A little fun and a lot of the weird
Noirit Mustapha
Most anime adaptations of manga and light novels take a lot of liberties when it comes to presenting the plot and character development. However, when it comes to adapting something like a video game, especially an arcade game that has very little emphasis on story and characters, the end result usually has varying degrees of success. Gunslinger Stratos is a recent example where the varying degrees of quality occur within the show itself, thereby presenting itself as nowhere near excellent or disastrous.
Set in the future of Japan in two alternate timelines, Tohru Kazasumi and his friends are chosen by the major national megacorporation to go back in time and participate in large-scale gunfights to secret precious future technology, as a means to help along their own development. The catch is their opponents are alternate versions of themselves vying for that very same power. This is where the plot of the game ends, and continues to focus more on the crazy action and gun-combining gimmick that was used to market it in the first place. The anime usually delivers on the action, despite feeling floaty at times, but there are very few instances of the combining, except once in the middle and more near the end. As if that was not enough, a new plot element is introduced in the form of Timekeepers--omniscient beings from the far future who claim to want to save humanity by hosting these battles, yet introduce even more complicated time travel nonsense into the already flimsy plot.
The trouble with Gunslinger Stratos is that it tries too hard to be something great, when in reality all it needed to be was a simple excuse to show some excellent gunfight animations. In trying too hard to keep both, it loses the consistent quality all throughout, leading to some questionable moments of character stupidity and lacklustre animation. It ends about as well as youd expect from a show of such a calibre, so this one might just be a miss for most people.
