This is a show with an interesting concept: what if you had to do battle with an opposing force, bent on destroying your world? What if your opponent was an evil version of yourself? What if you were deemed the evil version and not the other one? That is the initial concept with “Gunslinger Stratos: The Animation” (“Gansuringā sutoratosu Animēshon”). Now, this started out life as a third-person shooter (easily seen amid all the fighting sequences), but morphed into this series.

In the year 2115, the country known formerly as Japan has been split into two parallel worlds: the Frontier S (Stratos) and the 17th Far East Imperial City Management District. Frontier S is an outlaw universe in which freedom runs rampant (damn those freedom seeking radicals!), while the 17th Far East Imperial City Management District is a totalitarian universe, completely bereft of freedom and is under constant surveillance.

While the two universes are just starting to fuse into one, the governments of each world initiates Operation Stratos, a world-scale protocol wherein a handpicked group of gunslingers, mercenaries, street punks and special individuals, each from the two universes, will be sent in the year 2015, to alter the past by eliminating the other side until only one group survives, erasing a parallel universe in the process. No pressure, right? (more…)