[Switchblade]

It's great to see someone experiencing Garo for the first time, even more so if you convince anyone else to follow along with you. Garo is one of my favorite toku franchises and I think that when it's good it's some of the best stuff that the genre has ever put out and even at its less successful it's still likely to be both unique and interesting.

My favorite branch of Garo is definitely the Saejima shows, which include this series that you're starting now. I've watched it twice already and started a third watch last year, although I still have about 7-8 episodes left to go through (may use this thread as an excuse once you get up to that point). The first episode, though, I think I've actually seen five or six times by now.

So the first episode is pretty damn great, in my opinion. I went into Garo pretty blind outside of knowing that it was a late night show and that the director was kind of an auteur of tokusatsu. I think the first episode then does a great job of giving the audience enough to understand the basic premise of the Garo universe and a lot of this is due to having Kaoru as one of the main characters. I absolutely love Kaoru, she's such a delightful window into the insanity that is the world of Horrors and Makai Knights. That's not to discount Kouga, as he's also a fantastic character, just one that needs a little bit more time to open up so you really get to know his whole deal.

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Originally Posted by DreamSword

Starting off with 2005's' GARO. Granted, this is technically cheating because I have seen the trio of GARO anime already, but hey, baby steps, right? Plus this'll give me a convenient excuse to actually get around to watching it after putting it off for so long.

I really wouldn't say that seeing the cartoons has familiarized you with Garo. They have the Garo name, but they are all radically different from the urban fantasy horror genre that is real Garo's style. The third cartoon got the closest, but it still skewed far more over-the-top than what you'll usually see.