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Gyo
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Walking fishes! Stinky fishes! Fishes everywhere!
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:CreationDate: 2012-09-23 19:40:32
:Id: anime/review/gyo
:tags: - anime
- review
:rating: 2.5
:original: https://www.easternkicks.com/reviews/gyo-tokyo-fish-attack
This is a horror movie. You know because there's people with terrified
faces, the main character is a Plain Girl that's in over her head,
she's got two friends, one's a Bookworm and one's a Slut (sorry,
technical term here, haven't you seen Cabin in the Woods?), there's a
Journalist in search of the Truth, and a Mad Scientist. There is also
millions of fishes of every size, coming out of the sea and walking
all over Japan on mechanical legs, but really, you'd label this
"horror" even without seeing any of the beasts.
Yes, it's quite trope-heavy. It's also rather undecided on what it
wants to be. At the beginning, you may think it's a near-parody of the
genre. Then it continues in a more standard tone; the first serious
attack happens while the Slut is having fun with two random guys,
there's contagion, panic in the streets. It then nods to hentai, with
near-tentacle-porn at least twice. You may even think there's some
sort of social commentary, seeing as most of the people are shown
carrying on with their lives even in the midst of the invasion: at the
airport and at the train station, everyone is checking their watches
and the departure boards, while the monstrous fishes are just a few
metres away. Or maybe it's an old-style horror: the fishes are the
result of a military experiment, says the Mad Scientist. Or it's
really an allegory: the infected people are not totally mindless! Oh,
it's mystic: the gas that fills the monsters has a personality! No, it
was aliens!
And then it ends. Seriously. No resolution, no insight, not even "and
so humans went extinct". Just… the end.
I'm clearly not a lover of horrors, so I may be doing some injustice
to this title, but I really couldn't get into it. Not just because the
premise is quite absurd, that's sort of par for the course, but also
because of quite a few internal inconsistencies: none of the
"explanations" given by the characters has much bearing to what
they're seeing, for example; or, why only people turn green, and not
the fishes or other animals? It just feels like a set of random ideas
thrown together without much sense. Even the animation is not
particularly good, with the CG parts jarring against the mostly flat
shading of the drawn parts.
Lovers of horror movies, or staunch proponents of the "so bad it's
good" school, may find this interesting and even rewarding. Me, I'm
off to watch something else.
