Muteki Choujin Zanbot 3

It's very rare to watch an animated series and be genuinely horrified or shocked by what you're seeing. The other shows I can think of that really achieved this were Legend of the Galactic Heroes, FLAG and Dougram, but that's more because they starkly depict war crimes and political corruption that can hit very close to home in the current political climate.

Zanbot is very different. It sets itself up with a perky theme tune and plucky kids as the main characters and you expect a traditional super robot show.

Then it doesn't come. What you get is something hard to watch at times simply because it ... takes a look at what happens if a genuinely evil force, one who don't care about anything except winning, try their hand at attacking Earth. There's not so much "wait for them to form their robot so it's a fair fight," or "send one enemy with an obvious weakness" in this show. At 23 episodes the pace is breakneck, going from the first unsteady steps of Kappei and his friends at the controls to a series of ever-more sickening atrocities on the part of the enemies through to a deadly confrontation in space and one final, shocking twist.

The main villain for most of the show is Killer the Butcher, a grossly fat and decadent alien who is essentially the archetype on which all psychotic villains in mecha shows try to live up to. And to be honest, with the exception of perhaps Gates from Full Metal Panic: The Second Raid, none come close. While humanity is fighting for its life, he's shown singing karaoke, playing pool, smoking what looks like an opium pipe and grotesquely eating vast amounts.

He abuses his generals, toys with his prisoners and is unafraid to use terrorism instead of a super robot to fight humans. His mission is the genocide of the human race - not conquest, only murder.

So from this alone, you can see how the show is very different from an average show ala Mazinger or Voltes. There's a telling quote from the show's most unpleasant arc, the human bomb arc, where he says suicide bomb attacks are more effective than any kind of robot.

The death toll is shocking, not letting up even in the final episode. And unlike Victory Gundam's absurd impalements, explosions and death by wheel, Zanbot's main character deaths are quite chilling and effective.

As if the show couldn't be any bleaker, there's another plotline that's particularly interesting. Humanity is shown to resent the idea of super robots, and placing all their hope in one team who they never knew very well, and understood only to be untrustworthy and eccentric foreigners. Simple racism and paranoia is as powerful an enemy in some episodes as the alien invaders, and that's quite interesting.

-

The animation is quite dated, and the sound design isn't half as innovative or appealing as later shows. But it's worth putting up with this to watch a show that challenges the super robot genre in a most effective way.

There are also some wonderful visual cues in it that fans of Tomino's other works will recognise as being used in later shows - much like Nadia had a ton of stuff that would turn up in later Gainax shows, Zanbot brings to the table an early version of the Ideon Gun (Space Runaway Ideon would air in 1980, almost three years after Zanbot) and a particularly climactic scene which would be reused in Victory Gundam almost exactly.

A little background on how i found this old school gem, there was a magazine that talked about all of Tomino's work before gundam, this was one of those anime's. I was reminded of this little article by watching Gurren Lagann (GL takes some themes and mecha designs from this) So after some searching i finally found this. And was it worth it. The story starts out as your basic monster of the week sort of super robot anime, but each episode explores how these fights effect the population and how they react to the pilots themselves, the show gets more intense with each episode ... with what i would call a perfect ending. For its time the animation is very good too. So if your looking for a great old school anime that really isn't well known, give this show a try.

If folks wonder where famous Gundam director Yoshiyuki Tomino got his infamous moniker of "Kill Em All", Zambot 3 is an obscure, yet notable, mecha title that first showcased Tomino's habit of creating high kill counts with mecha titles he would direct. A fairly standard entry in the "super robot" mecha genre at a glance, Zambot 3 focuses on the efforts of the Jin family who learn they are descendants of an alien race whose home planet was wiped out by the Gaizok race. Seeking to protect Earth from destruction, the Jins utilize the alien technology left behind by their ancestors to combat the Gaizok.

On ... the surface, Zambot 3 would seem to have some of the typical tropes of the "super robot" mecha genre. You have a giant mech and a couple battle vehicles that can combine together to form a more powerful mecha which are all piloted by talented teenage pilots. All the episodes follow a "monster of the day" story style where the Gaizok unleash a new Mecha-Boost mecha to wreck havoc on Earth until Zambot 3 and the Jin family step in to combat them.

However if you look deeper, Zambot 3 does have a number of story elements that made it stick out from other mecha anime during its time period and have become standard elements factored into creating later mecha titles. While past anime would have their titular mecha and its pilots accepted by the masses at the start of their title, the Jin family are not immediately accepted by humanity in combating the Gaizok threat as they are seen as being the main reason by many for the Gaizok invading Earth. The battles between Zambot 3 and Mecha-Boosts leave a good deal of collateral damage that still lingers as the series progresses and the aftermath of this is highlighted with civilians left homeless thanks to their homes being wiped out from the Jin Family and Gaizok conflict. There are also a few points where human civilians or military personnel attempt to sabotage the Jin family's efforts against the Gaizok because of the negative perceptions they have on them.

