Gleipnir (Series Review)
Shuichi has a secret. For a reason unknown to him, he can transform into a giant stuffed bear. So, when Clair discovers his secret, he tries to pretend she imagined it. However, Clair has been looking for someone just like him!
Gleipnir (Series Review)
What did you read?
I instantly fell in love with the anime version of Gleipnir. I started watching it as it aired in April of 2020, however, I had a lot of other shows already on the go and knew that this would be a hard series to put up with weekly, so I put it on hold until the show had ended. So, once July rolled around, I dived back in and devoured it. This series is exactly the sort of dark and crazy story that I have come to expect from anime. It reminds me of the olden days in the 1980s when shows were crazy. Anyhow, I finished the anime and then started to collect the manga. As soon as the final volume was released, I began to devour the books, and as you can probably tell from this post, I have finished the series. So, let’s take a look at how the manga differed from the anime.
What happened?
Shuichi can transform into a monster. As a part of this transformation, he has developed heightened senses. So, when he smells a barn burning high deep in the forest, he’s quick to check it out, especially as he can smell a girl there too. Realising that she was unconscious and trapped inside, he transformed into his monstrous form and rescued her. However, she wasn’t unconscious. She pretended to be so until he left. He was exactly what she had been looking for. The next day, Shuichi realised that he lost his cell phone. Had he dropped it while saving that girl? What if she was able to trace it back to him? He would have to leave town and never return.
When he got to school, Clair was waiting for him at his locker. She gave him a curious look and then flashed his phone. She told him to meet her on the roof after gym class if he wanted it back. Shuichi showed up and tried to pretend that nothing happened. However, Clair wasn’t having any of it. She threw his phone close to the edge and when Shuichi tried to pick it up, she kicked him off the roof, forcing him to transform. Clair smiled. When Shuichi jumped back up to her, she told him to follow her. He transformed and then went with Clair to her apartment. She told him about her sister and how she transformed into a monster and killed their parents. She wanted his help to find her and ask her why she did it. Shuichi wasn’t interested, but then another girl jumped onto Clair’s balcony and attacked. What had gotten involved with?
What did you think?
I loved the manga even more than I loved the anime. This was a dark, depressing, and brilliantly fascinating story. I’m always a little put off by stories that refuse to kill characters. If you know that no one will die, or very few people will die, then the stakes don’t always stack up. There’s no danger. No urgency. Thankfully, this series did not do that. People die in brutal ways and every time, it makes a point. The character may or may not be important, but their death highlights how one wrong move could be the end of any character. Then, when you consider that if they fail to defeat the villain, the entire world will be erased and has already begun to do so, you quickly realise there’s no time for second-guessing. This series threw the characters into the deep end and they had to fight to survive from the word go. On top of that, this series has a very go ending. It could have easily lost its way with so many threads dangling, but somehow it all came together.
What was your favourite moment?
There was a scene where we really got a sense of just how dangerous Honoka was and that was fantastic. Shuichi was helping Chihiro because Honoka had become aware of her and was preparing to erase her. They merged and used that to access Shuichi’s hidden memories. They saw the time Shuichi and Elena fought Kaito and almost defeated him. However, Honoka intervened and then, she turned to Shuichi and Chihiro who were watching the memory and addressed them. Honoka was so powerful she was able to interfere with Shuichi’s memories. I loved that moment. It sent chills crawling along my spine in the same way the Shadow Version of Shiori grabbed Shinpei’s arm in his memory in Summer Time Rendering. There’s something haunting about a safe space like that suddenly being revealed to be anything but safe.
What was your least favourite moment?
As I was reading I got to the end of volume eleven and something felt off. It felt like the end of the story but there were three more volumes to read. Instantly, I started to worry that they had decided to continue the story past the original ending and that the rest would be inferior to what had just happened. Thankfully, that didn’t turn out to be true. If anything it got better, but for a moment I was really concerned. I’ve seen too many stories where they refused to let it end where it was supposed to and just kept trying to squeeze more money out of it.
This might seem like an odd least favourite moment, as I liked what I thought would be the ending and even though it definitely got better and ended in an even stronger place, I can’t shake that feeling that they deliberately hid stuff to make it seem like it was the end. They showed Honoka realising that Kaito had been defeated and appearing to crumble. This was deliberate misdirection. If it’s not going to be subtle, then don’t show it. It’s like cliffhangers that don’t go anywhere. It just leaves everyone feeling cheated.
Who was your favourite character?
It was Clair, without any doubt. She was fantastic from the beginning. I remembered seeing her in the OP for the anime and was captivated by her sly smile. Instantly, I knew she was going to be great, but nothing prepared me for just how great she would be. She was cunning and calculating. When she used the poisonous flowers to defeat Madoka’s group it wasn’t even remotely surprising. She was absolutely capable of pulling that off and having the foresight to prepare for something like that. Obviously, she wasn’t perfect. In another story, she could have easily been a wonderful villain, but that’s what this story needed as a hero. Someone who is prepared to get her hands dirty without hesitating. I need more characters like Clair.
Who was your least favourite character?
This is another easy one. It has to be Ikeuchi. While Kaito was the villain for most of the story, he was far more understandable as a character. He killed Honoka without realising that she was trying to hide the fact that Aiko had killed herself because she had been bullied. He realised that he was the villain and tried to bring her back. However, he had been twisted in the process and Honoka was not the same as a result. Then, there was Ikeuchi who was jealous that Shuichi and Chihiro had connected. He hated that because he loved Chihiro, however, he had probably never told her and he was a massive creep, using his coin to gain the power to become a high-powered surveillance camera. I did like how Madoka gave him his coins as he died just to see how someone like Ikeuchi would screw up the world. I didn’t like that he was so blinded by his jealousy that he was prepared to let Honoka destroy the world rather than let Shuichi and Clair be the heroes who saved it.
Would you like some more?
This story is done. The ending was fantastic and if they tried to take it further, I would be incredibly annoyed. Would I like to see more stories in this world? Yeah, that could be interesting, but it would have to focus on new characters. However, I also think that this should be left to stand as it is. What I really want is more stories that have a darker edge like this one. Stories that aren’t afraid to kill characters and ones that don’t feel the need to sanitise everything. There is nudity in this series and it makes sense. There’s clearly a lot of fetishism involved throughout so it makes sense. This is a book for adults. Crying about fan service or the dark topics that it covers are not needed or wanted. We need more books like this, not less.
What have you learned?
When I first saw the character design for Shuichi’s monster form, I was a little cautious about this series. After all, he’s a cute-looking giant stuffed bear… with a revolver. That didn’t instantly make me think that this would be something that I was looking for. However, it just goes to show that there are no bad ideas. The trick is coming up with interesting characters who can make those ideas feel real. If the character can buy into it, then the audience can too, provided we can make some sort of connection to those characters. I’m never going to dismiss an idea as being ridiculous without giving it a chance… well, maybe not never. It’s going to take something special to convince me to watch that story about someone being reincarnated as a vending machine…
Series Information
| English Title | Gleipnir |
| Japanese Title | Gleipnir |
| Genres | Action, Ecchi, Monsters, Mystery, Supernatural |
| Demographic | Seinen |
Anime
Manga
