Chouriki Robo Galatt

Chouriki Robo Galatt is one fever dream of an anime from the 80s. What stands innocently as just another one of many original mecha IP’s by the collective staff in Sunrise, it differentiates itself from the rest by virtue of its pure insanity. I mean sure, plenty of Sunrise’s mecha anime of the time had gags and a sense of humour, but as far as I’m aware none had gags so consistently insane and intensely dialled up to 100 as Galatt. By no means is this criticism though, as it’s exactly what makes Galatt such an enjoyable experience.

The story follows a group of 3 ... lovable goofballs who pilot adorable little robot that transform into mecha, an ability provided to their robots by a crazed scientist whose been tasked by the government to build super robots to defend earth against alien attacks. That’s the jist of it anyways, as I honestly don’t care as much about the story of Galatt as much as I do the funny scenarios and gags. Most episodes are episodic shenanigans, often leading the main cast to absurd situations which is where Galatt’s humour is found.

The best way I’d describe Galatt’s humour is that of complete and utter insanity. First of all, the comedic timing and pacing is very 80s, think something like Urusei Yatsura, where it’s somehow both slow paced and incredibly fast paced. The best way I’d describe it is that you can have these drawn out jokes with very awkward pauses between when the punchline is delivered, with that awkwardness being what’s funny, while other times you can have very sudden and abrupt dialogue or imagery that happens out of nowhere. There are visual gags in Galatt that literally last a single frame, that’s how fast I’m talking. A mixture of that alongside the fact that so much random shit is constantly happening in Galatt makes for an almost mind-numbing experience where you can’t help but laugh at how absurd it all is. Take the first episode for example, during the big mecha fight at the end of the episode, the villain randomly asks the main character (Michael) if he likes egg custard, to which he is of course very confused by, and the villain just says “just thought I’d ask” ...
That’s it, that’s the whole punchline. I mean like, WHAT? That’s so absurd yet so funny to me. Something I also love are these recurring background characters who’re randomly interspersed between scenes. For example, the Dosukoi sisters, through which the anime will consistently halt the events of its episodes to show what they’re getting up to, which is always unrelated to the actual episode. This type of humour is very reminiscent of Heybot, another Sunrise anime, and while they don’t share similar staff I wouldn’t be surprised if Galatt was an influence in Heybot’s own humour.

If it wasn’t already obvious by the “Sunrise Burgers” shop found within the anime, Galatt was created by studio Sunrise (This joke would make more sense if I could add images to my review, but if you watch Galatt you'll see lol). There are many prolific names who have worked on Galatt like director Takeyuki Kanada and script writer Hiroyuki Hoshiyama who both respectively have worked on Dougram before Galatt. As well as prolific mechanical designer Kunio Okawara. A name that stood out to me the most is Toyoo Ashida, not only because his name is actually mentioned in the anime through a gag about Kamil getting abused in his introduction episode, but because of his work as a character designer.

He has done character design work for Minky Momo and Vifam, and may best be known for directing Hokuto no Ken and Vampire Hunter D (1985), but what’s most important for the context of this review is his work as character designer for Mashin Eiyuuden Wataru. Wataru is arguably best known for its wacky villain designs which are typically characterised as big burly characters with huge detailed heads and small bodies. Wellllll, this is a design feature you can find on some of the Galatt characters. In fact, a lot of the visual gags you can see with Toyoo Ashida’s designs in Wataru can be found in Galatt, like how when characters are running their feet move rapidly in a circle around their bodies, which you can see pretty much whenever a character is running in both anime.

If any of this sounds interesting to you I highly encourage you to watch Chouriki Robo Galatt and any of the other anime I’ve mentioned throughout this review. Gag anime are an absolute joy to watch, especially when they go all out on the insanity like in Galatt or Heybot. It’s a shame Galatt is relatively obscure (at least here in the west) but fortunately there are available subtitles out there. Thank you for reading!