Gad Guard
| Gad Guard | |
| File:Gadguard1.JPG The antagonist and protagonist of Gad Guard, Katana and Hajiki, back to back. | |
| Genre | Adventure, Mecha |
|---|---|
| Anime | |
| Directed by | Hiroshi Nishikiori |
| Studio | GONZO |
Gad Guard (ガドガード, Gado Gādo) is a 26-episode anime television series directed by Hiroshi Nishikiori and produced by GONZO, which was broadcast across Japan by the anime satellite television network, Animax, and the terrestrial Fuji Television network. It has been licensed for North American distribution by Geneon Entertainment, and also aired on Anime Unleashed in 2005.
The Story
Hajiki Sanada is a boy living in a ghetto, where the electricity cuts out at midnight, gangs run the streets, and nosy people seem to disappear. As if being sixteen and the man of your family isn't hard enough, Hajiki comes into contact with an object he was supposed to deliver, a faceted stone called a gad...which transforms into a Techode, a humanoid machine that responds to his feelings and thoughts. With his Techode Lightning and a host of friends, Hajiki is forced to face off against Katana, an eerie teenage man-for-hire with a vendetta on his head, and a deadly Techode named Zero at his disposal.
Where do gads come from, why do they make Techodes, and why do some gads turn into monsters? With the cops on one side, gangs on the other, and the merciless Katana at his back, Hajiki has one heck of a ride in store on the road to finding out why Lightning came to him, and what it means to awaken a gad.
Unit Blue
The territories of this land are separated into color-coded mass-cities called Units. The central Unit in Gad Guard is Unit Blue, which is separated into three levels: Gold Town, Day Town and Night Town.
Gold Town is the upperclass area, where the wealthy and well-off live in comfort and luxury, and plays host to Global Electronics, the foremost provider of electricity, a commodity not everyone can afford to have all the time. Takumi Kisaragi and Aiko Mary Harmony live in Gold Town.
Day Town is more of a middle-class area, still equip with running water and electricity, though busy and metropolitan in most places. Arashi hails originally from here. While not as perfect as Gold Town, Day Town is seen by people on the other side of the tracks as the place where they'd rather be.
Night Town is quite plainly the slums, the ghetto of Unit Blue, called Night Town because of the darkness of its situation--or perhaps for the fact that all the power shuts off at midnight, and doesn't come back until dawn. In Night Town, gangs and punks run the streets, and all the local kids go to school at a church, taught by a nun and a young teacher, in hopes of giving them what they need to escape their meager living. Leaving something outside at night is guaranteeing having it stolen, and even walking around in broad daylight can be dangerous. Night Town is the dank and grimy setting for most of Gad Guard, where Hajiki and his family live, along with the likes of Katana, the Jacque Bruno Gang and any number of other troublemakers.
The Plot
In the anime, Hajiki Sanada lives with his widowed mother and younger sister in a gloomy ghetto known as "Night Town" in an area called Unit Blue, where criminals and gangs run the streets in mechs called Heavy Metals. Working as a delivery boy for a hard-nosed man named Hachisuka to help his family pay the bills, Hajiki also secretly saves up money to buy back their old home in Day Town, the much nicer suburbs of Unit Blue.
One day, while playing hooky from school to go to work, Hachisuka gives Hajiki a weird assignment: Hajiki is to deliver a strange, rare relic called a "Gad" that Hachisuka received from the most infamous couple of Night Town, Jacque Bruno--a gang-leader--and his girlfriend Wanda Woman. As Hajiki gets halfway to the dropoff point he is cut off by a speeding car. He swerves to avoid it and crashes his scooter. The package bursts open across the street revealing something that resembles little more than a stone cube. After wondering at it, he rushes to the drop-off point, where a woman accepts the package, and he heads on his way, assuming it was the client. Unfortunately for Hajiki, it wasn't and the Gad is now in the hands of Wanda, who with the help of Jacque intends to sell it to a buyer for a high price.
Later that night, as they head to the drop-off point to make their sale, Jacque and Wanda Woman, accompanied by their Heavy Metal operators, run into trouble in the form of another Heavy Metal. As the conflict between the two side starts to get ugly, Hajiki stumbles across the scene and spots Wanda with the Gad, recalling it being his stolen delivery, and takes it back, only to end up getting caught up in the middle of the action, setting off a strange reaction in the Gad. The Gad then begins to absorb every piece of machinery in sight--including Jacque's and Wanda's car--and gives birth to Hajiki's prized robot: a Techode called "Lightning."
Through the course of the story, Hajiki meets four other children who also possess Techodes like his own: martial artist Arashi Shinozuka, rich-girl Aiko Harmony, young vigilante Takumi Kisaragi, and a sinister boy known only as Katana. Katana is almost always accompanied by a young, blond-haired girl named Sayuri; Katana tries to keep Sayuri near him because she resembles a childhood friend of his.
It turns out that Katana plans to take over Night Town with his Techode, Zero. Hajiki and Takumi vow to stop him; Arashi chooses to never use her Techode, Hayate, in combat, while Aiko is of the opinion that all Techode operators should be friends.
