Elemental Gelade Volume 1

Elemental Gelade is the story of Cou and Ren. Cou (full name Coud Van Giruet) is the laughing stock of his ship – that of the pirate gang, the Red Lynx. A hopeless pilot and pretty talentless all-round, but he enjoys nothing more than landing himself in trouble and storming ahead of his team.

After a quick raid, that establishes our protagonist’s personality, the story quickly takes off with Cou snooping around the Red Lynx’s treasure room and discovering an elaborate casket with a young girl in it. Their relationship doesn’t get off to a good start, though, with her first words being “I hate you … you smell just like a human, therefore, I hate you”. Before Cou can recover, the ship comes under the suspicion of attack, with Cou grabbing the girl’s hand and dragging her to the cockpit, where they await there enemy.

Instead of attacking, the approaching vessel instead asks and is granted permission to board the Red Lynx. Fortunately the trio who appear on the cockpit don’t want to fight. Claiming to be the Arc Aile Edel Raid Complete Protection Agency (or AAERCPA for … short). What’s an Edel Raid? Well it turns out, the girl who Cou saved is one, and they’re essentially weapons, who Arc Aile are prepared to sign a big cheque for.

As can be expected, however, Cou doesn’t warm to the idea of selling his new girl, leading the Arc Aile trio to more forceful tactics, but even before they can fight, another enemy comes into play, with a small three way battle playing out on the ship.
Before Cou can join in though, his boss hands over a sword, and tells him to protect the young girl. As the fight continues the true nature of her power’s become apparent, as the young girl (or Ren, as we come to discover) ‘reacts’ with Cou’s soul, becoming a powerful weapon that adorns one arm. A few small fights later and the boss’ ship crashes, leaving Ren, Cou, and the three members of Arc Aile stranded in an unknown land. How better to start this kind of story?

From there, the series places a heavy emphasis on comedy, which is what it does best, with lots of chibi (or super deformed) moments from the Arc Aile trio in particular. There is also a fair amount of story development, with Ren revealing that she wants to travel to the Elden garden’s, a mythical land of peace and tranquility, and the introduction of Sting Raids, less powerful, but artificially manufacturable Edel Raids.

This is very traditional, Japanese style fantasy and storytelling, with the same kind of feel as JRPGs (Japanese role-playing games) like Grandia and Skies of Arcadia. In fact, just like Skies of Arcadia, an important element of the fantasy of Elemental Gelade is that the world of Guardia is occupied by seemingly nautical ships that sail the sky. So Elemental Gelade is a show that will have its fans carved out for it simply by appealing to this style of storytelling.

The biggest problem with Elemental Gelade, like the comparisons show, however, is that it’s very conventional. You’ve probably seen everything here before, and maybe even better, and maybe even ten years ago. The fights are especially generic, with a clearly modest budget working in the background.

In Summary

This one will depend on how much you like the particular world, story and characters of Elemental Gelade, and how much you like this very old-fashioned, perhaps even outdated set of parts, which Elemental Gelade certainly isn’t much more than the sum of.