Spoilers for GARO: The One Who Shines in the Darkness are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
GARO: Gold Storm Sho (or Garo: Gold Storm Flight) is a 2015 tokusatsu series in the GARO franchise, and spin-off sequel to GARO: The One Who Shines in the Darkness.After the events of Vol City, Ryuga and Rian are now travelling together, soon ending up in Line City. After dispatching one of the local Horrors, they quickly discover that Horror sightings have been increasing. This is due to the machinations of a pair of married Horrors named Jinga and Amily that have released the seal on an ancient Artifact of Death known as Radan. The seal splits into two daggers, each of which end up in the hands of Ryuga and Jinga respectively.
The Golden Knight and his allies must now rush to claim the other dagger and prevent the awakening of Radan before it can return to life and obliterate all of humanity.
A prequel film of the same name acts an Origins Episode to the TV show while the film GARO: Kami no Kiba serves as the Season Finale. The story continues in Garo: Kami No Kiba ~Jinga~.
This series includes examples of:
- Action Girl: Rian and Ryume.
- Adaptive Armor: Once Ryuga accepts his emotional weaknesses while trapped in the Dark Mirror, the Garo armor gains a pauldron of darkness to it's jaw and breastplates as well as a cape that allows it to fly; specifically to counter Jinga.
- Aesop Amnesia: Ryuga's Character Development last season invoved the reigning-in of his reckless Keet and Blood Knight tendencies. In Gold Storm Sho, he is shown more temperamental, emotionally sensitive and reckless than he was before. Subverted as his Berserk Button was repeatedly triggered and he at least respects authority figures now.
- Air Jousting: Jinga and Garo enter into aerial combat at least once per armored confrontation, though his final clash with Garo Yami plays the trope more-or-less straight.
- Apocalypse How: Castle Radan, if left unchecked, can cause anything ranging from a Class 3A to a Class 6. Jinga's going for at least a Class 4. At least.
- Aristocrats Are Evil: Jinga and Amily spend nearly two-thirds of their screen-time sitting in their pent-house drinking wine and admiring the city view. They're also trying to revive an Artifact of Death.
- Artifact of Death: Radan is an Ominous Floating Castle that absorbs the life-force of all living things in it's path.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: How Garo topples Castle Radan. By channelling the life-force of the Humans Radan had absorbed, Garo manages to grow to Ultraman proportions and punch it to to death.
- Bait-and-Switch: In "Feather," Daigo's former mentor Seiji is portrayed in such a suspicious way when he suddenly visits Daigo's dojo, it looks like he's possessed by the Horror of the Week. He's actually expecting said Horror to raid the Dojo. He's right.
- Battle Couple: Ryuga and Rian, though they only elude to their feelings for each other until the Finale.
- Jinga and Amily also qualify, being husband and wife.
- Battle in the Center of the Mind: Jinga accidentily possesses Rian in a bid to seize Ryuga's body. Jinga then struggles with Rian in a mental mind-scape to convince Rian to give up and let him take over. It's a stalemate until Amily gets involved and rips Jinga out of her through force.
- Berserk Button: Ryuga has yet to fully recover from the events of The One Who Shines In Darkness,note and flies into seething rage whenever an otherwise-innocent person is transformed into a Horror or when anyone insults the value of life.
- Big Bad: Jinga and Amily.
- Amily eventually gets demoted to The Dragon as far as role goes Upon Jinga's revival.
- Black Market: D Ringo is heavily implied to ferry very dangerous, if not outright-forbidden, items to Priests and Knights in-need.
- Break the Haughty: Rian does this to Gald in Episode 9.
- Cape Wings: Garo Yami gains a spiked cape that allows it to fly and engage Jinga.
- Cool Old Guy: D Ringo, who wields an oversized guitar / Madou Brush hybrid against the life-sucking missiles fired from Castle Radan.
- The Corrupter: Implied with Jinga toward Ryuga, upon Ryuga demonstrating utter hatred for the former. He tries several times to get Ryuga to stop holding back and give in to The Power of Hate. It doesn't take.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Quite a few play out.
- Jinga and Amily deliver one to Ryuga and Rian in Episode 7.
- Rian to Gald in Episode 8.
- Giant Garo to Castle Radan in the Finale.
- Dark Action Girl: Amily.
- Rian during Jinga's possession of her.
- The Dark Side Will Make You Forget: Averted. Once Jinga and Amily became Horrors, they remember what happened that made them that way. They just stopped caring.
Then again, considering what GARO has established about Horror possession... - Deadpan Snarker: Gald.
- D Ringo gets quite a few in as well.
- Demonic Possession: Jinga attempts this on Ryuga during the battle to seal Radan. He gets Rian instead.
- Eldritch Location: Castle Radan. A Haunted Castle chock-full of Bizarrchitecture that's both a Life Drinker and a Humongous Mecha.
