The tale unfolds on Gandahar, a peaceful land that suddenly comes under siege by an army of automata known as the Men of Metal. These tireless machines sweep through villages, turning people to stone and gathering the statues for their hidden base. In the capital city of Jasper, the people’s Council of Women greenlights a mission to uncover the threat, assigning the young, determined Sylvain Lanvère to take the lead. The journey begins as Sylvain encounters a mysterious group known as the Deformed, a race of mutants who were accidentally created by Gandaharian scientists during genetic experiments. Though the Deformed hold grudges and fears, they, too, are menaced by the Men of Metal, and they offer their aid to Sylvain, recognizing a shared stake in Gandahar’s survival.
On the road to answers, Sylvain’s path crosses with Airelle, a Gandaharian woman whose courage and resilience light the way through danger. Together they uncover a troubling pattern: the Men of Metal have a hidden base where Gandaharian captives are frozen and then dragged through a vast portal, seemingly absorbed into even more of the metal army. Realizing time is of the essence, the two clandestinely slip aboard a nearby boat that sails toward the heart of the ocean, hoping to stay ahead of their pursuers while seeking a larger truth.
Their voyage brings them face to face with Metamorphis, a colossal brain-like figure at the center of the menace. Metamorphis asserts that while the Men of Metal suspect he is their leader, he neither created them nor commanded their assault. He claims a desire to prevent Gandahar’s fall and asks for time to untangle the connection between himself and the robotic horde. After a tense encounter, Metamorphis returns Sylvain and Airelle to Jasper, where a long-hidden secret comes to light: Metamorphis, like the Deformed, was an experiment conducted by Gandaharian scientists. Abandoned at sea due to his rapid growth and increasingly violent tendencies, he finds himself poised at the heart of a moral crisis. With Majestic calm, Sylvain is ordered to kill Metamorphis with a specialized syringe.
Back in the city, Sylvain confronts Metamorphis again. The giant brain remains steadfast in his innocence but reveals a startling twist: the Men of Metal come from the future, traveling back through the same portal that Sylvain first glimpsed. Metamorphis urges Sylvain to carry out the killing not now, but a thousand years hence, when the syringe’s effect would finally take hold. Skeptical but bound by duty, Sylvain agrees, and Metamorphis places him into stasis, beginning a century-spanning等待 that will test time, loyalty, and the nature of life itself.
A millennium passes. When Sylvain awakens, he is met by the Deformed, who explain the true origin of the Men of Metal. Metamorphis’s cells, now aged and unable to regenerate, engineered the creation of the automata and commanded them to travel back in time to capture Gandaharian life force in order to prolong his own existence. The metallic menace is, in truth, a byproduct of his fear of death, forged when his cells fused with time itself. The Deformed explain that they were cast aside as unwanted, a cruel echo of Gandahar’s past experiments.
Reunited with his allies, Sylvain and the Deformed join forces to halt Metamorphis’s plan and to rescue the Gandaharians who remain. The Deformed take on the Men of Metal, buying Sylvain the moment he needs to confront Metamorphis himself. In a focused, perilous confrontation, the Deformed sabotage the reservoir that feeds Metamorphis with new cells, distracting him long enough for Sylvain to deliver the syringe and end Metamorphis’s threat once and for all. With Metamorphis defeated, the Gandaharians, the Deformed, and Sylvain escape through the portal back to their own time, leaving the future’s danger behind and restoring peace to Gandahar.
Throughout this odyssey, the intertwined fates of creation and consequence, memory and time, reveal a landscape where beings born of experiment—and the choices they force—shape the destiny of an entire world. The narrative threads weave a careful tapestry of discovery, alliance, and sacrifice, inviting reflection on how communities respond to threats that arise not only from outside forces but from the echoes of their own making.
