or wonderfully predictable characters! Also, ignoring the fact that there is supposed to be a HUGE language and technological barrier within the cast! Either be respectful with incorporating any era's concept or be flexible with it. And the awful hints of "romance" or affection! My goodness, what is this horrible cast!! People. Don’t. Talk. The. Way. Gibiate. Shows. It. Plot 1/10: Gibiate's story sounds like a fanfic writer's wet dream. I would know because I was one of those. I absolutely know I would have loved to write this idea for a fanfiction with characters from a famous series. The time travel concept was just a chef's kiss after everything. See, the progression and the arc setups were severely irritating. You got all this wonderful potential from Japanese history, but it ended up feeling like a child's story drawn from Mommy's bedtime stories mixed with Grandpa's war stories, all taken by the child to form a ridiculous story that will only ever be grand and have any small amount of coherence for a that child alone. Wow! What an interesting idea, let's take it. Wow! Another premise I can use. Maybe we can use it for a different project? NO, SLAM THEM ALL TOGETHER! What's also horrible was when the anime explains things happening as if the viewer is but a child. Maybe I missed a memo on that regard, but it was quite insulting in that regard. "He died because he got bit by the monster!" as if it was something meant to be a shocking reveal. "Oh no, things are bad! I must proceed to say it to make sure the viewer knows things are bad, by also narrating the situation as if the group of people with me aren't adults." We get barely an episodic length of character backstories, so yeah, things somehow managed to feel rushed despite the excruciatingly slow pacing of the character interactions. "You see how this character is actually good?! Now, feel bad and empathize!" Gibiate did all the bad things wonderfully. Sound Design 4/10: The only aspect I'm willing to accept as actually okay. It gets annoying, but it's mostly because of all the bad elements already mixed in. The worst of all is some action scenes are supposed to be exciting or suspenseful, but the general atmosphere of all the clustered aspects just made things feel pretentious. Final Notes 1/10: Basically, the anime tried so hard to incorporate various moods, eras, and genres. It obviously failed. Just no. Please keep yourself away from this actual monstrosity of an anime. So many other anime deserves the kind of financial or social backing that this anime got. I am so angry that this anime exists. I know a good number of 90's anime that are way more interesting with actually better animated and more entertaining fight scenes. Man, I will forgive ANY type of unoriginal fanservice anime full of breasts and such. At least, that kind of anime is true to their audience and intentions. Excuse my language, but I have to do it for the rest of the review. What the fuck is this abomination of an anime?! WHAT THE FUCK happened here?! What a FUCKING bad anime! My eyes! FUCK!! God, I wanted to give this anime a fucking ZERO. FUCK IT! STAY AWAY! FUCKING SAVE YOUR SANITY FROM THIS SHITSHOW!

Whenever I see that horror tag on a show when looking at the beginning of each season, I look forward to seeing how it would turn out. They're maybe only a couple each year but I look forward to them none the less. So I was looking forward to this show which looked to be in the veins of an action horror series with swords slashing at monsters in a world gone bad. But as I watched this show, I felt the anticipation I had slip away within just one episode. It also only took one episode to make a clear assumption that this showis absolutely SH*T! Sit back relax, grab your samurai sword and slash your device after watching this show a I present to you the anime review for Gibiate. Let’s begin. Story: 1/10 Set in the year 2030, Japan and the rest of the world has fallen into ruin. A virus strain known as Gibia has infected the world and has turned humanity into monsters. While the last few survivors try to stay alive, a weird phenomenon occurs that cause a samurai and a ninja from the edo period to travel forward in time into 2030. With their help and from others, they search for answers to cure the Gibia strain and save mankind. By all accounts, this sounds like a cool premise. A post apocalyptic world with scary monsters and a touch of sci-fi with time travel elements. This should have been something that the show can build on successfully. HA, fat chance. What turns from an interesting plot of past warriors trying to understand this new world that has gone to sh*t while also trying to survive turns into a rather bog standard post apocalyptic story about trying to find the cure in an unforgiving world. But the fact is that some plot elements feel completely dropped and never brought up again. The time travel aspect, learning the outcome of those they served in the edo period, having to understand this upside down world is completely dropped just so we can have these edo period warriors fight monsters. This also causes things to be wrapped up quickly for the sake of progressing the main plot and having twists for the sake of having a twist. It leads to the overall factor that is story is boring and clicd when executed and the unique aspects that this show presented is swept under the rug to play it safe and predictable except when those twists happen. This is especially true with the twist in the second to last episode WHICH COME OUT OF NOWHERE WITH NO LOGIC BEHIND THE TWIST. Like I said, twist for the sake of having a twist or for the sake of having an M.Night Shyamalan plot twist. It’s like the story writers tried to think of these cool ways to make the story more exciting and unique. But