Mazinger Z

Mazinger Z is a classic of the mecha genre. This anime introduced many concepts which we see at any mecha anime, for example: The robot is the last hope of humanity, being piloted by a human (preferably teenagers), mad scientists trying to conquer the world, cronies incompetent or strange-looking people, a proud pilot woman (do you remember Asuka?).

In each episode is the same plot: Dr. Hell sends his Mechanical Beasts, Koji Kabuto runs to Mazinger, background music resounds, and the battle begins. Many emotions and feelings are mixed in the battle, but in the end, Mazinger is the winner.

I saw this anime in the 1980s ... as a kid and I still like it. If you like the mecha genre, you should see this anime.

I know these words are not enough to describe it and see it as an adult is not the same when you were a child. This is my humble opinion. I hope you find it useful.

Unpopular opinion - I did not like this show. I watched the full thing so I can make a fair judgement but it's just not for me. Mecha fans? Definitely should watch. I just watched because I'm going on an old anime binge and wanted to see how much story they could put into a show that's only about robots. Surprise - not a lot. The main female character Sayaka makes me want to slap her; I know it's not unusual for male writers to be unable to really portray female characters in a good light, but wow, she is seriously one of the most ... incompetent characters I've ever seen. Her mecha can't even fight, and when she does get weapons, they're literally the most useless thing except maybe to distract the enemy for a few seconds.

When it comes to monster of the week 70's mech series, this is pretty much about as simplistic and bare bones as you can possibly get both in characterization, stories, and animation. It had its somewhat great moments and I think what kept me invested was seeing Baron ashura and his many antics and conquests to try and take down mazinger.(But certainly not as great as "Berge Katse" from Gatchamon. ) Loved the episodes showcasing the many mazinger upgrades as well and some of the stories were inventive and quite interesting in early parts of the series. It then built up steam quite a bit ... around the mid portion of the show and things started to gradually become more intense how ever it lost alot of steam around the last 1/3 of the series which i felt that i just wanted things to move on to the final episodes already.

The beginning of the series helped set the foundation of what was to follow and helped establish the characters very well and it felt fresh with each episode offering new and unique ways for Dr hell and his minions to win against the good guys. However, I feel what ultimately ruined my experience was as the series went on, many of the stories and idea’s the writers threw in felt very nonsensical and rehashed to many times. To the point where it felt that mazinger kind of suffered from an identity crisis and the writers even forgot what the initial character motivations were, especially on the antagonistic side.

For example, in the premise of the story Dr hell’s main goal was always to conquer the world. World domination was his ultimate goal and many of the MECH beasts that were deployed did just that, started blowing up cities and creating massive destruction in its wake but the writers of this series sort of shoehorned in the the idea that Dr hell and his minions are trying to take over and infiltrate the photon light institute and there where many episodes where he also wanted to destroy the photon light institute. So, you get this constant sudden change of character motivations and goals for the main villain and it just felt a bit strange to see that. It got the point where the writers relied to heavly on the concept of "lets take over that photon light institute because that is our primary objective" its like the writers were obsessed with this idea. Ultimatly it kind of derailed from its original story concept of what was established at the start of the series.

The series had some decent moments but lacked consistency and especially when compared to something like Gatchamon which aired even before mazinger, was quite a great deal a much better series with greater characterization, larger world with bigger set pieces, greater story arcs, etc. In Mazinger it is mentioned quite frequently that some how these characters are going to school, but we do not even see them attend school except for maybe a few episodes. I realize the series is targeted towards japanese children and needs to mainstain that thematic element of mechs and fights but the world could have been fleshed out a tiny bit more to showcase some other locations in the mazinger verse instead of just consisting of the battle ground locations. Overall, I would give this probably a 7/10. The ending really caught me by surprise and im hoping great mazinger is quite a bit improved over this classic series but will see. With all that being said, it can’t be overstated just how influential and important this series is to pioneering the mecha genre with many of the common themes and tropes you will see in many shows to follow. It certainly left behind a great legacy for mecha and that is something I will never forget.

Ah , the 1972 Toei Mazinger Z anime , this show is good , but the few problems are the episodes are all Monster of the week , and the animation is very janky , also this show is very Mazinger heavy in the episodes, and yes the robot is important in this show , nothing wrong with that , Koji is really based in this show , his views on Women is so me , he the best part of Mazinger , the villains are cool but they don't hurt the heroes much , except for background characters, this show is a ... classic of the Super Robot Genre , is it good ? Yes , is it dated ? Yeah , but that wasn't the creators fault , also it's longer than the 5 volume manga , even the anime should have been 50 plus episodes long