Related Titles: Gravitation (manga) | Gravitation (OVA)

Alternate Title: ぐラビテーション
Genre: Shounen-Ai | Romance | Comedy | Drama
Production Companies: Studio DEEN | Sony
American Licensing Company: The Right Stuf International
Format: 13 episodes (22 minutes each)
Dates: 10/04/2000 to 01/10/2001
Original Creator: Maki Murakami
Age Rating: 15-18 and up

Synopsis: Teenage Shuichi wants to make a famous band. He works on his band, hoping to get a chance in the public eye, with nothing on his mind but his fame and musical ambitions. However, one fateful night when Shuichi is working on song lyrics, his paper with his lyrics gets away from him, and a stranger picks them up. The man is Yuki, a famous romance novelist who tells Shuichi that his writing skills are grade school level. From that moment on, Shuichi is determined to find Yuki and have him explain his rudeness...he just doesn't realize that it was love at first sight for him. When Shuichi finally finds Yuki, it's a journey of obstacles, frightening experiences and haunting pasts trying to keep them apart. But, it's just the gravitation of fate and love that always pulls these lovers back together everytime.

The notorious anime odd couple are back in a tv series! Better watch out! Knowing them, they'll blow up the world before it's all over!

SCORE: 72%

Plot: As I said in my manga review of the series, I won't pretend to know how a real gay male couple would act, but this one sure is a rough one! (In more ways than one LOL *wink wink*)

The plot isn't an extraordinary one, and my friends and I have come to the conclusion that this series is very much a soap opera. It's nice to see that there are some straight people in existence in this anime (a lot of shounen-ai/yaoi like to ignore that). This show is just mostly about love interests and relationships, especially when it comes to Shuichi and Yuki of course. The plot does do well, and if it was not for the whacky slapstick humor, this series would be a very down-to-earth plot in most areas, even if it is dealing with the pop music industry. But that is just as well. Nothing about supernaturals and sci-fi once in awhile can be a really nice breath of fresh air. But don't expect to be bored with this series...the angst is edgy and the humor...is well...defintely out there. It really is something else!

I do have to admit that this series did educate me a little. I did learn more about the pop music industry (even though the band is suppose to be a rock band, they seem to be more pop/industrial type). I'm not really interested in that sort of thing, but seeing it in the series did keep my attention, suprisingly.

The characters haven't changed since the manga, and even though I wish I could see more Ryuichi and K, I was satsified with what I saw. ^_^ Shuichi is still stupid, and Yuki is still a grump-ass. LOL

The OVA for this series was kind of a predessor to setup what the tv show would be like, and it shows. While the series isn't nearly as random as the OVA (nothing made sense in the OVA), it is still just as spastic (Shuichi hasn't changed!).

You might be used to Shuichi in the manga, or even the OVA. But, be prepared for Shuichi to be a halfway intelligent person at the beginning of the series who gets progressively stupider. LOL, but many people find that factor funny. I do...and I don't. I usually don't, sadly. So, grit your teeth and be prepared!

The tv series was a wonderful rehashing and compressed version of the manga; I do love the manga, but often plot and subplot would drag an itty-bit until one would began to wonder if anything would eventually be resolved. The tv series was a good collection of most of the funniest, sweetest, dramatic, and best moments of the Gravitation manga.

Visual: This series didn't really push for anything extraordinary, but was animated very well a la computer. The use of live action (especially in the first episode) could get painful, but sometimes actually worked. The repeated concert scences were annoying, but luckily only happened a few times.

Character design was pretty good. Luckily the animators' used one of Shuichi's several haircuts/haircolors, instead of switching around like in the manga. I like seeing a character's looks change, but maybe that's not the best thing to do in an anime, especially this short one, so characters are still recognized. Unlike the OVA, characters like Shuichi looked less like their manga counterparts, while Yuki looked more like his manga counterpart (Yuki lost a lot of his prettiness in the OVA that he actually does have a lot of in the manga).

Joke visuals worked pretty well, and for the most part were hilarious. Characters were very well animated, and their personalities were brought out well through their body language, especially for Shuichi, Yuki, Sakano, and K.

Sound: Sound affects were affective, but nothing new.

The voices fitted excellently and are a bunch of my favorites! Tomokazu Seki as Shuichi (Kyo from Fruits Basket, Dee from FAKE, Ken from Weiß Kreuz), Kappei Yamaguchi as Ryuichi (Ranma of Ranma 1/2, Inuyasha from Inuyasha, Subaru from Tokyo Babylon), Shinichirou Miki as Tachi Aizawa (Tsuzuki from Yami no Matsuei, Yohji from Weiß Kreuz, Takumi from Initial D) Takehito Koyasu as Sakano (Seishirou from Tokyo Babylon, Aburatsubo from Magic Users' Club, Aya from Weiß Kreuz), and Kazuhiko Inoue as Yuki (Hatori from Fruits Basket, Oriya from Yami no Matsuei, Kakashi from Naruto). Quite a famous and/or favorite crowd!

The music is great! It's pop, it's electronic, and it's Engrish, but it's great! Kotani Kinya, a popular Japanese singer, has made excellent music for both this series and the OVA that came before it! And he's like a real life Shuichi (but not with pink hair!). Favorites you'll get from this series are the opening (Super Drive), the closing (Glaring Dream) and their different versions. Plus other good ones like Blind Game Again, Shining Collection, and Spicy Marmalade (actually Spicy Marmalade may only be in the OVA, but right now I don't care, lol). And many if not most are performed by Kotani. *grins*

The Dub: Is there a dub? Well, there is an American Licensing company, so I guess so...where is it?!

Extra Rants and Bitching: Uh...yeah.... I really don't have too much to bitch about, besides the very small amount of annoying live action that didn't work. The voices were awesome! I love Tomokazu Seki and Kappei Yamaguchi! ^_^ I wish the series was longer, but Shuichi was getting stupider as the series went along. Some find that funny, but people like me start to get annoyed. It's a lot funnier to read than to watch, I think. The stupidity jokes and sickenly cute costumes and facial expressions were just getting into excessive, even though most were hilarious and done well (at least in the beginning of the show).

Score Comments: I do love Gravitation, but towards the end of the series, the humor was annoying, even for me (and believe me, that takes a lot!). 72% is actually very good considering that. Read the manga to avoid the annoyance. Or, watch this series because it's a nice condensation of the manga and a lot shorter! See whichever one suits you better!

Websites:
Anime News Network
Check out the info I've put up on this series in their encyclopedia!

BoysonBoysonFilm.com: Gravitation
My review (if slightly reorganized) of Gravitation, on Boys on Boys on Film!

Have a website about this series, or do you know of a good one? Want me to link to it on this review? Well, the feel free to email the sucker to me! Just make sure to put "Review Link" in the subject.