without establishing why, all that did is make a mess of a story with no cohesion or teasing as to why these things happened so when it gets explained, it comes pretty much out of nowhere. Characters: 1.5/10 Before I go into specifics with these characters, I just want to say that all of these characters make bone head decision after bone headed decision. Their logic and thought patterns don’t make sense at times and it infuriates me as it feels like they have a deathwish. But that’s just the surface as all characters share this trait. Individually, they do not get any better. Sensui and Kenroku, our two main leads, fill their roles of samurai and ninja stereotypically well. Sensui is the broody but honourable warrior that does not waiver and show weakness. Whereas Kenroku is a wise cracking smart-ass that uses unconventional methods to beat his opponents. That’s all well and good but the problem is that they don’t shape that stereotype to form their own identity and so, they act like their stereotypes and are absolutely boring characters. Then there’s Kathleen, the token female lead and I say that because she really does act like it. She’s near useless in combat and always seems to get into trouble because out of all of the characters it feels like she makes the most bone headed decisions the most. There is also some kind of romance element between her and Sensui but feels like it goes nowhere. She really feels like the damsel in distress character because she causes more trouble than it needs to be. The rest of the cast are similar to that of Sensui and Kenroku in that they all have stereotypically defining roles, it’s just that they do it in the most blandest way possible. So when we get emotional character drama, it just comes across dry because there is no intrigue into the characters’ personality to get attached to them at an emotional level. I will say this though, it is nice that they gave the characters backstories, ranging from small to pretty sizeable just so we can know more about them. This is especially true when the episode starts where we get a camcord of them just so we can get to know them better first and foremost to try and get some emotional attachment. So I will give them credit there because with some shows of this quality, it would normally be neglected or be barely mentioned and then they just move on. Animation: 1/10 Another case of the CG curse, Gibiate’s animation is simply put, terrible. It’s not just the fact that the CG monsters just looks like crap and completely out of place with the rest of the animation, but when they are not using CG, the monsters still look unimpressive and poorly designed. But even then, the rest of the animation looks unimpressive with still shots and shaky cameras. The usual tactics to make it look like they’re fighting without putting in much effort to do so. I am also not really a fan with the character designs or art direction as well, mainly due to the purpleish tint to it that looks out of place with the post apocalyptic setting. Granted, they do look distinct from one another but that should honestly be a given. The designs themselves, while thematic for their character, look unimpressive and forgettable honestly. But Kathleen just screams main female protagonist with her design yet she is such an eyesore with her design with all her bright colours. Makes me glad they changed her clothes in the last 3 episodes. Sound: 1/10 The words “generic” and “forgettable” come to mind when describing the soundtrack, it sounds very standard and doesn’t do anything to enhance a scene to get you pumped up for the action or see the scary nature of the Gibia. It kind of just blends into the background and not in a good way. But what really grinds my gears is the sound design for the monsters. This is because it becomes very annoying when you have 2-3 sound effects on loop and doesn’t stop and it got on my freaking nerves. Those humanoid, pterodactyl looking Gibia really get on my nerves in this regard making the same screeching, stock monster sound effects over and over again. Then there is the OP and ED. The opening, "GIBIATE" by Yoshida Brothers feat SUGIZO, is boring simply put. This is mainly due to the fact the opening just mainly uses footage of the episode to make the opening exciting, even though the animation regardless looks ass. They try to change it up by changing what is in the opening but still looks ass. You can try dressing a turd all you want and give it different outfits but it will still make it a turd. The ED is not any better as I just skipped it as it, just like the opening, uses footage in the episodes and puts it in an ED. This essentially means that both the OP and ED are lazily done and I will not miss listening or watching both. Conclusion: Yeah, if it wasn’t clear by now, this show is sh*t, simply put. I only continued watching it because I wanted to review this abomination and I love the anime horror genre. Considering this was studio l-a-unch・BOX’s first anime and studio Studio elle first anime since 2012 with some other notable individuals working on this anime, they really shat the bed with this one. It looks sh*t, it sounds sh*t, the story is sh*t and the characters are sh*t. Everything about this anime is completely and utterly sh*t. And it’s not even so bad it’s good, it’s just straight up bad. My only wishes now is that this show get put on the top of a lot of people’s worst anime of 2020 lists (because it’s certainly on the top of my list) and that Jujutsu Kaisen and Higurashi 2020 can wash away this icky feeling of watching an absolutely sh*t horror anime. Oh, did I mention that this show is sh*t? I don’t think I was clear enough. My Personal enjoyment: 1/10 Overall score: 1.1/10 Recommendation: ABSOLUTELY DON’T F**KING BOTHER!

