Things have been going... somewhat poorly, with Subject T-33. Yesterday, he broke out of his padded cell where he was supposed to be finishing up a certain experiment...
...to, then stumble off to the floor's broom closet and then proceed inhaling massive amounts of the fumes of various cleaning supplies.
He proceeded to ramble on and on and afterward once he settled down, he claimed he had been watching an anime rather than rambling in a broom closet for six hours while smelling cleaning supplies.
...I was of the opinion that we should just... forget this ever happened, but the Head Researcher of the Theoretical Generalyzing Goblins Group stated his interest in seeing an experiment done on...
...
...on an anime that doesn't even exist.
This is certainly one of those shows where just the concept of the show itself makes it a lot better to go into it while still knowing as little as impossible about the insanity that lies within.
And I absolutely cannot talk about this show without bringing up the various twists and turns, so here's your spoiler warning!
#Goldfish and Insanity#
Galilei Donna is a fucking amazing anime about Galileo Galilei and goldfish or something. Brought to us by studio A-1 Pictures and directed by Umetsu Yasuomi (he would go on and do Wizard Barristers...). I honestly cannot even picture what the pitch for this was. ~~If there even was one.~~
We want to do this mecha show about Galileo Galilei and there'll be goldfish... an adventure, no, a race to find Galileo's long hidden secrets before BAD GUYS find it! It'll be fun and cheery at points, but other times there'll be TERRORISM AND DEATH.
This is just another one of those shows that's just a tonal roller coaster basically the whole way through. Like okay, the Galilei sisters are on their adventure and they're making progress and finding the hints Galileo has left behind! But then the business suit bad guy descends and just starts shooting people one after one in a hospital because they're trapped inside due to the blizzard outside and they're complaining because they're cold.
They want the doctors to power up the lower floor shutting down the ICU and basically killing every single patient up there who are depending on the machines to live so the people in the lower floor can be... warm? Just systematically gunning them down is clearly an overreaction and evil, but it hasn't even been a fucking hour yet.
Yet they're acting like they're going to freeze to death on the spot and that the doctor is an asshole because he isn't immediately bending to their whims at the promise of money. And they already attempted to humanize the origami folding business suit bad guy earlier but then he just starts immediately gunning people down with NO remorse.
Like I get that it's supposed to be shocking but it happens so suddenly that my immediate reaction when he just started shooting people was laughter. He had absolutely no reason to do this. Like yeah I get it from his tragic backstory that he hates selfish people like this, but him just outright jumping to brutally shooting people to death shows that he is a complete and utter psychopath. Comically so.
In this series you have mechas, you have sky pirates, you have goldfish AI, the main characters are going around the world collecting scraps of paper that their ancestor Galileo Galilei left behind for some reason in absolutely bizarre locations (like an island they just happen to crash land into at one point after a battle with the bad guy???) and...
Then you have the business suit bad guy basically saying verbatim:
"YEAH, THERE'S TOO MANY HUMANS ON THIS PLANET. WE HAVE TO START KILLING PEOPLE NOW. AND BECAUSE YOU DARED TO COMPLAIN ABOUT BEING COLD, YOU'RE THE FIRST ONES I'M STARTING OFF WITH."
I think the description of this show is a little bit off...
Yeah. That's better.
And you know, it's not even limited to the insane gun toting bad guy. Like as early as episode two, the episode ends with the reveal that that true bad guy, the head of the company, apparently in questioning the mom of the sisters, violently assaulted her. I mean did she trip and fall??? That's kind of a lot of blood there, man...
But just the next episode, he just calmly says in a line of dialogue that oh no big deal she just has amnesia.
So okay wait, you struck her so hard in the process of trying to question her that she now is amnesiac and doesn't remember her daughters at all?
Spoiler, click to view
Fun fact, head injury aside, she was faking it the whole time. Apparently, you can fake amnesia. Like she just outright admits it the whole time that she was faking it.Like this guy and the origami fellow are just so over the top evil that the whole thing is just comical no matter how hard they try. Regardless of Origami's intentions (his name is Roberto), the main bad guy's goal is I guess to just make more money.
"I'M KING OF THE WORLD. I OWN THE POLICE, I CAN MAKE THESE RANDOM THREE GIRLS INTO INTERNATIONAL FUGITIVES WITH THE SNAP OF MY FINGERS. I AM GOING TO GET GALILEO'S PROCESS OF MAKING ENDLESS ENERGY AND I'M GOING TO MAKE BILLIONS OFF OF IT."
What an interesting... antagonist... ehhh...
...
...Have I even mentioned that the main sister time travels? She... at one point, she travels back in the past to... to hang around with the man himself. Galileo Galilei. It's him. The man himself.
They were literally in like the climax of the show and it... the universe pauses. Literally pauses. And sends the main sister... back in time. And specifically to Galileo Galilei.
Her going back into time and Galileo Galilei falling in love with her (she's his DESCENDANT) serves absolutely NO purpose to the outcome (and yet is bafflingly setup throughout the entire show) and what should have been like the final sequence of the show is paused for it for like an episode or two while she's hanging out with Galileo in the past.
And then when she makes it back, their predicament that was paused is immediately solved by the sky pirates.
So I, the viewer, immediately fucking questioned what the hell was the point of the time travel? But then the show doesn't even give you time to recover as they're immediately captured after this. And you know where they're going??? These sisters who did absolutely nothing to be arrested for until after they started getting chased and put into life or death situations???
They're going to COURT.
BUT DON'T WORRY. IF YOU CAN'T AFFORD ONE, A WIZARD BARRISTER WILL BE APPOINTED TO YOU. NOT THAT IT'LL MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE. THE CHURCH WAS RIGHT, GALILEO WAS WRONG. THE SUN REVOLVES AROUND THE EARTH!
GEOCENTRIC FOREVER!
#Conclusion...?#
...
...I can't even pretend to try and comprehend what any of that (the show AND this review) was and I apologize profusely for it. Let me tell you, me and Umetsu really need to lay off the... cleaning supplies. Like you're supposed to use them to clean. Not inhale mass amounts of.
...But speaking seriously, I genuinely tried as hard as possible to take this show seriously. In the end, it proved to be an impossible task. I laughed profusely throughout multiple episodes and was almost at a loss for words of what I was witnessing. Sometimes while watching shows I consider to be very bad, I constantly wonder if there was even one person who like looked over the scenes or the scripts or ANYTHING and went...
"Yeah no, this isn't right at ALL." or "This comes off completely comical."
Either that person did not exist for this series or they purposely chose to say nothing or were just ignored.
I give this show a 3 out of 10. And comparatively, I was at least entertained by this whereas with Wizard Barristers, I just remember being vaguely annoyed almost the whole way through.
But like if you actually asked me if I thought it was "bad", my answer would just be...
...I can't believe this show actually exists.