Aiko's father, as it turns out, has been hoarding a huge number of Gads (intending to make them Aiko's inheritance). When his Gads are stolen, Takumi assumes that Katana is to blame, as it is his belief that Katana is evil. Aiko attempts to stop Takumi from looking for Katana; Thunderbolt (Takumi's Techode) suddenly goes haywire and begins attacking Aiko's Techode, Messerschmitt, without orders. Takumi repeatedly attempts to make Thunderbolt stop, to no avail. Finally, Thunderbolt dissolves into nothingness, and Messerschmitt is left badly damaged. The result is a revealed truth only Katana seemed to know: in time, all of the Techodes will disappear.
Eventually, Katana attacks Hajiki's home and tries to kidnap Hajiki's younger sister, Satsuki, to inspire Hajiki to fight him. Satsuki is left unharmed in the end, but the Sanada family home is destroyed in the battle. Hajiki cannot face his mother after this, and leaves the city in a stolen truck, taking Lightning with him. Arashi quickly joins him, saying that she understands why he wants to run away.
Katana, meanwhile, begins to suspect that Sayuri is not really human; she looks identical to a girl he knew as a child, without any signs of age. Sayuri suddenly remarks that Katana is about to die, and, thus, he no longer needs her. With this, she runs away.
While on his journey, Hajiki and Arashi find a photo of a man who looks exactly Hajiki's father, Yujiro Sanada. Yujiro had been a rocket pilot, and he was assumed dead after a rocket accident when Hajiki was very young. Hajiki, although unsure that the man is his father, decides to pursue him.
Hajiki and Arashi track the photo to a small island, which once served as the launch site for a space burial company. There, they locate the man from the photograph; he never speaks, but spends his days digging for the remains of old rockets. Hajiki (although still doubtful about the man's identity) and Lightning begin to help him dig.
When a fire breaks out in the mine, Hajiki realises that the man is a Techode who only looks like Yujiro. Still, the false Yujiro is severely burned and unable to dig. Hajiki and Lightning decide to continue digging in his absence. Suddenly, Sayuri arrives on the island as well, stating that she wants to go to her homeland--in space.
After some time of digging, Hajiki and Lightning unearth a rocket and prepare to launch it. However, having tracked Sayuri to the island, Katana and Zero suddenly rush to the launch site and begin trying to stop the launch. Katana claims that he will never let Sayuri leave him. In the ensuing battle, Lightning merges with the Techode-Yujiro. Now able to speak, Lightning explains that Gads merge with people's thoughts and wishes. However, some people have more than one wish, and so multiple Techodes are occasionally born from the same Gad. Lightning and the Techode-Yujiro were an example of this; Sayuri and Zero were the same case.
Katana realises that Sayuri is a Techode, and tries to make her merge with Zero to make Zero more powerful. However, he pulls Sayuri away at the last moment, unwilling to lose her. Hajiki and Lightning manage to make it into the rocket, while Sayuri and Katana decide to go home. The launch platform crumbles in on itself once the ship has gone, threatening to crush the witnessing Arashi, but she awakens to find herself alive amongst the rubble, miraculously shielded by a badly-damaged Zero, which Katana sent to save her. Zero then disintegrates.
The rocket carries Hajiki and Lightning to 'the birthplace of Gads' in space. The voice of Hajiki's father (issuing from a Gad) explains that the Gad was sent to Hajiki to fulfill Hajiki's dream to fly. Hajiki comments that now, his only dream is to become a responsible adult who can protect his family- in short, he wants to be like his father. He then is sent back home, and Lightning dissolves. Hajiki then decides to go on a journey to find Katana, remarking that the two of them probably have a few things to discuss.
The Significance of a Gad
Known in the Gad Guard world only as "powerful stones," everyone desires gads and believes that gads will fulfill everyone's dreams. However, each corrupted person to handle a gad soon came to realize the nightmares hidden inside them. Though the real importance of a gad is unknown, they are used as very high sums of currency and are usually only owned by the rich in the color-coded sectors and units. Nevertheless, a gad has many peculiar abilities, and some of the things that have come forth from gads have been beautiful dreams while others are metal nightmares.
Techode
A Techode is one of the three things that sprout from a gad, also called a "Gadrian". It is usually a powerful robot fueled by the emotional bond between the robot and the owner, giving it uncanny abilities and strengths to do almost anything. They are usually "born"after the contact with the gad's owner having a strong or serious emotion in an area occupied by a lot of metal.
A-Techode
An A-Techode is a manifestation of one's greed or lust for a gad. According to Catherine, who makes herself out to be an authority on gads, the few creatures that have appeared from them have been A-Techodes, as Techodes are very rare. A few of the A-Techodes to plague Night Town have been a dragon train and a flying fortress.
Gadrian
A Gadrian is what happens when feelings of hate or greed completely consume the owner of the Gad, and likewise, the Gad itself. The Gad then absorbs these thoughts of greed and anger, usually killing the owner of the Gad and creating a monster of sorts, organic in nature with technological modification.
The monster created by this process, or rather, the Gadrian, then acts on these feelings in an attempt to destroy the things around it out of hate, or accquire what it previously lacked in human form. They are mindless and act only on the feelings they have absorbed. Examples of Gadrians in the series are The Detective/"Meat Saw Monster", or the Woman Monster.
Cast of Characters
Main Article: The Characters of Gad Guard
External links
- Gad Guard ({{{type}}}) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia