Anime Spotlight #73: Gachiakuta
a.k.a. The Animeister.
My initial plan for this review (back when I didn't know there was going to be a cour break and it was scheduled for the Monday after Christmas 2025) was to have the intro play into the gift aspect of the holiday and make some profound statement about how things and the spirit in which they are given should not be taken for granted or treated as disposable even though our modern economy is structured around physical waste and overpriced, non-fungible, non-ownable (and in the long term, non-sustainable) services that make us want more of what we ultimately find unfulfilling. Not every darling needs to be killed if it doesn't work out. Common courtesy shouldn't need to become a rarity before it is valued. We should respect those who provide by taking the time to see them and greet them, whether it be family or the overworked champ of a fry cook at your local grocer, instead of demanding their attention and service so we can fuel our afternoon shit a few minutes faster.
That was what I intended to say in December (except that everyone's a little nicer in December because "Merry Christmas!" makes people happier), but it's three months later now, so the context no longer applies even if the message is still important to see and hear. It's not broken, so why throw it away when you can fix it, show it love (again, it doesn't have to be February for you to do that), and find new purpose in it?
But as I always do (since Call Of the Night, anyway), I'd like to start by talking about the music. And in the case of Gachiakuta, I can't exactly structure this review by "OP, plot, ED" like I usually do because this is a rare case (I think I only ever really noticed it with Bleach's "Ichigo's about to get serious" melody, the DBZ Faulconer score, and One Piece's bumper themes before, but there are certainly other anime that have done this that didn't make as much of an impression on me) of an anime with a stand-out soundtrack beyond just the opening and ending songs and their visuals. As the characters are driving around or farming aura for a fight, Gachiakuta has snippets of background music that evoke a Street Fighter III hip-hop vibe. The openings ("HUGs" by Paledusk for the first cour and "Let's Just Crash" by Mori Calliope) are both metal bangers that I mostly skipped (like the endings) on my second watch of the first cour so I could binge faster, but they're definitely going on my playlist. Of course, I'm partial to the visuals for the "HUGs" opening
because of the mixed media, David Seidman-meets-Kaiju No. 8 vibes that go thematically hard without spoiling the plot too much.
Those vibes continue with the unsettlingly chill, trappy "Tomoshibi" ending by Dustcell
and the more upbeat, frantic "Ban" by Karanoah from the second cour, both of which are going on my playlist as well.
In an aristocratic (but still class-divided and ruthlessly dictated, because extremely shitty people resort to extremely shitty measures to "prove" how way less shitty than everyone else they are) floating city called The Sphere, alleged son of a murderer and active trash raider Rudo (who is loud, has spiky hair, is more athletic than most, and lives his dream of repairing and collecting the slightly damaged things that the rich, wasteful, and excessive throw away, because he’s a shōnen protagonist) is framed for his adoptive father's murder, betrayed by his childhood crush, and sentenced to a public execution (because in the Sphere, broken people and criminals are considered trash, too) by being cast into The Pit as Filth.
But this is where the first bit of Alice In Wonderland flavor comes in, because The Pit turns out not to be the death sentence (for everyone) that Rudo expects. After falling through a strange barrier, he wakes up on The Ground (so Gachiakuta is an isekai, kind of, and a battle shōnen in one), a toxic landfill world with composited (I mean that both in the sense that they are CGI and amalgamated garbage given life) Trash Beasts, lowlife Scavengers and Raiders, a feudal-looking police force, and a powerful Trash Beast extermination squad of Cleaners.
In his long-term quest for revenge against the man who killed his caregiver specifically and against the Spherite society in general (so he wants to "pierce the heavens" and punch rich people to death, basically), Rudo quickly comes to learn about Anima (the series' version of ki, souls, the Power Of Love And Friendship, and RPG monster cores, among other things), Givers (people like the Cleaners, Raiders, and Rudo himself who can imbue objects with their own Anima to create Vital Instruments), and their...Vital Instruments.
