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UFO Robo Grendizer first aired in Japan 50 years ago as the second sequel to the incredibly successful Mazinger Z, and it was the first anime to become a hit in Italy, France, and many Arab countries. But while it wasn't quite as popular in Japan as the first two series in the franchise and didn't sell as many toys, Grendizer stands far above Mazinger Z and Great Mazinger in the story that it tells and in the way that it tells it.

Let's get the simple stuff out of the way: UFO Robo Grendizer follows a young man named Daisuke Umon who is in fact ... Duke Fleed, the prince of another planet called Fleed. After his home was destroyed by evil aliens called the Vegan Empire, Duke takes the "guardian" of Fleed, the titular Grendizer, and crash-lands on earth, where he is found by Dr. Genzo Umon of the Space Science Laboratory. Joined by Koji Kabuto, the hero of Mazinger Z who has been relegated to sidekick, along with the eclectic Makiba family, UFO-obsessed father Danbei, young Goro, and Duke's sort-of love interest Hikaru, Duke Fleed and the Space Science Laboratory defend Japan and the earth from the Vega's march towards universal conquest.

If you've seen Mazinger Z or Great Mazinger, the setup should sounds familiar. Grendizer on the surface is functionally the same as the previous two series: protagonist gets in super-powered robot and fights bad people want to destroy said robot and the entire world; cue episodic, monster-of-the-week show that rarely, if ever, deviates from the formula. Grendizer improves a lot of technical aspects over the past two series, like sound design and animation quality, but still feels like a pretty standard 70s super robot anime. But as I've said for every entry in this series so far, you don't come to these shows for a challenge to storytelling conventions or a breakdown of the human condition—you come to them because giant robots are fucking awesome; and sometimes, if you're lucky, these formulaic toy commercials will actually have something interesting to say.

Mazinger Z opened the door for this aspect of the super robot genre, and there were a few episodes sprinkled throughout it that played up some character drama and complex stories of enemy soldiers fighting against their will and issues of pride and confidence among the heroes. Great Mazinger then ran through this door, going as far as to talk about issues of race and the cost of war on innocent civilians. But UFO Robo Grendizer is what you find on the other side of this door, a series which takes the interesting ideas of love, war, personal trauma, and conflicting character dynamics and throws them into nearly every episode. And despite the fact that the show is episodic, it isn't afraid to have its characters change: Koji learns to manage his pride as he plays second fiddle to Duke; Hikaru begins to fight so she won't be a burden to her friends; Goro and Danbei both end the show more mature than they began it. Halfway through the series, Duke's little sister Maria is introduced, and she brings a great emotional weight and is so dynamic with the other characters that her presence really elevates the rest of the story.

Duke himself is a fascinating character. While he seems to not change all that much throughout the series, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing because he is set up at the beginning of the story s a character defined by his past. Though he's usually the one saving the day in Grendizer, his primary conflict throughout the series is overcoming his own past and what has happened to Planet Fleed and the people that he loved. Because of this history, the conflict with Vega is much more interesting, much more personal. This is exacerbated during a number of episodes where Duke is brought face-to-face with other survivors from Planet Fleed such as his old lover and his best friend, and another episode in which a Vega soldier imitates his mother. Despite Mazinger Z and Great Mazinger both caring about their characters, Grendizer is the first in the trilogy to tie the conflict of its characters to the conflict of its broader plot, and this connection between the emotional side of the show and its narrative really works in its favour.

This isn't to say that the show doesn't have its issues. For example, plot points seem to be dropped pretty much on a whim. This happens a lot with the show's attempts at romance, with Hikaru's feelings for Duke and Koji's feelings for Hikaru seeming to vanish into thin air. Hikaru on the whole is sort of just there for the last 30 episodes or so, though she has her moments. And despite how well I think the show uses its monster-of-the-week formula, there are certainly some episodes around the middle that are boring and are, in my opinion, unnecessary bloat. That said, unlike the first two Mazinger series, I think the good here outweighs the bad. For the most part, even when there's no character development going on, even when the plot seems sort of stagnant, Grendizer is still enjoyable thanks to a good blend of lighthearted kids' show and and epic space opera.

