Nessa no Haou Gandalla is a mess of an anime series. I can't say if I can appreciate it for what it was, fully, since I felt like I was picking at its story at every turn, but there's nuggets you can engage with. My interest with this series all started when my wife showed me the opening on twitter a couple weeks ago. That opening is so cool, and it wasn't even the corrected version that plays past the 5th episode or so. You can immediately tell the series' art director is Junichi Hayama with how his human characters look. The monsters look reallycool, the titular God monster, Gandalla, looks especially cool. And the song was catchy af. ( I still sing that chorus even after watching this mess)

It's sad to say but that's honestly the best part of the show, including the ED which is nice as far as sliding picture endings can be. It's funny too that this is the fact because even a lot of the japanese comments on the show on youtube videos kinda echo the same thing. Many people who watched this when it was airing often say they watched it while they were young just cause the OP was really cool and it pulled them in.

*************** SPOILERS AHEAD ********************

If I could compare it to other series I've watched I'd say it's a weird mash between Macross and Heartcatch Precure. Specifically the elements of Macross where the main characters are musicians tasked on defeating the over arching villains and the element of the villains theming around desertification like in Precure. Though instead of aiming directly at any of these themes, the audience has to be drudged through a lot of mundane things that are vaguely tied together. Instead of being directed to the main story of this series, I had to build the story in my head because the show wants to cut to unrelated things happening on the other side of the world instead of tying them together on screen. Once you watch this show you'll soon realize this series is King of Vagueposting.

The story kicks off in Los Angeles, California where our main characters Emma and Yuuki are introduced to us. The crux of the story at the start revolves around their relationship to the band fronted by Emma's late brother. Since being introduced to each other as kids Emma has been fond of Yuuki but, since the passing of her brother combined with his girlfriend, Michelle, dying in a freak airplane crash over the Nevada desert, Yuuki has been in an anti-social downward spiral. He can't find it in him to fill the role as the band's guitarist and lacks any drive to anything but work on his car.

Meanwhile in the Sahara desert, sandstorms are sucking down villages into the Earth and US government agents are tracking monsters while desert people are being traumatized by the melody by some apparent centaur lady. It's all very vague...

This is the general pace of the show for the first 10 episodes. You have two very unrelated things going on at first, sometimes with how the art style is you might be tricked for a moment that something is going on in another place because of how all the desert sections look all the same. But you, at one point, have 4 different groups having their own stories that don't really intersect a lot take up precious time and the story doesn't move on all that well because of it.

Eventually the story moves on from average "LA rock band trying to score a record deal" mundanity because Emma got kidnapped by the government agents in charge of desert monster hunting because she's tangently related, for helping a girl escape these agent because she witnessed a related sandstorm that killed 80s glam rock sensation NOT Poison. Turns out the song that their band, named Gold Dust, is trying to make a hit single has the same melody as the song a surviving desert villager is constantly humming in the agent's captivity. Knowing this instead of calmly going up to Emma, as she's an innocent civilian, and ask her about the song they instead kidnap her and fuck her brain which leaves her comatose for an episode, and the GULL they had. Once they did that then Gold Dust gets RECRUITED under a shell company this government agency owns, and when they try to test the song under a research lab Emma can't sing that song anymore because she's traumatized by said agency. OH AND GUESS WHAT, said Agent that fucked her brain up was a SAND MAN that works for Gandalla! WHATEVER THAT MEANT AT THAT POINT. So the agents, who are suppose to be on the side of humanity SOMEHOW LET A MAN MADE OUT OF SAND walk into their government with a crumbling SSN card made of sand and went "ALRIGHT LOOKS GOOD TO ME!", and gave it a lab coat and a giant syringe!

There's a lot of inexplicable moments like this in this show. And it doesn't help that the show illustrates everything so vaguely. At this point you, as the audience member, don't know what Gandalla really is. He is as enigmatic as he is when you see his presence in the OP, he's almost like the force of the desert itself. You get vague things like how the desert tribe, The Lazaherians, perceive him as this deity that protects their land but then you see these sandstorms targeting people over Nevada or some opera singer on the road crossing through THE FUCKING FOREST. So you end up scratching your head pinning over what is going on?

And then immediately after an episode where you are introduced to Amurita, the Chieftain of the Lazaherians, properly and see things from her perspective over the matter of these desert kaiju and the military's presence in the Sahara. YOU GET SIDECHECKED BY ALIENS THAT LIVE UNDERGROUND THAT ARE KIDNAPPING THE MUSICIANS THROUGH THE SANDSTORM. And you never get properly introduced to these guys. All you know that there's a big pale alien guy who's named Sir Tyrone and he likes to imprison naked musicians in giant glass eggs.

