The Guilty Gear series has rocked its way through the fighting game community for the last two decades with its heavy metal influence and anime art style. But fewer people know that series creator Daisuke Ishiwatari cited one manga as a direct inspiration: Bastard!! Heavy Metal, Dark Fantasy.

You can probably see some similarities to Guilty Gear with the title alone. The series just got a new anime adaptation on Netflix last month so I figured now would be a great time to see how this 80s shounen manga inspired one of the most well-known fighting games around today.

What is Bastard!!

Bastard!! began as a 1988 manga by Kazushi Hagiwara who wished to combine his love of Dungeons & Dragons and heavy metal into one story. The manga was adapted into an OVA series in 1992 and recently received a new anime adaptation by Liden Films which was distributed on Netflix.

In a post-apocalyptic world that’s reverted back to a medieval society, The Kingdom of Metallicana is under attack from The Dark Rebel Army. While all hope seems lost, the priestess Tia Noto Yoko uses a seal-breaking spell on a young boy in her care named Lucien Renlen (the spell is being a virgin and giving him a kiss) to turn him into the demon sleeping inside of him: The All-powerful Wizard with the muscles of He-Man, Dark Schneider who died 15 years ago.

Dark Schnieder is titular Bastard. He’s a selfish, hot-headed, womanizer who wants to rule the world more than he does save it, but they’ve got no choice but to convince him to stop the invading armies of darkness.

The Heavy Metal Adventure

From here the plot turns into an admittedly pretty repetitive monster of the week format. A new enemy shows up, and Lucien turns into Dark Schneider to beat the crap out of them with tons of blood and gore. If you’ve seen any 90s anime OVAs, you’ll have an idea of what to expect.

The constant fights do admittedly get kind of tiring after a while but I give them credit for going all out. You gotta love a show where each enemy seems to need to top the last with how stupidly impossible their attacks are to overcome, like first fighting an Ifrit with fire hot enough to turn stone into lava, followed by fighting the ninja version of Guts who’s able to instantly slice people in half with sonic booms.

I should also warn you that the show is basically ecchi. Pretty much every female character gets incredibly horny for Dark Schneider, who’s more than happy to take advantage. It’s definitely not for everyone and while I’m not prudish, it can feel a little jarring just how quickly these women go from wanting to kill him to just wanting him in the span of minutes.

That being said, it does go along with how bombastic and strangely light-hearted the story is especially with the relationship between Schnieder and Yoko. If The Great Wizard Dark Schneider sounds like a 12-year-old boy’s power fantasy, that’s because Dark Schneider is technically a 12-year-old in a grown man’s body.

It’s established early on that Dark Schneider and the pre-teen Lucian are two halves of the same coin, a Jekyll and Hyde situation. Schneider is immature and horny because ultimately Lucian is. This leads to several comedic situations where he gets too cocky or bratty and Yoko has to come along and scold him. Even with all his power, he still gets embarrassed, even sulking in a corner a couple of times. It’s kind of cute and makes Dark Scheider feel a little more human.

The anime in general is very tongue-in-cheek as well as self-aware with Dark Schneider declaring he’ll win just because he’s the young handsome hero who always saves the day. I’m not the fondest of meta-humor but it gives the show a good amount of brevity that tells you not to take it super seriously.

Guilty Gear and The Metal References

So you can probably already see some parallels between Bastard and Guilty Gear. They both take place in a post-apocalyptic setting that has a medieval fantasy aesthetic but more importantly: they are both filled with heavy metal references.

While he never specified, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to imagine Daisuke Ishiwatari reading the name ‘Dark Schnieder’ and coming up with the equally badass yet ridiculous ‘Sol Badguy’. This is especially true when you learn that like Mr. Badguy, Dark Schneider is a rock reference, in this case to German Vocalist Udo Dirkschneider.

Other notable metal reference names include:

• Metallicana (Metallica)
• Lars Ulu (Lars Ulrich)
• Bon Jovina (Jon Bon Jovi)
• Geo Noto Sort (Jeff Scott Soto)
• Sean Ari (Sean Harris)
• Kai Harn (Kai Hansen)
• Di-Amon (King Diamond)
• Kall-Su (Kal Swan)

Beyond this several of the magic spells in the series are named after various bands, several of which would end up either being the names or inspiring the names of several Guilty Gear characters.

Finally, there is this one guy called Kall-Su who serves as a rival to Dark Schneider who looks like this in the 1992 OVA:

I’d go further to say that the two series also are somewhat similar in tone. Guilty Gear isn’t an ecchi but they both have this larger-than-life feel to them. The characters of Guilty Gear seem they could be fighting and striving across the hellscape battlefields of a heavy metal album cover and Bastard has that same feel.

Let’s Rock!!

As a long-time fan of The Midnight Carnival, it was interesting delving into Guilty Gear’s inspiration with Bastard.

The two series share a lot in common with their mixture of fantasy, metal, and love of muscular himbos but it also showed me how Guilty Gear has gone beyond its Bastard inspiration. Its memorable cast of characters feels a little more fleshed out than its predecessor and its world feels far more lived-in and complex (for better or worse).

I also find it interesting how Guilty Gear took the anime and heavy metal influences of Bastard and implemented them into a video game. The series’ pumping OSTs are the stuff of rock legend and perfectly syncs up with the style of the game’s combat: fast, aggressive, roman cancels, and air dashing to help keep you popping combos for all long as possible.

If you like Guilty Gear, why not pay a little respect to its’ great Bastard grandpa: the missing link between the gears and their heavy metal anime roots. If you’re still not convinced, check out its banger of an opening:

The first season of Bastard!! Heavy Metal, Dark Fantasy is available on Netflix, and the second season of the anime will premiere in September 2022.