Gokudo - Swordsman Extraordinaire

Starring:Tomisaburo Wakayama, Koji Tsuruta, Minoru Ohki, Sanae Kitabayashi, Bunta Sugawara
Director: Kosaku Yamashita
Studio: Enoki Films
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Description
Where is it written that heroes have to be heroic? Gokudo is the perfect adventurer, reckless, greedy and ambitions. Unfortunately, that makes him one imperfect crown prince and an even worse hero. With his flaming sword, a tomboy looking for excitement and the prince of his rival kingdom, he sets off on a quest to uncover all the great treasures of the world. He'll succeed, or he'll make a total fool of himself trying!

Gokudo - Swordsman Extraordinaire
Average customer rating:

The fantasy genre... twisted every which way!

Money, Babes, and Fame

An anti-hero comedy fantasy? It's better than you think!

Gokudo - Collection Extraordinaire

Yes its good, but not that good...

Gokudo - Swordsman Extraordinaire
Starring: Tomisaburo Wakayama , Koji Tsuruta , Minoru Ohki , Sanae Kitabayashi , and Bunta Sugawara
Director: Kosaku Yamashita
Manufacturer: Enoki Films
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

Minoru, Ohki | ( M ) | Actors & Actresses | Stores | DVD | Video
Sugawara, Bunta | ( S ) | Actors & Actresses | Stores | DVD | Video
Tomisaburo, Wakayama | ( T ) | Actors & Actresses | Stores | DVD | Video
Wakayama, Tomisaburo | ( W ) | Actors & Actresses | Stores | DVD | Video
General | Anime & Manga | Genres | DVD | Video
All | Media Blasters | By Studio | Anime & Manga | Genres | DVD | Video
General | Animation | Genres | DVD | Video
( G ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
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ASIN: B00005NB8G
Release Date: 2001-10-30

Description

Where is it written that heroes have to be heroic? Gokudo is the perfect adventurer, reckless, greedy and ambitions. Unfortunately, that makes him one imperfect crown prince and an even worse hero. With his flaming sword, a tomboy looking for excitement and the prince of his rival kingdom, he sets off on a quest to uncover all the great treasures of the world. He'll succeed, or he'll make a total fool of himself trying!

Customer Reviews:

The fantasy genre... twisted every which way!.......2005-08-15

Gokudo: Collection Extraordinare collects all the six individually released disks for the series and put them in one over-sized pack. Spanning 26 episodes this is both one really looong breath of fresh air compared to your typical fantasy anime.

First of, let me say one thing. I simply can't help but ADORE Gokudo, the exraordinary main character! Seeing him mess things up in his unending quest for fame and riches (in the most arrogant way possible) is encredibly entertaining. In short I'm a little biased in this review, but who wouldn't be after loving a series.

The show features about five main story arcs that really go all over the place. One has Gokudo felling the Magic King from power, another has him come in conflict with the Buddah, God and Magic World races in one huge confrontation and yet another has him face off against Buddaha and Magic World people with the fate of the entire world resting on his actions! A little over the top, I know, but the slap-stick, often intellectual (a better word would be contextual...), keeps things running light. Gokudo and his companions are always fighting and arguing. Fighting and arguing. Not at all what you'd always expect from a group who's destined to save the world... somehow.

Basically, you have more comedy than you can shake a stick at and, even though it won't appeal to everybody, it will definetally have an impression. The voice actors (in both Japanese and Enlgish) to a good job making everything... absurd. As for plot, it may get a little overwhelming and overcomplicated with so much going on so quickly throughout the show that is may loose other peole who just want to relax their brains and go on auto.

Recommended! Tired of white-knights saving the world with charm and good looks? Get Gokudo: Collection Extraordinare! Its not perfect but at least it is (you guessed it) Extraordinare.

Money, Babes, and Fame.......2005-07-05

This anime had me laughing from start to finish (and that includes the ending theme too)! Judging by the cover, one would assume this to be a typical sci-fi/fantasy adventure series with lots of detailed sword fights and dragons and such. But they just omit the action and cut strait back to the comic story of Gokudo, a half-prince anti-hero who's willing to do anything to line his own pocket with money, get babes, and become famous. Heck, he'd even sell someone's soul to the devil if it meant that he would come out of the situation on top!
If you're looking for something with loads of gut-wrenching humor, hilarious animation style, and very interesting plot with an anti-hero as your main character, then you're gonna love it!

An anti-hero comedy fantasy? It's better than you think!.......2005-06-24

As a 26-episode fantasy comedy Anime series, GOKUDO is outrageously wacky, offbeat, and howlingly hilarious, crammed to the bone with more laughs than one would expect. If there were any title to rival SLAYERS for its humor and zaniness, GOKUDO would be a worthy candidate, in that it refuses to take itself seriously while moving along at a zippy, roller coaster pace.

The title character of this tale is the most unlikely kind of hero anyone would ever want to meet--he's selfish, greedy, obnoxious, and has only two goals on his mind: money and hot babes! Gokudo is unabashedly an anti-hero, all right, and so one gets the impression that we're not supposed to identify with him. And yet, in spite of his disreputable qualities, there is actually something about Gokudo who is very likeable--perhaps because his personality is so over-the-top that one cannot help but laugh at him. The most comparable character to Gokudo is Lina Inverse, but unlike our favorite flat-chested sorceress, Gokudo has almost no redeeming qualities whatsoever--and yet he is all the more amusing for it. (He also tends to break wind in more than one location--particularly dealing with major baddies.)

