Garo the animation: What makes an impressive female?

Where there is light, shadows lurk and fear reigns. Yet by the blade of Knights, mankind was given hope.

Garo: The Animation, known as Garo: Hono no Kokuin (literally meaning The Carved Seal of Flames), is a 2014 anime series, followed by a movie, based on a live action tokusatsu (think Power Rangers and Godzilla-style productions) franchise. The writer is Yasuko Kobayashi, one of, if not the, most prominent female tokusatsu writers in the business, having written Mirai Sentai Timeranger (Power Rangers Time Force), Kamen Rider Den-O, Kamen Rider Ryuki (Kamen Rider Dragon Knight), Samurai Sentai Shinkenger (Power Rangers Samurai), and several others. She has also written several anime scripts, probably the most well known of which is the first eight episodes of Attack of Titan, as well as portions of the Jojo's Bizarre Adventures adaptation. The basic premise of the franchise is that evil creatures, known as Horrors, infest the world. Horrors are born out of, and feast on, the darkness in human souls. Horrors can change shape, allowing them to appear as their victims or in other forms to hide among people and hunt for humans. They also possess numerous other abilities, including enhanced strength and speed, various kinds of magic, and many are several times larger than the average adult male. Humanity at large is unaware of and incapable of standing up to Horrors, thus the task of eliminating Horrors and protecting humanity falls to a secret order of heroes, known as the Makai Knights. The Makai Knights are well equipped for this task, being highly trained in martial arts, having various forms of magic at their disposal, and a whole host of allies, such as the Makai priests, who are magic users that serve as assistants for the Makai Knights, Makai Alchemists, the counterpart to priests in the anime universe, the Watch Dogs, basically the knights dispatch unit that gives them their assignments and serves as a governing body, and Madogu, sentient magic tools designed to help detect and track Horrors. The most famous and iconic tools of the Makai Knights, however, are their magic weapons, typically some kind of sword, that allow them to summon a special suit of wolf-themed armor that gives them their hero name (such as Garo, Zero, Zen, Gaia, etc.) and enhances the wearer's physical abilities and gives them other, more explosive powers. The series usually follows the Makai Knight known as Garo, a warrior clad in golden armor and who wields a large broadsword. The 2014 Garo: the animation is the first of currently three anime series based on the franchise, which usually takes place in modern times, but the three anime series take place during various historical eras, with The Carved Seal of Flames taking place in a Spanish themed kingdom roughly around the time of the Spanish Inquisition. The backstory is that 16 years prior to the main story, the king of Valiante fell sick. The king's advisor, Mendoza, started a witch hunt, claiming that a witch was responsible. The series opens on the execution of the woman believed to be responsible, named Anna, as she is burned at the stake. Rushing to her rescue is a man clad in silver, wolf themed armor. During her execution, Anna gives birth to a son, who is protected from the fire by Anna's magic before being rescued by the warrior. Following the escape, Mendoza orders a massive witch hunt to wipe out Anna's kind, succeeding for the most part over the sixteen years. However, Mendoza is actually a former Makai Alchemist who was expelled from the order because of his horrific experiments to control Horrors, all of which involved human sacrifice, a huge break in the Makai code, which forbids the harm of normal humans in any somewhat lethal way. Anna was actually a Makai Alchemist herself, and the silver knight was her husband, German Louis, the Makai Knight known as Zoro. The boy, named Leon, is raised by his father to become the Makai Knight known as Garo, dedicated to protecting the people of Valiante from Horrors and killing Mendoza for his crimes. Of course, being young and reckless and hate-filled, Leon is far more focused on the later than on that whole protecting people thing. In addition, the prince of Valiante, Alfonso, finally reaches adulthood, and receives a neckless from his mother that tips Mendoza off that Queen Esmeralda and Alfonso are actually decendents of the previous Garo (while the normal method in most Garo series to pass down armor is just for the previous wearer or the Watch Dogs to declare someone worthy to wear it, the method in this series appears to be only those who are decendants of a knight can wear a suit of armor, though it is never fully made clear). This results in Mendoza throwing a minor coup, just displacing Alfonso and Esmeralda, and Alfonso learning of his heritage, starting a rebellion, and taking lessons from Rafael Banderas, the Makai Knight known as Gaia to become a Makai Knight himself. The series follows Leon's and Alfonso's growth and quest to defeat Mendoza, before he uses his evil powers to take over the world and allow Horrors to run free.
