Gall Force: Eternal Story

By Justin Emerson     February 16, 2002
Release Date: August 04, 1998



The Review!
The plot of this story follows the Star Leaf, a ship which becomes separated from its fleet after a horrific battle that pitted Solonoids vs. Paranoids, two races that have been entrenched in a war for generations. The ship is headed for the planet Chaos, where there is a new hope for the two races. We follow the plight of the 10 crew members, as the all get killed off one by one, leaving only the klutzy ditz behind (typical).

The movie itself is somewhat interesting, however having never seen any of the later pieces, I'm left with many questions unanswered. The only problem is, I'm not terribly motivated to keep watching. The story just hasn't grabbed me like other Anime series have. While different and original, you don't really develop any sympathy for the characters. When one of the women die, I'm really not emotionally effected much, as opposed to watching Wort die in Record of the Lodoss War. I think the movie moves too fast and doesn't give each character time to develop in our minds so we can empathize with them and actually find meaning in their deaths.

As for the more technical aspects, the video transfer looks very good, but since this Anime was produced over a dozen years ago, the source begins to show its age, with some weird coloring around the edges of certain objects and such.

The Audio crackled incessantly, why annoyed me a lot. Also, until Chris's review, he stated that the audio is in Dolby Pro-Logic and not Dolby Digital. While I have seen 2 channel Dolby Digital streams with Pro-Logic encoded over them (making a 5 channel output matrixed into a 2 channel stream), this DVD did not seem to have that. The only audio I could get (in either language) was Dolby Digital 2.0, which was adequate since there didn't seem to be much use of stereo effects anyway.

The Menus I found decent, but the stupid US Manga Corps intro logo thing just plays over and over and over. You first play the disc and then after the FBI warning you see the trailer. Then after saying "Play the Movie" you see it again....twice in a row! What's up with that??? The actual still menus are rather mediocre, although maybe I've been spoiled by The Matrix's menus, but they are far too stale to be interesting.

The packaging was good, as it's in a keepcase and there are liner notes on the reverse side of the cover. I still would've preferred the snap cases, but this does quite nicely.

All in all, this disc is a decent purchase if you're looking for a typical 80's Anime flick, but unless you're ready to go out and get tapes of the rest of the series, don't expect to get a lot of satisfaction out of this disc. I've watched it twice now, and I have this gut feeling that it'll be sitting on the shelf for a while unless I want to show it to somebody else.

Review Equipment
N/A