Ask John: What’s up with Gundress

Question:
What exactly is the deal with Gundress? Why wasn’t it finished? Even more important, why was it released in Japan unfinished?

Answer:
Gundress seems to have perhaps the most confusing and mystery shrouded background of any anime to be released in the past several years. Not long after the premier of the Ghost in the Shell movie, anime fans were thrilled to learn that Masamune Shirow was at work on a new cyberpunk action film heavily inspired by Appleseed. Months went by, and a special edition “Making of Gundress” VHS and CD-ROM package was released, then the film finally premiered to Japanese theaters in March 1999, it was released in an unfinished form. Once sequence near the middle of the film had only rudimentary coloring in the characters but full, complete backgrounds, and several scenes toward the end of the film were little more than pencil test animation. I have no idea why a studio would rush an unfinished film into theaters, but such was the case with Gundress, which apparently had a very brief theatrical life before disappearing into virtual oblivion. The only thing I can suggest is that its studio decided to cancel financial support, so the film had to be released “as is.”

In June 2000, the film quietly slipped into Japanese video rental shops, then in September it was released in Japan on sell-through DVD. Yet the odd story continued. The Gundress DVD was released in Japan only as a special, limited edition of only 5000 copies pressed. The disc was offered for sale only to Japanese residents through the official Gundress website (which now seems to no longer exist). Some Japanese exporters managed to obtain a few copies, so there are at least a handful of copies of this original Japanese DVD in America.

The special edition Gundress DVD includes two different versions of the film: the theatrical version and the 5 or so minute longer finished version, along with two different trailers for the movie. The film is a cyberpunk story about a group of five young women that pilot landmate mecha suits to combat a terrorist threat to Newport City and the world. The character and mecha concept designs provided by Masamune Shirow are kept relatively intact in their transition to animation. The world design also recalls the technological yet biological look of the Newport City from Dominion. Unfortunately, the entire film, both the unfinished and the complete version, have the look and feel of a feature length action film created on a 30 minute OAV budget. The art quality varies from scene to scene from very good to dismally poor. The animation quality through the film is, at best, on par with the early 1980s OAVs. Furthermore, for a cyberpunk mecha action film, the action scenes and gunfights are bloodless and unexciting almost to the point of being dull. The best analogy I can provide for Gundress is this: for a theatrical movie released in 1999, after Ghost in the Shell, Gundress is essentially the 1988 Appleseed OAV with character designs that look closer to Shirow-san’s original manga character design style. Gundress is a film for only the most die-hard Shirow fans. For a story with such potential, Gundress ranks very high on my list of most disappointing anime I’ve ever seen.