Gilgamesh Volume 1 Review
© Holly Ellingwood
In 1992 a combination of bad timing and worse luck struck me down and I found myself spending nearly three months in the hospital. There, I could hardly focus my vision to read so my friends and family would bring me comic books since it involved pictures and few written words overall. Once I was able to return home and convalesce, I would find out in the coming months that my injuries had resulted in a permanent physical disability. As I struggled to get used to the new changes my life would undergo, times proved hard during the adjustment. There were lows, moments of frustration, even despair. During that time the comic book shop that I would still get the odd comic book and manga from offered to lend me a couple of tapes they had for rent. They called it anime and from their description it sounded bizarre. I said no but their optimistic voices persisted and I relented. That's how I found myself suddenly transported into fascinating worlds that took me completely away for adventures, actions, dramas, romantic comedies that made me laugh, touching moments that would bring tears to my eyes and heart stopping moments and beautiful animation that would leave me breathless. Anime proved a wonderful respite from some dire times. Since then, despite pessimistic doctors, I completed a secondary education, have become a writer and researcher, and maintain a happy life no matter what curves have been sent along the way. That's why I hope you'll listen when I tell you that after watching Gilgamesh, it brought back to me exactly why I love anime so much. Because here is a series that transported me from beginning to end proving yet again what a wondrous innovative genre anime truly is.
Gilgamesh, a title from A.D. Vision (ADV), is an anime the likes of which I've never seen before. The art style is completely unique to me, and the gritty suspense filled story line is nothing like the usual formulaic plots you can become tired of when you've seen as much anime as I have. The story begins in the future's past, with a mad scientist who triggers a disaster that plunges the world into chaos as magnetic interference from the blast alters the sky into a giant mirror, cutting off all electronic technological capabilities. Now fifteen years have passed and two children are on the run from a horrible fate only to meet perhaps a worse one.