- The Dark Mirror as well, trapping Ryuga in a realm of Darkness where hopeful words themselves become crystals of tainted energy as well as giving darkness inside one's heart physical form as a monster.
- Evil Laugh: Jinga and his wife are both very fond of these.
- Exact Words: The whole reason the plot even happens is due to Jinga and Amily preventing a priest that can un-do the seal on Radan from "Reuniting with his daughter." After un-doing the seal, the Priest is reunited with his daughter....The sole bone from her body that's left of her.
- Flaying Alive: The helmet of Jinga's armor can basically be described as "Gai's helmet, skinned."
- Freudian Excuse: Played With. Jinga and Amily were once morally-upstanding Makai operatives until they came upon a village sacrificing children to appease a demon that plagued them. Despite the duo killing the demon (Which was a Horror), the village didn't trust them and instead used the duo's child as the sacrifice. Roaring Rampageof Revenge, followed by Horror Possession ensued. But, Jinga eventually reveals in the final episode that upon becoming a Horror, any ideas of revenge had already left his mind.
- The reason Gald hates Makai Knights to the point of actively opposing Garo is because A Makai Knight slaughtered people in his village when he and his little sister were children. Gee, who could it have possibly been?
- Fusion Dissonance: Inverted by the Horror fought in the first episode who is disguised as identical twin girls that can move independently from each other.
- Glowing Eyelights of Undeath: Castle Radan's Humongous Mecha form sports a ominous pair of bright-white ones.
- The Grim Reaper: Castle Radan's Humongous Mecha form, right down to wielding a Sinister Scythe.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Jinga and Amily eat fellow Horrors so that they can become powerful enough to control Castle Radan upon reviving it.
- I Work Alone: Due to a Makai Knight, revealed to be maddened Jinga himself, slaughtering the inhabitants of his village, Gald refuses to work with any Makai Knight. He Gets Better. See Freudian Excuse above.
- I Surrender, Suckers: Amily takes a gentler tone upon being taken hostage by the Knights. (Jinga had escaped on a chunk of the building, having taken Rian with him) After giving her and her husband's Dark and Troubled Past via Troubled Backstory Flashback, she escapes after tricking the Knights into returning her Madou Brush to her under the false pretenses of helping them out.
- Kill All Humans: The closest thing to a motivation Jinga appears to have.
- Living Battery: Jinga and Amily eat other Horrors so that they can become powerful enough to become these for the re-activated Castle Radan.
- Once Jinga actually activates Castle Radan, Amily sacrifices her body to enter a new form that turns her into this for Radan's Humongous Mecha form.
- Manly Tears: Ryuga, quite a few times whenever the value of life and people's happiness comes up.
- The Mentor: Daigo to a group of children training to become Makai Knights.
- Mook Maker: Jinga and Amily's penthouse is designed as an outright nest for Horror-spawn, with a barrier powered by Ki Manipulation that releases Horror batches every night.
- No-Sell: Once Garo grows giant-size to demolish the Humongous Mecha form of Castle Radan, his palm is enough to block anything and everything it sends his way.
- Omnicidal Maniac: Jinga, ultimately. See Freudian Excuse above.
- Ominous Floating Castle: Radan. Doubles as a Humongous Mecha.
- The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Jinga feels this way toward Ryuga after their battle at the warehouse. It escalates during their final clash.Ryuga: "I'm glad you're a Horror."Jinga: "And I'm glad you're a Human."
- Posthumous Character: Burai has a hand in Rian's development and is referenced several times, despite being dead by the time of Gold Storm Sho.
- Recurring Element: The value of people's futures, the futility of revenge and the consequences of crossing the Moral Event Horizon.
- Also, as per the title of the series, flight.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Jinga and Amily, once good people, massacre Homuro Village upon finding out that despite killing the creature that terrorized it, their child was used as a Human Sacrifice to appease the (already-dead) demon by the superstitious townsfolk. It didn't stop at Homuro.
- Daigo's Sensei Seiji goes on one against the Horror that ate the children he'd been training as Knights when it infests Daigo's dojo.
- Daigo holds himself back from engaging in one when Jinga kills his Sensei.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: Ryume is a Watch Dog, the Makai equivalent of a Governess. She helps out during the siege of both the business building and Castle Radan. She also helps in the attempt to purify Rian of her Demonic Possession.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Castle Radan, held in the limbo between the Makai and Jinkai realms with the Houken. Jinga and Amily give An Offer You Can't Refuse to a knowledgeable Makai Priest to un-do the seal and kick off the plot.
- Slasher Smile: Jinga does nothing but enjoy everything his enemies do two-thirds of the time, and is rarely seen without a smile on his face.
- Would Hurt a Child: Episode 9 is dedicated to fighting a Horror that specifically targets children undergoing Makai training.
