Gravity Rush reminds me of Gainax Anime series, and floating Islands around Jirga Para Llhao

Kat could be from a Gainax Anime: After god knows how many years clean, I have been watching anime again. I am currently watching a bunch of stuff I always meant to but never got around to. Diebuster was first on the list – the follow up to Gunbuster and a most worthy follow up at that. Then I worked my way through Gurren Lagan and that was a glorious amount of fun. Truthfully, watching anime again has been fun. Next on the list is Serial Experiments Lain – after that we will see. But, going back to Diebuster there was a moment where I was reminded of Gravity Rush.

There is a moment in the opening credits where the main character, Nono takes off and it gave off strong Gravity Rush vibes – like when Kat takes flight. In truth this was a culmination of smaller observations regarding Kat and Nono – they seemed to share characters traits. I wondered if there were any tangible connections between the series.

Turns out I was not the only person to see some similarities between the Gravity Rush series and the Buster series. Before I ran with this idea I put it through google first – to see if I was a crazy loner with this idea. Turns out no. Not by a long shot. A plethora of results popped up from reddit to gamefaqs, all replete with the similarities between Gravity Rush and Gunbuster and Diebuster. The more I think about it, there is a bit of Gurren Lagan in there as well.

The big one is Kat’s Gravity Kick which is incredibly similar to the Lightning Kick from both Gun Buster and Die Buster. Or to give it the correct pronunciation SUUUPPPPAAAAA IIIINNNAAAZZZUMMMMAAAA KIIIIIIICCCCKKKKKK!

Both Kat and Nono suffer from memory loss that clouds their true identity. Both take a while to come around to their true strength. Both of them have their heads in the clouds. Both of them come good when everything depends on them. Granted, that could describe a whole lot of protagonists but with Kat and Nono, I could see parts of each character in each other. Also, as both the discussion links mention, lots of space monster fighting. And going into space.

Beyond the taking flight, the vibe of Gravity Rush (particularly the 2^nd) meshes perfectly with the Die Buster opening. The colours and the vibe – the colours and vibrancy of Jirga Para Llhao – Groovin Magic could just as well be Kat’s theme song. In the end of Die Buster (spoilers here for a 15 year old anime y’all) Nono sacrifices herself by warping away a black hole that threatens to destroy earth. Kat, at the end of Gravity Rush 2 does something similar to save Heksevile.

And in the case of Gurren Lagan (god that ended so awesomely) near the end, when all seems hopeless the hero’s get a power boost from everyone in the Universe lending them their belief in the heros cause. Similarly, in Gravity Rush 2 when all seems lost at the end the residents of Heksevile come together in song, giving Kat the necessary impetuous to push through the final obstacle. 

Gravity Rush could be a Gainax anime. And that’s awesome.

Floating World of Gravity Rush 2: Both Gravity Rush and Gravity Rush 2 have floating worlds. Each place hangs in the air, suspended by anti-gravity crystals. Beyond that common feature, Heksevile and Jirga Para Llhao are structured very differently. Heksevile has four districts, each of them a solid block of land. Gravity Rush 2 has three districts, and they are much more fractured. There are still come larger blocks of land hanging in the sky, but there are many splinters of land, some holding things as large as skyscrapers and some with things as small as a single house.

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My favourite part of this are the many tiny islands that hang in the air around the market district of Jirga Para Lihao. Whenever I boot up Gravity Rush 2 I find myself revisiting these places, sorely for the pleasure of seeing them. In terms of tangible reasons to visit these places, I have none. At one point they would have had gems hanging around them for buying more skills but they are long gone. There is no tangible reason for me to revisit Gravity Rush 2 with the platinum wrapped up, but moving around is so fun, bouncing around these floating places.

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These islands are some of best and beautiful parts of Jirga Para Llhao’s architecture condensed into tiny spaces. The billboards emblazoned with unique language that the denizens of these places speak. And the vibrant artwork that accompanies those words. The style of the buildings themselves vary greatly from island to island. One looks like a house that has been stretched out and never went back to normal size. Another seems like a religious building repurposed for something else. Others look like regular houses that have accumulated various architectural affectations over the years and are now wonderful combinations of various styles.

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Another thing I like about these places is the absurdity of their existence. For people living there they are separated from everyday life – I guessing shopping is a pain. And if they run as a business then I cannot imagine they would get too many customers. And that absurdity just makes me love them even more. Just some beautiful constructions hanging there in the sky, letting Kat bounce between them with her gravity powers. Sometimes it’s good to bin logic and common sense and all that stuff.

