And boy was it a tough watch.
Now, don't get me wrong, I don't mean that it is bad, it is surprisingly good, with detailed animation, meaningful character development and a rich plot, with clashes and conflicts within each episode paced out to advance it, but that the anime feels like a novel or a social commentary. The messages are deep and meaningful, but takes time and effort to think about it before you manage to get the point.
You don't really get these types of anime in the market nowadays. Especially considering that this came from a children's show, but requires more than just a teenager's perspective to pick it apart.
I'll start the analysis of the show with an analysis of the characters. The characters are human, in that they are not stupid, but have normal intelligence. They don't just do things just because of plot, like a lot of anime out there, but do things because they feel like doing it, with their own reasons and compulsions.
However, their interactions are pretty complex, but for most part I'll talk about the ones with more screen time first.
1. Sugane Tachibana, conservationist.
We focus on Sugane first, our protagonist who provides an objective view on the world around him because of his simplicity.
Our main male character is a high school student who walks and talks like a samurai. Early in the opening scene, we get to see his room.
His room is simple and traditionally styled. A scroll stating "to focus with all your heart" is place on top of his Gatchaman NOTE, whereas his sword is placed below his NOTE. A person's room is one's own personal space, and the way you treat your room is like the way you treat your mind. It serves to show where Sugane put his loyalty to. He places his ideology first, and his gatchaman duty next in front of him. This part is a little crucial if one were to understand why as to he chose to remain in the shadows as a Gatchaman.
A samurai is affliated with honor, loyalty, and the old forgotten world. This will put him in direct conflict with our main protagonist, Hajime. The Japanese are not known for talking back against their superiors, nor are they known to challenge the status quo. Sugane here is our exaggerated normal Japanese. He does not question the actions of his superiors and is loyal to a fault.
In episode one, we see him asking a sick young man to give his seat to a pregnant woman. This is not wrong. He simply judged that the pregnant woman deserves the seat more than a young man. However, in a later episode, we see a similar scene happen again, with a standing old man, in front of a sleeping young couple. However, this time Hajime is present. Sugane determines that the old man deserves the seat more, but Hajime stops him saying that the couple may be too tired from work. They are both not wrong. It is simply a show of perspective. This is a recurring theme that occurs from time to time.
There is no right or wrong in the real world, this may seem cliched, but in Gatchaman Crowds, instead of showing us a villian who had another perspective on his actions, it shows us the absolute villian, and instead turns the focus on the good guys, who actually seems to do bad, even if their intentions are good, but they are stuck with their own self-made rules to do anything significant.
Fighting aliens? Cool! Helping normal people during a crisis? No way, we have to keep our identities a secret! Such is the actions of the Gatchamans, which we can see from Sugane's perspective. He repeatedly stops Hajime from helping people out with their powers, with no explanation given. Remember his room? Simple, organised, and in the center of everything, his ideology, his mater, his sword. His actions are to his master and his master alone. As the story progresses, we see plenty of chances for him to change, but he does not change a lot. The main status quo is still there. This is in tandem with the Japanese society. While it has changed a lot, it retained its culture, warts and all. Sugane is obstinate on change, so is the old society. However, as events and conflicts crashed around him, we see as Sugane slowly opens to new ideas and he changes as the world progresses. He changes his master from simply the Gatchaman duty, to the people of the world.
2. Hajime Ichinose, realist (oh, the irony)
Hajime is our OP female character, almost like Haruhi Suzumiya, but with one difference, which I would like to quote from a comment in the wikia, "Hajime makes Haruhi Suzumiya seem like Ayanami Rei", to which I find to be extremely true.
Hajime strikes many as loud, overly cheerful, creepy and overpowered, but she is human. It becomes slowly apparent that her "genki" facade hides a surprisingly complex and insightful mind. She has a dark personality, but she has it all under wraps of a masquerade.
Ask yourself this. How do you grow, mentally? You think about stuff that happen and in understanding the background and motivations of the people around you gain insight. To understand another person, you must put yourself in their shoes. In PsychoPass, "to catch a criminal you need another criminal", and this is shown in the heightened crime coefficient of the "hunting dogs" of the police force.
For Hajime to make such insightful comments and actions on the darkness around her, she must also sink herself in this dark pool of thoughts. Her "genki" facade is exaggerated, and this may be the last stand for her against the darkness.
One of the most sharpest criticism she has made about the world around her is when she asked Rui, "Are those shining children your friends?". For someone who has just met him and witnessed his actions, that is a very painful question for Rui to answer.
Early in the anime we are shown a glimpse into this complex nature of our female main character. Instead of a room metaphor, we get to see how she uses her notebooks.
She had different note books for different things, showing that she handles different stuff independently. This is apparent in her later involvement in the MESS incident. Hajime treats duty and justice as different things.
In the early episodes, MESS, while being able to morph to anything under the sun, it prefers to run. Now that is strange. Don't you think it should morph, maybe to the double of its attacker and strike back, for an alien race that the Gatchaman takes it to be? Instead, it takes the cowardly route and ran, thrice in a row we are shown this action.
The Gatchaman takes it to be a show of their strength. Hajime being the newbie, has not understood her powers well, and in the skirmish with MESS, she saw that in spite being a powerful alien, it does not prefer to attack her and instead just morphs itself into a faux scissors. This makes her confused, but she bounces back immediately and even makes MESS into something like a lackey.
Again, we see the comparison of the old and new society here. Sugane, in spite of being more powerful than Hajime, but not flexible is not able to solve the MESS "threat", but Hajime, being extremely open and flexible in her thinking, was able to solve the threat without resorting to force. This is a criticism to the current Japanese society that without a fundamental change, they would not be able to clinch the results they actually want.
I've already mentioned how Hajime provides another perspective to Sugane. Something good may not really be the best choice to do, even though it is good. The nice ED of the series captures this spirit, and you can view the english translation here.
Hajime believes in changing the world with their own powers, but it doesn't mean that super heroes are not needed.
Superheroes are also part of the(ir) world too, su!
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