Yuusha-Ou GaoGaiGar Final

After the really excellent GaoGaiGar TV series, I was very excited for the follow-up OVA, which promised bigger and better fights, more robots, more enemies and more characters.

I certainly got all of that, but I wouldn't say it had the charm of the original. The TV series is approximately 25 episodes of classic super robot plot updated for modern audiences with plucky kids, brave heroes, talking robots and masses of explosions and shouting, followed by another 24 episodes of a more arc-based plot with its own exciting story and charm. It's a good solid show for anyone who loves or loved the classic super robots ... of the 70s and 80s.

The OVA tries to be more edgy and adult, with the stakes raised to massive levels and the villains more "mature" in design. As a case in point - GGG TV had for its villains a train conductor, a masked pilot, a ballerina and a sailor. Then it had a clown and a team of mutant enemies themed on body parts.

GGG Final has a dominatrix, the Grim Reaper, a doctor who injects himself to become more powerful and a plethora of creepy kids and other misfits. When you've got a PVC and spikes clad villain chaining up the female heroes and "disciplining" them, or an oversized doctor using his "Doping" powers, it's not quite as charmingly pulp as what you've come to expect. There's also a lot more nudity and fanservice, and to be honest it doesn't really work.

The battles tend to be inconclusive as the show saves itself for the final hour-long episode, something that mecha OVAs and movies sometimes fall prey to (Char's Counterattack seems to come to mind) and even then the fight relies on fakeout deaths and stalemates until its climax, at which point it's all over. The real problem is how it's set up in terms of power-ups. The intial fights, which pit GaoGaiGar against itself, are great. However, then the villains need to be shown as more powerful than the planet-sized Z Master who capped off the TV series - and this means the heroes need another couple of power-ups which only serve to make GGG more ridiculously tough and (in my opinion) a lot uglier than its original form.

The ending of the OVA also bears discussion - it attempts at the same time to be hopeless ala Zambot 3, and have a noble sacrifice, while also leaving it open for a sequel. As a result, it doesn't really work at all. When you've raised the stakes as you have, the ending either needs to be full-on heroic or actually tragic, rather than inconclusive.

All in all, GGG Final is a beautifully animated follow-up to the TV series which unfortunately misses what made the series so good. Overpowered robots and massive stakes do not instantly equal quality - as any Russell T Davies Dr Who finale, Godmars and Gundam SEED Destiny all prove. Similarly, the villains are dull for all their "extreme"-ness - I'd rather have plainer designs like the Zonderians, but at least they had personality from Penchinon's creepy laughing to the actually quite sinister behaviour of Primada.

It's worth a watch if you're a completist or a fan of the show, since the fights are well-choreographed, but in this case bigger doesn't equal better - and GGG could happily have been left at the ending of the series.