As previously mentioned, the Makai Knights most famous and iconic symbol is their armor. Said armor is generally one of, if not the, most impressive and visually amazing parts of any entry in the Garo franchise, as the combination of practical effects and cgi used to help generate it and the fights with the Horrors that require it tend to be some of the most stunning visual effects on television (at least by the standards of 2005-2006 for the original, and by various other standards for the other shows), in addition to the in-universe power of the armor, which can allow a single well-trained Makai Knight to take on an army of Horrors, many of which are multiple times larger than the average human and a decent number of which are larger than a number of buildings, alone and still come out victorious. However, in all installments of the franchise, including the animation, a suit of Makai armor can only be worn by men. In fact, the title of Makai Knight can only be claimed by men, with women who join the order having to become priests or alchemists depending on the universe. While the anime never explains this, along with many of the other parts of the magic system in the Garo franchise, there is actually a reason behind this in the main universe. In the main universe, the suits of armor and their associated weapons are made of a material known as Soulmetal, which burns a human's flesh on contact. It is such a problem that, in the main timeline at least, each suit of armor can only be worn for 99.9 seconds before it must be removed to prevent it from causing harm to the wearer. Because men generally have higher physical abilities than women, men are allowed to become knights because they are able to actually handle the burn of the armor, even if for just a short amount of time. In addition, the armor was originally made when only men fought Horrors, so no suits of armor designed for women exist. I bring this up because of how it relates to the female characters in the Garo anime. There are four, technically seven, named female characters who appear in multiple episodes throughout the series. The seven are Anna and Esmeralda, who have little presence beyond motivating Leon and Alfonso, Ximena, German's love interest (as German explains, Leon received the Garo armor and German needs someone to inherit his armor, though he does actually fall in love with her), Garm, the morally ambiguous head of the Watch Dogs assigned to Valiante, Octavia, Mendoza's loyal subordinate, Lara, Leon's love interest who saves him after the first fight with Mendoza where Leon loses confidence in himself and tries to commit suicide, and Emma, a Makai Alchemist. There are also a number of named one episode females and a large number of prostitues that German likes to hang around, but none of these are really important to the story at large. Of the seven, Anna and the Queen are basically non-entities, serving really just to motivate Leon and Alfonso to action, Ximena is there to show German in a different light and to have his second son to pass the Zoro armor to, Garm is just a dispatcher and tactician, whose only real contributions are causing Leon and Alfonso to meet and having German work for Mendoza near the end as part of a ploy to wipe out a massive number of Horrors but would also wipe out a large portion of Valiante's capital city, Octavia is a villain, obsessed with Mendoza, to the point of using his cut off hand to grope herself to orgasm before absorbing it into her body near the end (I did mention that one of the genres that this show is in is horror, right?), Lara is really just there to drive Leon's character from angsty, revenge obsessed teenager to a true Makai Knight who protects the people for no reason other than it being the right thing to do, especially considering Lara dies after three or four episodes, and Emma. Emma is the sole recurring female character in the series who serves a purpose beyond motivating someone else to action, as well as serving as a front-line combatant, a role she takes to increadibly well. Through the course of the show, Emma only needs to be saved once, and that one time is after destroying the Horror that she has been hunting the entire series, and she has more or less passed out while falling through the air, so Leon had to catch her. Emma regularly eliminates Horrors on her own, both prior to the show and during the course of the show, with little to no help from a Makai Knight. Making it even more impressive are her choices in weapons. She relies on magic, martial arts, and a number of cords that function like razor wire to slice her opponents to pieces, all of which allow her to take on Horrors multiple times her size. Even more impressively, she does this without the benefit of having a suit of armor to fall back on. But all that being said, does Emma make up for all the other females in the story? In my opinion, she does. It honestly takes a lot to impress me when it comes to a character like this, and far too often it seems like this sort of character basically falls into the role of "character who talks a big game but can't deliver" and "character who demands respect but doesn't actually deserve it". Emma on the other hand keeps up with and in several cases, outright surpasses her male cohorts by being just a generally good, well rounded character. While it is sad that she doesn't get a suit of armor herself, if she did, she could probably solve every problem in the series on her own, rendering everyone else completely pointless. Emma is, in my opinion, a testament to how to make a female character awesome without making them overbearing and annoying.




Post Edit (4/5/2018): After reading the comments and re-reading the post, I realized I made a mistake. I mentioned at one point how the Makai Order does not allow women to become Makai Knights, which is true... from a technical perspective. As previously mentioned, the soulmetal that composes a knight's armor and weapons burns on contact. In addition to that, training to become a Makai Knight takes a long time, with most of the heroes of the series having been trained from birth. The Makai Order is also very small, and can't afford to be very picky with its members. I should have made it clear that technically, there is nothing saying that women can't become knights. Rather, women cannot be trained as knights, since there have been no women in the past that can wear the armor, and they aren't willing to risk able bodied people to do something that they aren't even sure is possible, and all evidence so far says that it is impossible. I should have made that more clear, so I apologize.