These are where the series' power system gets kind of crazy (and maybe destroys all dramatic tension?), because what a Vital Instrument can be or do is dependent on the owner's personality and the term and quality of care they Give it, so you have everything from basic stuff like oversized anime weapons (the ginger assassin with giant scissors is kind of my favorite) to more broken and conceptual stuff like eyeglasses that can see the future, boots that give people olfactory hallucinations, and a pen that can transform into any artistic implement and draw stat buffs on people up to and including death-resistant healing spells. Rudo and his gloves (which he calls "3R,"
and were a gift from his adoptive father to hide the strange red markings on his hands, but are subtly and obviously set up as more traditional family heirlooms that belong to a series of Instruments with a history of driving their Givers insane, so we're probably going to get into Rudo having a Dark Mode at some point because that's a Given in battle shōnen) fall somewhere in the middle, because his personality and care for objects of all quality Give his 3R the ability to draw out the full potential of anything he touches, whether it be transforming a nail gun into a railgun, or turning a broken protection charm into a biblically accurate guardian that can sense hostile intent and change the laws of physics (the latter of which makes his fight with the masochistic zoomer Jabber Walker—there's more of that Wonderland influence!—the first time the series made me "oh, shit!" myself into a sitting position).
Shortly thereafter, however, Gachiakuta embraced the edgelord vibes of its first OP by introducing us and the Cleaners to Amo, a Giver with the same series of Instrument as Rudo's gloves. The encounter is kind of a nothing-burger; less of an actual fight or progression of the plot than it is two and a half episodes of screaming and twisted face-pulling with a smattering of psychological thriller bullshit. But the aftermath is genuinely uncomfortable to watch, let alone remember as you're watching it twice, because the first cour finale reveals that Amo is a developmentally delayed, gullible child whose mother sold her to a human trafficking Acrobat to be his personal concubine. It's cool seeing the reveal that Amo sort of got her boots from the man who killed Rudo's adoptive father (he actually took them from Amo's pedo-prince by force shortly before flying to the Sphere on Vital Instrument wings and before the scumbag himself learned that he could not fly, becoming a red stain on the already coppery garbage-sand far below, as all pedophiles should), but the anime takes little artistic license in showing or telling us what the trafficker did to her without earning the episode a spot on a hentai site, and yeah; I don't know whether the finale was more disturbing when I didn't know what was coming versus when I did. I think Gachiakuta handled the subject and its allegorical context with far more nuance and emotional and psychological understanding than other edgelord revenge fantasy series have, but still, maybe avoid episode thirteen and have someone tell you the safe basics of the plot if you have...experience on the wrong end of it, because I haven't, and the ick factor was clearly still there for me.
Cheers to me for meeting another of the base qualifications for a decent member of the human race, I guess?
Moving on from that, the second cour is your basic cast expansion arc (show more of what the existing players can do, introduce new heroes and villains, have a big fight, open up the world with the promise of even more of that next season, and end on a big reveal—that's kind of the same, last name twist that Dr. Stone's first season hit us with, but here, it's the kind of reveal that invites more questions, so I don't mind because Kanaru seems to take a subtle, long-form approach to her big world-building elements, a la Eiichiro Oda). And I'm kind of glad I got swerved by the mid-season break, because the second cour delivers Miyo (the scissor assassin I mentioned above) vs the Raider Noerde (an Alice-looking warrior woman who can turn her glorious hair into lightning with her Vital comb), one of the best animated and choreographed hand-to-hand fight sequences put to screen this year, courtesy of Bones Film.
There's more to unpack in the second cour (like the leader of the Raiders being a dark mirror villain for Rudo who treats everything like an experiment and all that entails), but I've spoiled enough, it's publication day, and Gachiakuta is worth digging through for yourselves whether you feel spoiled or not. Don't let this series go to waste.
Puns! And please stay chill and Stay Tuned by remembering to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have feelings about, Giving to my ad revenue as you read because staying Grounded in a Spherite economy is tough, and following me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.
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Animeister,
Out.
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