One new anime I’ve been enjoying this season has been the deliciously weird Gleipnir, which has the perfect mix of horror, mystery, action and pantsu to keep me entertained. Let’s look at some reasons why you might want to give the series a try!
I Love a Good Mystery
All teenagers go through various awkward changes, but Shuichi has a really bizarre one: for some reason he’s able to transform into a monster, a huge and bumbling kigurumi that resembles a dog. When he saves a girl named Claire in a fire, she discovers his secret and reveals that she’s been searching for evidence of “monsters” like him. Claire discovers a zipper on the back of Shuichi’s bizarre dog costume and realizes she’s supposed to get inside, “piloting” the suit from inside Shuichi’s body as they struggle to understand what’s happening to the world around them.
I’m honestly not a fan of most fighting anime, as it ends up being eight episodes of posing and filler, with very little proper story being told.
I am a fan of the high-stakes combat in #Gleipnir, however. It’s dark and very interesting. pic.twitter.com/JkPIDAbNcS
— Peter Payne (@JListPeter) April 24, 2020
A Fighting Anime I Don’t Hate
I’ll let you in on a secret: I’m secretly salty at Dragon Ball Z for making the genre of “fighting anime” such a successful category, because it gave us years of series that spent more time fighting endless battles with lots of posing and filler than they spent trying to tell an actual story. So far I’m totally a fan of the tightly-scripted combat in Gleipnir, which always moves the story forward, often to very dark places.
Lots of Pantsu
If you appreciate fanservice in anime, both visual (as in pantyshots) as well as situational (the complex relationship that develops between Claire and Shuichi when she literally gets inside his body), you won’t be disappointed.
An Anime That Violates Expected Tropes
When I start a new anime, I often try to guess what characters will do based on famous tropes that have come before. For example, a blonde-haired character will usually be an ojosama rich girl student body president who’s the daughter of the director of the school, and the first opponent to appear in an anime with combat will generally be converted into an ally by episode 3. Glepnir isn’t a show that follows these time-tested stereotypes, but tells an original and darker story with anything-but-generic characters.
Thanks for reading my review of the super-weird but awesome Gleipnir anime. Will you be checking it out? Tell us in the comments below!
Our big news this week was that the Japanese post office has halted Airmail and EMS shipments to the U.S. due to a lack of cargo flights to the U.S. during the crisis. J-List has responded by aggressively expanding the countries we ship DHL to, and giving everyone a new DHL discount coupon. Follow our post about countries we can currently ship here, or start browsing awesome J-List products here!