The final seven episodes serve as a loosely-connected culmination of the series, where the Vega move beyond simply destroying Grendizer to conquering the earth because Planet Vega is incredibly unstable and will soon die. These episodes are, in my opinion, the highlight of the show as they up the emotional ante tenfold. Episode 68 is a brutal look at the horror of war and betrayal through the lens of Maria and her childhood friend Kane. Episode 72, which introduces Duke's ex-fiancee Rubina, the daughter of the King Vega, is for me the best episode of the entire Mazinger seires (and the first to make me cry). And the show's final scene which sees Duke and Maria leave the earth, venture across the cosmos, and return to Planet Fleed drove home to me just how far this franchise has come in terms of creating art within its commercialized formula. The shots are Grendizer flies across the stars remind me so much of later mecha series that I can't help but wonder if some young mecha animators and storytellers drew inspiration from this show as they did its predecessors.

Ultimately, Grendizer (and the Mazinger franchise as a whole) is a big piece of anime history that continually gets smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror. There's practically zero online discussion of this show, even less than Mazinger Z or Great Mazinger. I'm not so blind as to question why this is. It's easy, after all, to dismiss anime like UFO Robo Grendizer as "outdated" or "irrelevant" because of how far the industry and the artform has come in the 50 years since it first aired in Japan. Yes, the show is what it is: a 74 episode, monster-of-the-week, super robot anime. There are dozens of others like it, including two other shows in its own series that are both more successful and more influential. But I think that's missing the point.

I think it's important to know where the things you like come from, and though Grendizer isn't my favourite show of all time, it certainly helped lay the groundwork for some of them. While Mazinger Z will always be more famous, Grendizer will always stand out to me as a pivotal step in the evolution of mecha. Grendizer does what it does really well. And if you're interested in or curious about retro anime or the mecha genre, I think it's worth checking out. It might not be perfect, but it's definitely a good time. And along the way, it elevates the super robot from a campy and forgettable piece of anime history to something more interesting, more lasting, and more real.

On April 1, 2007, the first episode of Gurren Lagann aired in Japan. Widely regarded as one of mecha's last great hurrahs, Gurren Lagann would go on to become a beloved anime all over the world (and this reviewer's personal favourite). The next day, April 2, the first episode of Heroic Age aired. But despite sharing in Gurren Lagann's message of hope in the future and the power of humanity, Heroic Age would go on to be mostly forgotten, swallowed up by the sands of time and the ever-increasing seasonalization of anime. Outside of series like Gurren Lagann and Code Geass, mecha as a whole ... in the 21st century has had little staying power in the anime community, and despite the fact that I actually quite like this show, Heroic Age is a good example as to why.

To get the technical stuff out of the way, the show looks and sounds really good. The animation is fluid and pretty consistent throughout, which is pretty much all I ask for. I do have my issues with the CGI, but it wasn't so egregious that it broke my immersion. The character design is something between Leiji Matsumoto and a 2000s shounen, which I feel was intentional and spoke to the series trying to craft the tale of an epic hero while staying true to its mecha roots. And in that vein, the orchestral soundtrack really works in the show's favour, adding a layer of tension to what is, in some points, pure melodrama.

The story of Heroic Age takes its inspiration from Greek mythology and Hesiod's Five Ages of Man, but brings it into a space opera setting. The premise of the show is that the Golden Tribe, the original master race of the galaxy or the universe (this isn't really clear), eventually reached such a stage in their evolution that they left this universe for another. Before they did, though, they called upon other "Tribes" to step forth and claim their place among the stars. The show follows the Argonaut, a ship of humans (in this world known as the Iron Tribe) as they try to find their Nodos, a boy named Age, and reclaim the Earth from the ruling Silver Tribe who are hellbent on destroying them. Complicating this relationship is the presence of the Nodos, five individuals who contain the power of the extinct Heroic Tribe within them. There are the main "mecha" of the show, although calling them mecha is about as accurate as calling a bicycle a motorcycle. Nevertheless, the show presents the Nodos as giant-robots-in-spirit, and in doing so sets itself up in the vein of things like Mobile Suit Gundam and the Twelve Labours of Hercules simultaneously.

For the most part, this combination tends to work well. The political elements of the show, such as Dhianeila being forced to stage a coup against her brothers, or the Silver Tribe splitting into factions over how best to deal with humanity, makes the fantastical elements feel more believable and this world feel more real. At the same time, the show is trying to do a lot in its combination of classical and retro anime inspirations. Twenty-six episodes, despite seeming like a lot by today's standards, feels like it wasn't enough to explore this universe as much as I would have liked. This isn't necessarily to say that the story was rushed or cut short, but there elements of the worldbuilding, like Dhianeila's psychic powers, Age's backstory, or the technology of the Silver and Golden Tribes, that weren't as fleshed out as I thought they should have been.