Eventually the band finally reach the Sahara after two episodes and figure out, "Wow, we're just imprisoned here for no good reason." and eventually Emma and Yuuki are basically played like hot potatoes between the Lazaherian tribe and the Gov'ment while the rest of the band sit in a room for episodes on end. There's a lot of unresolved beef between them between episode 11 - 21 and all this does is lose the plot. You get everything from perceived cuckoldry as Kiriya, Amurita's childhood friend and lieutenant, struggles to get his d**k wet with Amurita because of religious practices and Amurita's new found fondness for white boys from the US Military while he hide their dead bodies in the desert, to Rick, the BEST member of Gold Dust, finding out that the desert kaiju the military wasted was his best friend in the world that he thought died in a sandstorm 15 episodes ago, and he NEVER BRINGS THIS UP TO ANYONE! HE NEVER BRINGS IT UP TO HIS FRIENDS OR THE COMMANDER THESE MONSTERS THEY'VE BEEN FIGHTING ARE HUMANS! Alright bro...

A point I should have brought up earlier though is that the song that Gold Dust have written and have been performing at this point is a song written by Yuuki and his long dead GF Michelle. A big reason why they came here is so that Yuuki and Emma can search for the reason why that survivor of the sandstorms is humming the same melody as in Yuuki's old tapes of Michelle. Eventually it all comes to when Yuuki hears her melody sung in the canyons and once he plays the chords to her song, GANDALLA APPEARS OUT OF NOWHERE IN ALL OF HIS COMPUTER GENERATED GLORY! But don't be too happy, as soon as he appears he returns back into sand to leave you in a VAGUE sense of that NOTHING HAPPENED.

The story episode to episode is filled with a lot of NOTHING HAPPENS. Emma still can't sing her song, so they replace Gold Dust in their experiments with beloved Canadian rock band NOT Rush. Emma regains the ability to sing her song after hearing their rehearsal and after Rush BOTCHES the concert experiment, Emma and the rest take their place and SUMMON GANDALLA IN HIS CGI GLORY and he immediately turns back into sand and disappears like NOTHING HAPPENED.

There's some episodes with the aliens, The Zanlightians, and it feels like we're edging closer and closer to their plot in all this being revealed but it remains all vague and each episodes feels like NOTHING HAPPE- except for their first true episode we witness them. That episode was very cool, if at first viewing kinda confusing. You get introduced to Krayser, the right hand man for Tyrone, and all the centaur people who were once human musicians. You get that they were kidnapped and transformed this way to serve them, and you get that Krayser is much more sympathetic than Tyrone. But you follow this centaur girl throughout the story who is being noncooperative and I thought it was Michelle. I saw flashbacks with her and what seemed like Yuuki and she ends off being transformed into a monster after Tyrone set her up. I was thinking "WOAH DID THEY KILL OFF YUUKI'S GIRLFRIEND BEFORE HE FOUND HER!?" but then it turns out the teal haired centaur who was following her plot was ACTUALLY Michelle? I dunno man this show feels like it wasn't thought out through during Pre-production.

Anyway it all comes ahead when Yuuki finally meets Michelle and he gets involved with the resurrection of GANDALLA, and as slow and winding the plot of the story was before episode 22. It equally has a hard time explaining the last 4 episodes in a somewhat brisk fashion. Essentially the aliens use Gandalla as a desertification tool to make Earth like their home planet that they lost. There's world wide hysteria, the government agency fumbled on trying to control Gandalla to take over the world, MICHELLE HAS A BABY WITH KRAYSER I DUNNO HOW SHE'S HALF HORSE, I'M NOT EVEN THAT HAPPY TO SEE ALL THE RAD MONSTER DESIGNS SHOWING UP BECAUSE THEY BEARLY MOVE AND JUST TURN THE SURROUNDING BUILDINGS INTO SAND. THE WORLD IS ABOUT TO END.

And so the show wraps everything up with Yuuki flashstepping to the enemy base where he protects Michelle from Tyrone's magic conch spear, but KRAYSER COMES IN FOR THE CLUTCH as he tanks the hit for his baby momma and lands a critical hit onto Tyrone with his ring spear that he used ONE TIME. Finally ending the conflict as they both lay dying in the room where they were controlling Gandalla. BUT WHAT'S THIS? GANDALLA COMES IN TO ASSIST as strolls into the base with the combined music of the freed centaurs and Gold Dust. Gandalla seals his kill death ratio but burying the enemy base under his sandy form. (I have to say there was a very funny scene, there's an old lady Zanlightian that get her last words cut off by a falling column. The editor really wanted to take a piss on this show lol.) But Michelle and Yuuki get swept away by the sand for only Michelle to surface. It's suggested in the end that Michelle gave birth to her baby and gave it away to Emma so that it can live a normal life and that Yuuki DIED in the sand reappearing and disappearing as a mirage in the desert.

...

This show left me stunned. Like a flashbang in point blank range. I came out of this wondering about what was happening behind the scenes. Only Junichi Hayama could probably tell us but this show had so much going for it to get engaged with but leaves nothing for you at the end. I can imagine the staff might have learned to hate this show and they relayed their feelings with such an unresolving and breakneck ending. Almost textbook on how not to make a show and I really enjoyed the ups and downs as a viewing experience.

-Thank you for reading