Not bad, Gonzo. Compared to Dragonaut, this is absolutely great.

The episode opens in 2019 (they skipped most of the manga-canon flashback) with the protagonist Kouichi attending school and getting bullied. Yes, he’s one of those wussy guys who wants to be a hero. This is completely different from his initial character in the manga; if Gonzo does this right, however, he’ll eventually morph quite nicely into his GAR manga self. (Then again, when was the last time Gonzo did something right? Kaliedo Star?)

The episode switched between Kouichi’s adventures in Wussland and this super-secret government agency with lolis in it. The bit with the random ninjas coming out of nowhere and a few other key character-building scenes were cut, and we get way less Yajima.

Less than eight minutes into the episode, the object the government was tracking falls from the sky and lands right next to Kouichi. When his senses return (and he stops worrying about the stupid curry bread) there’s a hot naked chick and a giant robot next to him. Sooooooooooo not canon, but that’s beside the point. Smooth one, Gonzo, way to cliche this up more than its manga already was.

After Kouichi takes hot naked chick to his house and (mercifully) gets her some clothes, moar giant robots land in the city! OH NOES! A huge battle ensues, hot naked chick’s like “THEY ARE MY ENEMY” and goes after them, then Yajima gets her and Kouichi away from them…

Before…

… until a mecha-on-a-stick comes flying at them. (Actually, it was a mecha-on-a-stick sans the stick, so… eh, hard to explain without a .gif :D)

… After. Had one too many tequilas there, Kouichi?

Kouichi refuses Yajima’s attempt to sacrifice himself, and punches through the wall. That right there might be manga canon. ^_^; Hot naked chick (now clothed, of course) remembers that her name is Emi Kizaki, and does the whole boob-grabby-summon-Linebarrel thing.

SO not canon. Gonzo, thou art a franchise murderer.

Kouichi proceeds to pilot the Linebarrel to victory, happy ending, yadda yadda, and then Emi proceeds to tell him he’s dead.

I’m not even going to go on a full-fledged rant about how Gonzo is on the very brink of murdering this adaptation; I think I’ve made it pretty clear what I think. I will say, however, that the series can still be saved. Kurogane no Linebarrel’s strongest point as a story is not its opening; it gets much more epic as it goes, and the manga-ka takes his darn sweet time fleshing out the characters. (That’s not to say the series is lacking in action, however.) While Gonzo obviously cut a ton of that out this episode, perhaps they were just attempting to make a splash with mecha fans. They failed fairly miserably, with uneven CG quality to go with a mediocre battle, but I can’t say they didn’t try hard. Gonzo might just pull this off if they fire some of their writers and just use what the manga did so well.

Episode rating: 5 out of 10 California rolls (because it could have been worse. Seriously.)

Series potential: 8.5 out of 10 California rolls

~CJ