GASARAKI (PG)   DETAILS:
GASARAKI - eight volume series DVDs $29.95 each (Multilingual - English/Japanese) Region 4 Videos - $22.95 each ( English language) PAL VHS Available in Australia from Madman.   SYNOPSIS: Warning! May contain spoilers... The development of Tactical Armour systems is going to change the face of warfare forever. This bipedal weapons platform, developed by the Gowa Corporation and being tested by the JSSDF (Japan Special Self Defence Force), has the ability not only to move over any terrain faster and more easily than the most advanced tanks, but is powered by a system based on technology that learns. It is state of the art weaponry with highly guarded origins and, still in the prototype stage, it requires pilots of unique ability to man it.
Young Yushiro Gowa seems the perfect candidate. Not only does his operational competence continue to push the limits of the established testing parameters, but his ability to function at an accelerated state of consciousness is so intense as to unprecedented. However, he's no soldier, his combat experience is all simulation and his unique abilities also seem to have their limitations. He is in fact only involved in the TA program at the insistence of his family, the same Gowa who developed the technology in the first place.
More organisation than family, Gowa are not someone even governments can refuse and their interests in the development of the TA systems and Yushiro's training are not exactly above board. Yushiro's official military training is only half the picture. Upon his return from TA test runs, he becomes a test subject of another sort, a Noh dancer on an ancient stage of stone in a performance that is much ritual as experiment. The Gowas are attempting contact with and control over an unknown power, and Yushiro has been reared his entire life as the obedient medium through which this power can be reached. The tranced state he attains in combat is the same state he reaches in his performance, his accelerated consciousness the key to the Gowa's true ambitions.
Unknown to the Gowa family however, another even more shadowy organisation, known only as Symbol, is attempting similar experiments with a similar test subject, the young, enigmatic Miharu. Yet despite their efforts both organisations' respective experiments fail, for within the trance Yushiro and Miharu somehow achieve the impossible, breaking the confines of their trances and making contact through a vision. It is here, during this meeting that Yushiro begins to awaken, both to his family's purpose and his own power and he finds he is unable to ignore or forget Miharu's disturbing warning.
What is it that his family is trying to do? What is he being used for? What is Miharu so afraid of? With little knowledge of his true role in the secret plans of his family, Yushiro soon finds himself thrust into international conflict in Belgistan, a supposedly third world Middle Eastern country with very powerful, unseen friends. It is the perfect opportunity for the Gowas to properly test in real combat both the fourth son and the TA systems and Yushiro and his unit become pieces in manoeuvres between the two rival organisations intent on the acquisition or destruction or each others technologies. It is clear there has begun a race to succeed in harnessing the mysterious power so sought after by these two factions and nothing, not even political opposition and international conflict will stop them.
Yet with each step Yushiro takes he draws unintentionally closer and closer to his destiny, to the answers he seeks and to the ultimate truth of Gasaraki.   REVIEW: Dancing While Standing Still
Gasaraki is on the surface exactly what it appears to be - mysteries and experiments and secret organisations; a boy and a girl and dangerous destinies; advanced weaponry, military might and political scheming. It does not fail to deliver and is complex and intriguing enough to be enjoyed on this level with few shortcomings. But it is also more than this and that is where its greater strength lies. Look beneath its initial value. Think not of it in terms of a film to be watched but a dance to be interpreted, for in the finest, most subtle traditions of Japanese Noh performance from which it draws its main impetus, it is what is not seen that communicates the greater truth. Noh is an art form that favours understatement and suggestion over declaration and explanation. It is theatre played on a bare stage with few props, an abstraction of reality made tangible by the presence and gesture of dancers who act as medium for the audience's perception, who describe and build the elements of the story practically out of thin air. It has been claimed that its roots lie deep in ancient religious practice, in rituals performed by priestesses to encourage spirits to come down to earth, by shamans attaining the ecstatic frenzy of possession and in Shinto tradition and worship. The movements and gestures of the dance are all precisely calculated, controlled, refined and there is as much meaning in and significance to taking a single step as a great leap. Nothing occurs without a specific reason and to a specific end, that end being the communication of something greater than is immediately visible and so the story being performed takes shape not in front of the viewer but in the viewer's imagination. Gasaraki, beneath its surface, is more play than anime in this respect, its elements deliberate like the gestures of a Noh performer, the implications and inferences taking on greater weight than the visible proceedings. The introduction of each character, the timing of each event is revealed like steps in the dance, controlled and measured and deliberate. Truth is at first hidden, camouflaged by what occurs on the surface; and is something only given definition gradually by the principal dancer, the character of Yushiro. Through him events become significant, through him each element is connected. His thoughts appear in haiku at the commencement of each chapter, yet within the context of the episodes it is his silences that command the viewer's attention. As the Gowa family's Noh performer, he is both powerless, a tool to their greater, hidden purpose, and the focus of power, a medium without which they would fail in their questionable endeavours. But as well as this and at a deeper level he is not only a character in the story but a device to propel the story forward, providing the gestures necessary to interpret the story and without which the viewer would have nothing, an empty stage devoid of purpose.
The pace of the story is also a measured, controlled thing. Action takes place like the sudden leaps and cries a real Noh performance, but meaning resides in the deliberately understated gestures, in moments of seeming inactivity where there is in fact much more going on than might be first realised. It is this combination of action and inaction, silence and significance that makes Gasaraki well worth the effort.
There is a sense of grace about Gasaraki that is impossible to ignore, a feeling of inevitability, of gravity. It's like a heightened state of awareness, where what is happening might not be immediately visible, but its presence is nonetheless felt. The dance commencing with the episodes of the first DVD, The Summoning, and continuing in the second, The Circle Opens is something that once started cannot be stopped. As powerful and mesmerising as the art from which it draws its inspiration, this anime is one to watch and keep watching. Do not miss a step, absorb each detail, and let the dance take you where it will, for in the end when the curtain closes, there is no doubt what you will have done is not watched but experienced. Rating: Nine Tranced Noh Dancers out of Ten
DVD EXTRAS: The elements of the DVDs, as props on the stage to support such a finely crafted tale, are for the most part quite well constructed and there is consistency in the use of some of the TA system's interface graphics that suits the space between each episode well. Chapters within the episodes (four on the first DVD, three on the second) are reached through a graph, and main navigation is direct, without confusion. The principal soundtrack for the menu is also the series' opening theme song, however it is a dominant piece and perhaps would have been better replaced by something a little more ambient instead. This aside, the music does not greatly affect the psychological tone introduced by the DVD design and background information in the Extras section helps to provide detail in support of this tone, with a description of the principal actors, elements and terms.
The production of the English dialogue is good, supporting and strengthening the effect of the film's silences and the initial powerlessness of Yushiro's character by utilising understated vocal performances and building an overall sense of expectation and tension throughout the story. The only misplaced step in the DVD's technical elements, the subtitles, lost occasionally in the background of the scene, a small discordant note easily overlooked in context of the whole. Reviewed by Deni Stoner
MORE REVIEWS: Dan Borses at Akadot  SCI FI dot com's Anime Colony  Michael Wieczorek at EX-MANGA   PLACES OF INTEREST: Gasaraki Heaven

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