To fully understand or rather to fully immerse oneself into the beauty and sublimity that is Gibiate one must have considerable patience and determination to follow through. To depict this in plainer terms: infamous Anime Discord Moderator and desktop wallpaper aficionado Drizzo, once said “You’ll have a harder time watching Gibiate than a 10 hour compilation of Nyan cat.” I was especially intrigued by that statement, so I just had to give this anime a try. Gibiate follows a group of modern day Japanese militants, two Edo period samurai, a thicc horny monk, a useless teenager, her schizophrenic mom and a smokin’ hot doctor (whois also a licensed pilot and a pro sniper apparently) as they embark on their heroic adventure to the Japanese countryside. Their ultimate goal? That is supposedly, to develop a vaccine and use that to save the world from a deadly virus: a disease that turns infected into terrifying monsters called Gibia. However, their journey will not be proven easy for neither themselves nor for us, the viewers. Throughout the story we all get subjected to a variety of “complications” that might deter some from continuing to watch. Those came in a series of: random monologues, painfully dragged out and mostly irrelevant historical flashbacks, and the occasional fight scene with bad CGI monsters. Nothing ever really sticks to the plot for more than five seconds before getting overshadowed by one of these “complications.” Without diving into too much spoiler territory, I would like to briefly touch on our characters, which have to be the most vital part of every story, unless we’re talking about Gibiate. To give you the rundown, we have our generic overpowered samurai protagonist Sensui Kanzaki, who can one-shot bullet proof monsters with his super sWoRD and his “friend” Sanada Kenroku, who can do the same, but this time with iron wires. These two must protect our useless female protagonist, Kathleen, for reasons unknown to pretty much everyone (probably the writers included). Unfortunately for our samurai friends, Kathleen is only ever good at mentioning the obvious, acting completely oblivious half the time and basically adding zero value to the plot besides “oh look, it’s a waifu and she has uh boobs!” The rest of the cast are too ridiculous to make fun of or too irrelevant to mention. Like seriously, what kind of doctor can pilot a helicopter and shoot guns on target in the middle of a freefall all to save a person that was going to die anyway? Sometimes I wonder to myself why in god's name I watched 12 episodes of this. I clearly had many problems with Gibiate from the story to the production quality. Nevertheless, I really wanted to make this review short and sweet, so I will be ending it on a moment of self reflection. To sum it up, I consider the show to be a comedic masterclass, but even as a one it falls a bit short because there are instances where it actually tries to be one. The scenes where Gibiate tries to be funny and the ones I found to be the most boring. What it’s really missing aren’t better voice actors, a story that makes sense, deep and impactful themes, multidimensional characters; none of that mumbo jumbo that good Anime usually have. All it needs is the Comedy tag. After taking everything into consideration, Gibiate is in the purest sense so unbelievably bad it’s actually good. With that in mind, I highly recommend it, easily 9/10, just wash your hands after watching and maybe grab a pillow to shove your head in every time the fight theme plays. Thank you very much for reading.