Gachiakuta: Riyo... A Gun? Make that Sh#t Make Sense!

Senior Journalist -

The manga and mostly anime community is raving about episode 18 of Gachiakuta, which covers chapters 60 through part of 65. At the end of the fight between Riyo Reaper, a member of the Cleaners organization, and Noerde Hew Amozo, a member of the villainous Raiders, Riyo couldn’t beat Noerde, so she pulled out a gun to shoot her in vital mobility areas (allegedly) and revealed that she used to be an assassin. However, she had promised her Akuta team leader, Enjin, that she wouldn’t kill anyone.

Unpopular opinion: that scene and the one that followed made absolutely no sense. Riyo was literally dodging Noerde’s lightning attacks. Do you know how fast lightning is compared to a bullet?

Lightning is much faster than a gun, both in the initial development of the strike and the final return stroke. A lightning bolt can travel at speeds of around 90,000 to 120,000 meters per second, while even the fastest bullets travel at most around 1,500 meters per second.

Footage of Riyo dodging Noerde lightening attack

Let’s say the hair is not as fast as lightning. They were moving pretty fast.

If she was fast enough to dodge lightning hair strikes from Noerde, she should have been fast enough to beat her. You can tell the match was about speed. We have Semiu Grier over here dodging bullets (who is simply a receptionist whose skills wouldn’t work well on the battlefield, as the series states), but Riyo needs to pull out a gun to beat an enemy when she’s dodging lightning-adjacent strikes?

Make that sh#@ make sense!

Footage of Semiu dodging bullets using her precognitive abilities.

And no, being precognitive doesn’t make you physically faster. The glasses give Semiu the ability to change her perception of time, allowing her to see things at different speeds. It doesn’t mean she has superhuman speed. Perception of time has nothing to do with physical capabilities. Again, Semiu is not slowing down the objective; she can only see them slowing down, which is where “perception” comes from. But let’s give that she can move that fast because the world is built like that—to where you can move your body as fast as, or faster than, bullets. As fast as Noerde (queen hair lightning herself) and Riyo were moving, you mean to tell me a bullet was all it took to trump her?

I think a lot of anime fans are just numb to repetitive tropes, so they reach for anything that seems “different.” It's a new mental drug that gets worse with each generation. The need to feel and see something different in order to stand out in its own right, regardless of how unorthodox, chaotic, or nonsensical it is. I also think content creators see this as an opportunity to feed on the fan base that loves this series so much by overemphasizing and overhyping scenes and stories that are mundane or don’t make sense.

Some people will try to argue that it’s manga or anime, so it doesn’t have to make sense because it’s all fiction. That would be true if it were fully a gag series like Looney Tunes, Disney cartoons, or, in Japan’s sense, Dr. Slump, Gintama, or KonoSuba. But there are stakes in this series where even main characters can die… Supposedly… When you create a series that blends fantasy and reality, you have to keep it balanced in ways that make sense to your audience, even when a large portion of that audience consists of sensational, avid, or idolatrous supporters.

#Gachiakuta #GachiakutaAnime #riyoreaper #noerdo #Semiu #SemiuGrier #anime