The show subverts the depiction of its main hero being seemingly flawless and level-headed in his actions. While main lead Kappei is a capable mecha pilot, the immaturity of his age is believably highlighted in this series as he often jumps into things without thinking his actions through, behaves recklessly in piloting the Zambo Ace and Zambot 3 during early episodes of the series, and his cockiness in being a mecha pilot often will rub the human populace the wrong way. This, combined with the mentioned collateral damage from his fights with Mecha-Boosts, complicate public perception to the Jin family's efforts of heroism against the Gaizok.

And finally, the series has a high kill count resulting from the conflict between the Jin family and Gaizok. While at first coming as the result of collateral damage or Mecha-Boost attacks, the conflict gradually gets more intense in later episodes when the Gaizok make human bombs out of their captives, Gaizok leader Killer the Butcher thinking of killing humans as a sort of game, and the Jin family find themselves having to make sacrifices in later episodes in dealing with the Gaizok threat.

Setting aside the praises, Zambot 3 still does carry a number of weaknesses that effect its quality somewhat. Many characters in the series lack much in the way of fleshing out as they either get tacked on with a character type or exist only to compliment some element of the series proper such as being a family member or controller of one of the pieces of alien technology used by the Jin family. The explanation that the series provides as to how Kappei and his two young cousins become capable of controlling the advanced alien technology used for their mechas is a bit of a stretch and reeks of lazy convenience. Also as this series came out in the 1970s, the animation is quite dated and was obviously made on a limited budget with the number of reused frames, occasional drawing errors, and other shortcuts employed during the time period that may turn off fans of more recent anime from checking this series out.

Still in spite of these flaws, I would at least recommend checking out Zambot 3 at least once due to how ahead of its time it was for introducing new story elements of the mecha genre that have become standard for more modern entries of it and being the earliest title where Yoshiyuki Tomino earned his "Kill Em All" moniker from his overall direction of the series.

Zambot 3 is an absolutely buck-wild anime about a squad of kids piloting mecha and learning about the true horrors of war! Death, terrorism, refugee crises, war crimes, PTSD, the whole nine yards! All the while featuring a catchy and upbeat theme-song which *totally* does not lend itself to some serious tonal dissonance the longer the series goes on!

Our main protagonist, Jin Kappei, is introduced to us with a motorcycle chase that culminates in an anchor-wielding duel with the leader of a biker gang. Said duel is immediately interrupted by a giant tentacle kaiju, and instead of running Kappei decides to wrestle the damn thing. ... This is all in the first third of episode one, and he has yet to even set foot in a mech. To say the kid is off the rails would be an understatement.

Kappei turns out to be the descendant of alien refugees who landed on Earth in order to escape the evil Gaizok, who as misfortune would have it, are now looking to destroy Earth as well. The Gaizok are led by Killer the Butcher (excellent name) an eccentric warlord who gets a serious kick out of death and destruction. Killer the Butcher is great, his clownish antics only look more deranged the more morbid his tactics become, and boy do they ever get dark!

For the most part Zambot 3 is a monster-of-the-week style series in which Kappei and company fight a new kaiju sent by the Gaizok to eradicate them and the rest of humanity. While it is a bit episodic feeling at times, there is a steady momentum to the plot. That city that was caught in the middle of a kaiju fight last episode? Well all of those people actually died or lost their homes, so now there's a vagrant crisis with people trying to escape to safety.

For such an old super-robot show it tackles a lot of themes that feel fairly ahead of its time. Our characters deal with the pressure of having to protect humanity despite being children. The villains resort to underhanded tactics that simple robot fights can't solve. Even though they're the heroes, the protagonists ARE partially to blame for the threat even coming to Earth when it did.

While it does have a decent amount of plot intrigue, the show is quite rough around the edges and is really showing its age. At many points it feels like the network wanted a light-hearted robot show, but the director wanted something that'd scar the children watching it for life, leading to moments where it feels like the show is playing tug of war with itself. The fights, while fun and ALWAYS ending on a unnecessarily large explosion, do feel a bit on the formulaic side. This is sorta standard for series of its era however, and depending on your tastes it won't be much of an issue.

On the audio side the one thing that bares mentioning is Kappei's voice actress, who is famous in Japan for playing the beloved character Doraemon. Unfortunately I have no attachment to Doraemon or his voice, and Kappei essentially uses the same exact voice; which is shrill and a bit on the annoying side. You get used to it, and the actress does pull out a solid performance when she has to get emotional, but it makes the character feel a little too cartoonish for the type of show they're in. Everyone else is fine on the voice-front, and the music is solid enough for the time.

In terms of animation its about what you'd expect. Lots of goofy off-model shots. Frames where you can see dust on the lens. Plenty of reused animations. Its pretty decent for the time all things considered, but the visuals are not the selling point.

Zambot is worth watching for the curiosity. The story that feels both dated and ahead of its time. The tone that ping-pongs between cartoony and gut-punchingly brutal. This series is the first full anime directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino, the godfather of Gundam, and it really shows. In many ways it feels like a prototype for his later attempts at expressing the horrors and cruelty of war with kids piloting giant robots, and while that may make it sound like its been invalidated by those later, more successful attempts, I think Zambot's still worth watching for the insanity of it all.

The show's only 23 episodes, and I greatly enjoyed my time with it. If you want some old school robot action featuring tonal whip-lashes like no other, check out Zambot 3, its a wild time. A strong 7/10.