And I think this issue is compounded by the fact the main character of Heroic Age is somewhat unclear, and thus the show isn't really sure who to focus on. You would imagine, from the title, that Age would be the show's protagonist. He is caught somewhere between a Greek mythological hero and a messianic figure, but there are times when he vanishes for episodes at a time, locked in combat with another Nodos as the focus shifts to the Argonaut trying to navigate a space battle against the Silver and Bronze Tribes. In a way, I appreciate this more than the monster-of-the-week format of older mecha anime--the trouble is that it pushes Age to the margins of the show. In fact I was surprised, watching it 14 years after I saw it as a kid, how little Age speaks throughout the series. This time around I've come to see the main character as Dhianeila, trying to navigate her people through the conflict against the Silver Tribe and trying to create peace in the galaxy. The problem I have with Dhianeila, however, is that she is a little too one-note to be a main character. There are only so many times you can sit in front of a tv and watch her gasp, "Age!", and she, too, is a sort of large-than-life figure with her powers and how the other humans venerate her as royalty. And, to make matters worse, the show develops this strange admiration/love between Age and Dhianeila that isn't all that believable because Age has the mentality of a five-year-old and the two really only share a bond through fate. This isn't to say that I dislike either character, but I didn't really find myself to drawn to either of their personal stories.

The side characters, though, are all quite enjoyable, and for me, that's where the real characters arcs lie. The characters of the Argonaut, like Iolaous, Anesha, Mobeedo, are all really likable, the other Nodos have interesting personal conflicts that carry them throughout the show, and as the series progresses and the Silver Tribe becomes more and more pressed by humanity and their own dark past with the Golden Tribe, characters like Rom Ror, Prome Ou, and Paeto Ou are all given the spotlight. I would say this is where the show feels most like an 80s space opera like Zeta Gundam, where the story of the side characters is just as compelling as that of the main characters.

At the end of the day, though, Heroic Age is an anime driven by its plot. Even if things are abstract or unexplained, you never get the sense while watching that anything is really out of place. Despite the slow pacing of the first few episodes and the seemingly endless fighting between Age and Karkinos, once the Argonaut returns to the new human planet, Dewey, the show picks up steam and really gets going on its epic journey. Beginning on a ruined, backwater planet and ending with the opening of a portal to another universe, Heroic Age takes you across the galaxy in a melodramatic, interstellar battle for the survival of humanity and universal peace.

And I think, ultimately, this is why it was mostly forgotten. Heroic Age is heavily indebted to two traditions, Greek hero myths and 80s mecha anime, that are largely antithetical to modern anime storytelling. As opposed to something like Gurren Lagann, where we follow and get invested in a personal journey of growth, Heroic Age is far more impersonal in that it speaks to something bigger than one person. It isn't really a story about anyone in particular, though it tries to be with its pseudo-love-story between Age and Dhianeila. Rather, this is an anime about everyone, about humanity as a whole and our place in the universe, in a way that comes more from hard sci-fi than the individualized, shounen-eqsue tropes of Gurren Lagann and many modern anime.

This isn't to say that one is better than the other, and if you look at my favourites you'll see which one I prefer personally. At the same time, I think there's a place for stories like this. Unfortunately, they don't really get told anymore. The space opera is a dying genre, and though Heroic Age isn't nearly the best that I've seen, I do give it credit for trying to do something new with its retro mecha inspirations and bringing them into the 21st century. Eighteen years after it first aired, it's fair to say that it hasn't really translated to the rest of the anime industry like Gurren Lagann has, but I do hope that, like Age, shows like this come back at some point--and when they do, they bring us to a new world of space opera mecha that speaks to our own times the way Gundam did to the 70s and 80s.

If Mazinger Z is the forgotten legend, what does that make its sequel, Great Mazinger? Its score is about .2 points lower than its predecessor, and there is little if any online discussion about Great Mazinger as a series. While this isn't too surprising considering it's been 50 years since its release and that Mazinger Z is by far the more influential series, I do think Great Mazinger deserves more respect than it gets for taking the episodic super robot formula and improving it, turning it into something far more watchable and far more enjoyable.

