Anime Review: Gokudo, Swordsman Extraordinaire, Volume 1
There Gokudo was, just trying to have dinner as an old lady ranted at him about destiny. So he did what any sensible young man would do in that situation. Stole her purse and left without paying his tab! Back in his room at the inn, he discovered that there was nothing in the coin purse but a rock…which summoned a djinn that offered Gokudo three wishes.
Gokudo promptly wishes for babes, money and fame–but Djinn refuses. Seems that he can choose which wishes to grant, and won’t help out with selfish or evil desires. Djinn loves to lecture about morality. In an effort to get Djinn to listen more closely, the djinn becomes a djinnya! Before Gokudo can fully process this, the innkeeper hires the swordsman to find his missing daughter Asuka.
After scoring a magical sword he can sell for big bucks, Gokudo ditches the quest. While waiting for her “master”, Djinn gets drunk and dances on a table at the local bar. Gokudo is rude to her, so Djinn turns him physically female as well. They are promptly abducted by the people behind the recent kidnappings, and the adventure truly begins!
“Gokudo the Adventurer” was a light novel written by Usagi Nakamura and illustrated by Takeru Kirishima, which was then turned into an anime series in 1999. The series is a parody of heroic fantasy. Gokudo’s greedy, rude, lustful, kind of cowardly; generally the opposite of the usual hero of this sort of story, without having the cool black wardrobe or edginess of the typical antihero. In his backstory, he’s an orphan who was abandoned with a couple that turned out to be real jerks and taught him to care only about himself.
Gokudo, still in a female body, wakes up in a cell with also still female Djinn (who has lost her powers somehow), Asuka (who knows herbalism), Mora, a mysterious and beautiful seer, and Princess Rubette, a tomboy who likes fighting monsters more than dance lessons. The five manage to escape the cell, but then are lost in the palace of the Magic King. They run across the goody two-shoes adventurer Seigi, who needs rescuing himself, and has a surprising connection to Gokudo.
Gokudo and his allies of convenience defeat the Magic King and restore the true heir to the throne. But Gokudo finds the good life too stifling and sets out on another adventure with Princess Rubette tagging along much to his displeasure.
Gokudo gets sucked into a contest to determine the next prince consort of a desert queendom, which is complicated by the fact that magic doesn’t work right in the desert. This volume ends partway through that story.
Your enjoyment of this series will depend heavily on your ability to laugh at the main character being an ass. Gokudo is not noticeably a better person at the end of the show than at the beginning, and most of his supporting cast are fairly shallow types. Most of the bad things that happen to Gokudo are well-deserved, but every so often it’s because there are actual villains in the story.
The anime’s “meta” character is Usagi, a rabbit girl named after the original author, who provides scene changes and “this fight was too long so we didn’t animate it” transitions, but doesn’t interact with the cast.
I found the series funny, but some of the humor has dated badly with changing times.
Content note: body function humor, some sexism (especially Gokudo, even when he’s temporarily in a female body), slapstick violence.
Recommended for folks who like an older style of fantasy parody.
