GARO -Vanishing Line-

Episode 15

After fifteen weeks of ambiguities and slow-burn buildup, GARO -VANISHING LINE- has finally given us a peek inside the fabled El Dorado. Surprisingly, this isn't just a quick cliffhanger scene or an after-credits stinger; GARO actually abandons our heroes entirely this week to give us a full episode set inside the city's opulent walls. While the execution of that story is pretty mixed, the premise of this episode alone is enough to justify its existence.

The reveal that El Dorado really is a city speaks to just how vague Garo has been about its big picture up until this point. El Dorado could have been a secret base, a gateway to another dimension, or goodness knows what else. The truth of the matter is much closer to the actual myth, except instead of El Dorado being a city of literal gold, it is an opulent neon metropolis. In keeping with GARO's unusually prescient examination of the class divides that afflict its otherworldly America, the bridge to El Dorado is surrounded by outcasts and vagabonds who have seemingly been deemed “unworthy” of the city's riches.

The same can't be said for Carol Warren, a young woman who has taken the bus into El Dorado searching for her slice of the proverbial pie. We don't learn anything about her, but that doesn't matter much after our ostensible perspective character gets murdered in a ghastly night-club sacrifice, where it's revealed that most of El Dorado's inhabitants are ghoulish Horrors in disguise. (There are some strong DEVILMAN crybaby vibes going around in this sequence.) While I dug the atmosphere that this first half was going for, it ended up being muddled by some shoddy animation. While El Dorado itself looks just fine, the character animation and art this week was downright ugly to the point where some incidental shots featured characters who were almost abstract or cubist in appearance.

All of the budget and time seemed to have been spent on the second half of the episode, where the real plot kicked into gear. Instead of being a view of El Dorado from the perspective of a new civilian, this episode ends up being a more solid reintroduction to Bishop and Queen, who are busy running the city and protecting King from the threat of a new Horror who's hellbent on usurping his throne. When the would-be-regicidal monster finally does come into contact with Queen, their showdown is sharp enough to go a long way toward making up for the first episode's garish aesthetics. It doesn't look great per se, but the novelty of seeing a full Horror-on-Horror battle makes the encounter a win overall. Queen's needlessly exploitative costume design is much less interesting than her more refined general look, but she proves to be a badass act to follow when throwing down with the assassin and his clone projections. Of King's henchmen, Queen might just be the most compelling so far, though the others will hopefully prove themselves in time.

Overall, this sidestep into El Dorado was more of a tease than anything else, but it was necessary at this point. GARO simply couldn't keep dangling El Dorado at the end of a string as a halfhearted MacGuffin for another dozen episodes, and even a cursory glimpse into the fabled city's inner workings revitalizes the plot's momentum. As a standalone episode, it's mostly sloppy and only truly entertaining in its final ten minutes. But it serves a vital function as a larger piece in -VANISHING LINE-'s puzzle, so I remain glad that it exists.

Rating: B-

Garo -Vanishing Line- is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is an English teacher who has loved anime his entire life, and he spends way too much time on Twitter and his blog.