Anime original by Tatsunoko
Available on Crunchyroll

Premise: Tokyo is under attack by mysterious being known only as Rubiks Cubes MESS. To defend earth a team of uniquely powered individuals has been bought together and equipped with NOTE armour to battle evil as Gatchaman.

 Zigg’s Thoughts: Nothing of Note

This thing was my great white hope for the season. I liked the quirky looking art and I was sort of down with the idea of a modern day Gatchaman with little or no connection to the original. Sadly, my hopes proved to be misplaced as this was a terrible opener and in fact was one of the worse first episodes this season. There’s no attempt at any sort of mystery, build or attempt to organically develop the story or characters. Instead we just get a massive exposition dump around a bunch of characters we’re given no information on.

It’s difficult to care anything for people who appear to have no characteristics who are just dropped on us suddenly. Main character Hakime is the worst, a shrieking overly-excited bundle of all the worst genki girl cliches you could possibly imagine. She comes off as a stupid airhead, which is about the worst thing you could possibly do with a lead character who we’re meant to emphasise with. Everyone else is introduced way too fast and they mystic mumbo-jumbo is tiresome rubbish. In addition, the show doesn’t even look very nice. Sure, the art gives it an initial unique pop (and I like the suits a lot) but the animation is so cheap that any effect is lost when everything moves clunkily and goes off model easily. A bitter disappointment.

Gee’s Thoughts: Pretty. Flat.

While I never paid too much attention to Gatchaman as a kid, the stylish aesthetic of Crowds piqued my interest. After all, as an artist, I’m always on the prowl for good art direction. Too bad everything else about this show is pretty darn bad. The characters are boring and the main girl is fucking atrocious. Listening to her makes me want to die. People who know me know I despise cutesy high-pitched girls in anime, and this girl takes it to a whole new level of annoying. As for the rest of the show, while the good art direction helped make things interesting to look at, the poor animation didn’t do it any favors. As The Eccentric Family showed us this season, it’s quite possible to make an interesting looking show even if your budget doesn’t allow super fluid or detailed animation. Unfortunately Crowds fails to do that, the animation being both boring and limited in its scope. Throw in a flat uninteresting narrative and you have the perfect recipe for disappointment. If I was a Gatchaman fan, I’d probably call this the most blatantly terrible thing I’ve seen this season short of Free! Thankfully I went into this with zero expectations so I’m merely unimpressed.