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Bonus images – love these places

A quick word on the compact worlds of Gravity Rush, and reminiscing about my time with the series

Fondness for the Gravity Rush series and its smaller than usual worlds: After getting the Platinum for Gravity Rush 2, I have returned to Heksevile with Gravity Rush Remastered, with the ultimate goal of getting that Platinum after never wrapping it up on the Vita. I am greatly enjoying the return – I had forgotten a lot of Gravity Rush, so there have been many pleasant surprises. But, as nice as this is there is a bittersweet tinge to this – Studio Japan (makers of Gravity Rush series) have seen a lot of departures with the majority, if not all of the creators of Gravity Rush leaving for different companies. There will probably be no more adventures with Kat and Raven. On the one hand, that is a little sad. On the other, I did think the ending of Gravity Rush 2 answered everything I wanted – so I am content from that point of view.  But still, no more Kat in any capacity is…it is a bit rough. But hey, I should not cry because it’s over – I should be happy because I got some of the most fun games I ever played.

While going through my Gravity Rush renaissance something dawned on me. These two games are the only two open world games I have ever truly loved – the only ones I have any special feelings for. There are some others, but they have qualifiers (more on them later). Exceptions aside, the games I have played with open worlds are Horizon Zero Dawn, Zelda Breath of the Wild, Just Cause 3, Death Stranding and Ghost of Tsushima – so not exactly chopped liver – far from it – but they all have giant open worlds.

The Gravity Rush series has open worlds of the smaller variety – – in the case of Gravity Rush it is a rather small open world – perhaps the smallest in an open world game – but that is why I love them. My favourite video game worlds are those by From Software, and those from Metroidvania’s. Both these worlds have a few things in common – they are both on the smaller side of video game worlds and both make liberal use of verticality. The biggest Metroidvania world will generally be dwarfed by any open world and based on my personal experience many open world games lack the verticality present in most Metroidvania’s (I probably should play games like Infamous sometime). Gravity Rush has both of these things, in spades. I have touched on the size of the worlds already, but both are full of environments with tall buildings and sheer drops that allow Kat to use her movement abilities (already talking about excessively on this blog) as much as possible. That combination of compact worlds with verticality allowing for fun traversal is one of the cores of my love for Gravity Rush.

Gravity Rush tells its story with comic panels – that I dig too

Thanks for all the fun times Kat and Raven – the whole series has been a blast.

Some Reminiscing with Gravity Rush: Since I am talking about playing Gravity Rush again with the Remastered version, I am going to talk about some memories I have from playing the game on the Vita, all those years ago. Nostalgia can have its moments.

The first time I bought DLC: The first time I bought DLC was for Gravity Rush. This was back when DLC was still a dirty word – it was with some trepidation I pulled the trigger on the (soon to be dead) Vita store and I had my first DLC. The DLC consisted of three mission packs, each with their own challenges, costumes ad missions – all of this is available in the Remastered version. There are not the most extensive DLC’s – two missions to a pack and the missions were not that long but the stories they told were fun and added to the game world (one is really off though – almost justifying being a creepy peeping Tom), the costumes are fun, more Gravity Rush gameplay was always welcome and the challenges really did demand the best of Kat’s shifting. I had a lot of fun with them. This was my first realisation the DLC was way more than just DLC is bad because of reasons – not to say there is not bad DLC but the concept never was inherently bad.

Lonely commutes a little less so: Kat and company used to keep me company on lonely commutes. Like Gravity Rush 2, I kept playing long after finishing the game because moving around in Gravity Rush is so much fun. I would just fly around, making my own paths and courses. The world of Gravity Rush has four districts linked by a loop rail line. What I would do on my way home from work is starting from Kat’s house in Auldnoir I would follow the train to each district, have fun bouncing from roof top to roof top/descending to the bottom of a place and ascending and then either working my way back to Auldnoir as my train neared the station or fast travel back from the final district if I overran my loop. I think that continued playing helped to solidify my love of Gravity Rush – because those extended playthroughs were done with no achievements in mind – I was playing for the love of it.

About the missing Platinum: A got a lot of the trophies on the Vita, but not all of them. Gravity Rush has motion controls, and on the Vita sliding (Kat can use gravity shifting to slide – like she is on a snowboard almost) was controlled by motion controls. I could never get the hang of them no matter how much I tried. Me and motion controls have never been great friends – and in this case the gulf was huge. The sliding challenges were utter shitshows and that is being kind.

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Gravity Rush had some cosmic environments

But with Gravity Rush Remastered, the sliding can be done with the analogue stick and pretty much all of them are finished with gold medals. I cannot give an exact time, but that Gravity Rush Platinum is coming, and a gaming regret will be laid to rest. I’m digging that.

About those exceptions: Those would be Shadow of the Colossus and Nier Automata. I have heard of Shadow of the Colossus classed as an open world game – which does make sense – because it is an open world. But I always think of open world games having all these missions and collectables and things to do whereas Shadow is one the most direct games, devoid of anything resembling bloat.

For Nier Automata, I only realised how much I loved that game when I discarded the open world and turned the game into as linear game as I could. So, while it is an open world game, most of my joy came after cutting that aspect out as best I could.