Anime: Gun Frontier 3r468

This review was written after watching the whole series. As far as possible I will try to reduce spoilers to a minimum.

Quick overview:
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Gun Frontier seemed promising to me at first but soon turned out to be a letdown. It is kind of well drawn and actually does a good job at capturing the wild west flair but the story and characters are just horrible. I would not recommend this anime to anyone who hates cheap soap operas. But I also watched it until the end without forcing myself too much. So after all it has some entertainment value.

Characters:
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There are three main characters, everyone else is just there for one episode. And they really feel that way. Evil guys are just plain evil, women are just there for nude scenes & romance and so on.
Of the three main characters Tochiro (a short, ugly, samurai person) gets way too much screen time since the story revolves around him while Harlock (a tall, cool-headed gunslinger type) and Sinunora (a female travelling companion supposed to add some spice - fails however) are almost completely neglected.
So the only worthwhile character would be Tochiro but they designed him horribly. He is supposed to be some kind of misunderstood ugly hero with a kind heart but this did not work for me. Especially due to the way the tried to achieve this image (lots of drama scenes, very flat dialogues about how hard life is for Tochiro and how kind he is, etc.). He felt way too constructed and unconvincing.

Story:
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Horrible. First of all this anime not only repeats a few scenarios over and over and over again (hanging someone, eating horse meat, raping women, etc.). Those are common wild west cliches and everyone probably expects them - but not in such a repetitive manner. They could at least have arranged these events better. Often they repeat a scenario three episodes (like hanging Tochiro) in a row instead of doing it in episode 3, 7, 10 or something.
Secondly they really overdo the stripping and raping in this anime. Once a woman has been identified as disposable by some evil guy he immediately gets to work and takes off her clothes. After the woman had her chance to hop around naked for a while she has fulfilled her purpose and will die some way or another. Basically this happens every episode and that´s pretty much everything women get to do in this anime - even the girl from the three main characters. If you are male then be aware that it´s nothing to get excited about. You would be better off watching a hentai (although nude there are no details on the bodys and "erotic scenes" tend to be short and focus on the heads of the characters).
The worst thing, however, are the exaggerations in this series. They are so abundant that the relationship between the three main characters appears more and more unlifelike as the story develops and none of the other relationship or plots seem very convincing either. A few scenes made me laugh (or rather cry) instead of feeling for the characters because it seemed so completely out of place. The ending was probably the tip of the iceberg - it really felt like a bad joke.

To sum it up:
The person responsible for the storyline had no imagination or sense of realism. The result is a plot that lacks any sincerity and innovation - surprises are few and rare. Because they cycled through a handful of story elements a lot of the episodes are quite similar and become boring quickly.

A few things about the main plot:
The storyline mixes a wild west setting up with a few samurai elements. I don´t know much about American or Japanese history but it seems rather unlikely that the events could take place at the same time. Samurais in the wild west (that in itself is a bit weird) at a time when automobiles, zeppelins and machine guns have already been invented. But that´s not so important I guess. Anyway the story revolves around a former samurai settlement and the events that took place there in the past. As a consequence you will be presented with a share of katana action (nothing special) mixed with some gunfights. Although the emphasis is clearly on the wild west setting the story relies more on the samurai theme.
The main character, Tochiro, who is refered to as a samurai himself has some kind of connection to the above-mentioned village. This is revealed in the first few episodes and has to do for some time. His role is somewhat kept top secret and is probably meant as a way to keep people interested in the story. This even works for some time but after making a huge fuss about it they come up with a very cheap solution which was another letdown and blew away the last bit of interest (it even had a few minor logical issues).

Animation:
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The animation seemed fine to me. The drawing style is a bit unique as can already be seen by looking at the cover displayed here. Women and handsome men are drawn rather fine and appear thin, tall and have relatively small eyes with huge eye lashes. Other (side-)characters on the opposite are drawn crude (round heads with few detais) and often outlined with thick black lines. Ugly characters are drawn even more crude (always small and mole eyes + other features like thick lips). Although most characters lack detail this way it does not look so bad actually and once gotten used to I found it fitted the wild west setting somewhat.
The scenery is also quite well done and although it´s often a bit alike (desert, saloons, etc.) it does not get repetitive (like in Sunabozou). Also the characters generally move smothly (especially when drawing a gun). Aside from that I did not notice anything exceptionally good or bad.

Sound:
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I liked the background music and sound effects. The few wild west melodies and gunshot sounds added to the cowboy theme in a nice way - but then again probably anything in that direction would have done the job. So I would not call it a masterpiece but they did fine.
The voice actors are average. They lacked a bit of enthusiasm but the voices for each character seemed okay to me.

Enjoyment:
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I always watched this series when eating something. Normally there was nothing about this anime that would keep me watching a few episodes at a time but it was still quite a nice thing to watch in between something. I actually hated the story so I don´t really know why.

Value:
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As said before I wouldn´t quite so much recommend this anime. It´s pretty average and recommendations should be reserved for good things. If you like the wild western theme (seems rather rare after all) you might want to get this show - otherwise there is no reason I guess. The lousy story just overshadows all the good aspects of this series.