His motley crew is an equally interesting bunch--there's Rubette, a tomboyish princess who shares Gokudo's temper and feistiness (somehow I know that these two are destined for each other), Niari, a lovesick womanizer of a prince who falls for every woman around, a gender-changing genie, a pregnant male panda(!), a pair of Chinese witches... and especially an annoying little midget from Hell, Ikkyu. With the exception of the genie, they are all some of the most self-serving, argumentative group of heroes you'll ever see--and yet the continuous laughs they provide throughout are precious.

The misadventures that Gokudo and his "friends" continually get into literally bounce off the walls with non-stop silliness and unpredictable plot twists. The story is divided into five "parts": In the first, Gokudo is sent to rescue a damsel from a castle with the promises of a rich reward and the life of a king as the prize. Then he decides to get involved in a desert trek that builds to a showdown with a mechanical giant. After that, we visit the kingdom of the Buddhas and Gods, where they manage to pick up a pint-sized brat of a goddess as an unexpected ally. The fourth arc, which is arguably the LOOOOOOOONGEST of the show, involves Gokudo and his friends switching bodies and exploring the underworld. In addition to being slowgoing, this arc makes the grievous mistake of recycling a sequence that may have been entertaining in one moment (the pop-idol quartet musical number) but now tedious in the next. The last arc involves a trip to some kind of native paradise where they face off with a pair of powerful gods and, of course, the final confrontation with the most unlikely antagonist imaginable--a manipulative old hag. Although the unexpected twists of the plot hamper the entertainment value at times (and the animation and music being little more than cheesy, low-grade quality), GOKUDO is nonetheless a showstoppingly funny fantasy farce which should be a hit with comedy-fantasy-adventuregoers.

While people are bound to be, well, opinionated about dubbing in general (an argument not uncommon with Anime series and movies), I have to say that this particular English language track produced by New York-based Headline Sound is loads of fun. Daniel Kevin Harrison simply *is* Gokudo, the loud-mouthed, crude, impulsively selfish anti-hero of the piece. He sinks his teeth into the role with demonic, zany glee, and one of the primary reasons why the dub works is because of his performance.

He shares terrific chemistry with Angora Deb, another one of my favorite NY actresses, who plays Rubette. I have heard Deb in various other roles for dubs, my favorite of which is Leaf from RECORD OF LODOSS WAR: CHRONICLES OF THE HEROIC KNIGHT, but this is the first time I got a chance to experience her playing a lead, and she does so with glorious hamminess. One of her best moments is the episode where Rubette sings "red, red, red"; I was in complete stitches. Ed Paul also does a great job with Prince Niari; he sounded very suave and sexy while very courageous and daring at the same time.

The rest of the cast includes Greg "Ghim" Wolfe (credited here as Chunky Mon) as the Male genie, Jessica "Excel" Cavello as her female counterpart, Georgette Reilly as Ikkyu, J. David Brimmer as two basso-voiced heavies, Pete "Wagnard, Hiroyuki Miyazawa" Zarustica as the Panda, and various incidental roles performed by Rachel "Martina" Lillis, Billy "Parn" Regan, Lisa "Deedlit, Lina, Azalyn, etc." Ortiz, Megan Hollingshead, Meg "Pirotess" Frances, Liam "Hideaki Asaba" O'Brien, and others from the New Yawk dubbing crew. Add to this an equally entertaining adaptation provided by director Bill Timoney and, for a few episodes anyway, Rachel Lillis (which occasionally "Americanizes" Japanese jokes and strays from the original subtitle script, but not by much), and you have one heck of a dub to check out.

The 6-DVD set provided by Media Blasters is adequately packed and not only less expensive than buying each volume individually, but saves the customer a lot of storage space. The visual and sound transfers are both excellent, but the extras are paltry on the first few discs; the real meat is in the form of interviews with the English leads for Gokudo and Rubette on the last disc.

While GOKUDO may probably wallow in the shadow of other shows of its kind (namely, of course, SLAYERS), those who give it a try will find it to be deliciously silly, zany, laugh-out loud fun.

Gokudo - Collection Extraordinaire.......2005-04-29

This was a very interesting series. I normaly go for animes like Fushigi Yugi's Mysterious Play (best anime ever), Blue Seed, and others of their nature. But this was suprisingly refreashing. Gokudo isn't a goody goody or even turn out in the end to have any amazing personality changes. He remains basically the same the whole series, which is to say a lying cheating, inexplicale rotten fellow with a dry since of humor. but that is what makes this series so great. Along with a crew of wierd "friends" they embark on jouney after countless journey and the only ways to get Gokudo to do anything good is to either have a great treasure or hot babes, or something wrong with him that can only be cured with completting a quest. I recomend this to anyone looking for a good laugh and a side step to your basically averge animes that always have basicaly the same main character.

Yes its good, but not that good..........2004-02-10

I have watched many animes and GOKUDO is just something I would say rather plainly so far, is nothing exceptional. At certain times, it can be dry but it can be funny too. But for 26 episodes altogether, the story doesn't have a story and becomes a mix mash of silly tales of Gods & Demons.

It can be fun to watch when there is nothing to watch at all... but its more of rent than to own.

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