Great Mazinger picks up right where Mazinger Z leaves off and ... follows Tetsuya Tsurugi and his friends and allies at the Science Fortress Institute as they take on the Emperor of Hell and his army with the titular super robot, Great Mazinger. If that sounds familiar, it should. The premise is functionally the same as that of Mazinger Z, and the episodic structure the show uses to tell this story is pretty much the same, as well. But it's what Great Mazinger does with this structure that sets it apart from its predecessor.

There is a notable uptick in quality in the animation. There were a few moments in Mazinger Z that did some pretty cool stuff with shading, but it's nothing compared to the lightwork that does on in Great Mazinger. Great Mazinger's signature move, Thunder Break, is a testament to how good the animation team got at portraying flashing light, and the different uses of lightning throughout the series showcase this well. More generally, the battles just feel more fluid and cleaner as a whole, and there are some frankly amazing-looking shots of character faces and Great Mazinger just looking cool.

The other notable difference in the presentation of the two series is that Great Mazinger feels like an actual super robot. Surely this is influenced by me being a modern viewer, used to a certain style of robot associated with the mecha genre, but the upgrades made to Great Mazinger from Mazinger Z make it feel more like the all-powerful weapon it should be. The Thunder Break really helps drive this point home, as does the fact that Great Mazinger's wings are inside of it and controllable at any time, not leaving it reliant on some separate device that frankly left Mazinger feeling a little more campy.

In fact, I think the biggest improvement Great Mazinger makes is that it tones down the campiness and frivolity of the original. Tetsuya and Jun are far more serious characters than Koji and Sayaka, and you can feel this in their interactions. Kenzo, the head of the Science Fortress Institute, feels a little more intimidating, a little more in command, than Professor Yumi did in Mazinger Z. All in all, the show tends to spend less time on hijinks and shenanigans, and what time it does spend on them often influences the plot of the episode in some way or another, making each episode--and the series as a whole--feel a little more connected with its tone and themes.

Even in a series that's episodic, it's a wonderful thing when the characters feel like people. It's a good feeling as a viewer when you can watch them grow and progress over the course of 56 episodes, however minimal this development may be. And while I don't think anyone, even in 1974, was coming to Great Mazinger for character writing and psychological drama, I do appreciate that this show went further than its predecessor in dealing with its character. Koji, Sayaka, Boss, and all the rest often feel like caricatures in Mazinger Z, shallow representations of character tropes that are static and unchanging. And while I praised Mazinger Z for learning how to tell dramatic and compelling stories within its episodic formula, Great Mazinger goes a step beyond in writing internal drama for its characters, and allowing them to grow because of it.

For example, there's a great episode in the first half of the series where Jun deals with feelings surrounding the colour of her skin, learning that it isn't someone's race or gender that makes them who they are, but what's inside. Around the midway point of the series, there are a couple of episodes where Shiro learns that Kenzo is actually his father who he thought was dead, and dealing with that new information. There's another episode where Tetsuya develops a fear of death piloting Great Mazinger, and another where he comes face-to-face with the consequences of his battles as a little girl's dog is killed in a fight. And finally, there's the consistent reminder of the fact that Tetsuya and Jun are orphans who fight as they do to save others from losing everything like they did. Whereas Mazinger Z felt as though it was mostly about the super robot, there are many episodes where Great Mazinger proves it is about the people inside and behind the mecha that matter.

The final four episodes of the series are a great culmination to this newfound interest in its characters. Koji returns from America and steps back into Mazinger Z to help fight the Great Marshal of Hell (who, by the way, is the reborn Dr. Hell who Koji defeated) and the impenetrable battle fortress Demonica. This reunion between Koji and Kenzo as father and son leaves Tetsuya feeling alone, as though his family has been taken from him. These feelings of loneliness ultimately lead to selfishness from Tetsuya, which in turn leads to Kenzo's death. It's the lowest moment of either series and it forces Tetsuya to admit his mistakes and understand that Kenzo really did love him as a son and that the family he was looking for was there all along. It's a really nice end to a storyline that had been lingering throughout the series, and raises the stakes not only by killing an important character but by asking serious questions of the protagonist, and allowing consequences for his actions. It helps that the animators did this really cool thing with Koji's eyes that made him look a little evil, certainly a little jaded, and overall I thought this drama worked wonderfully.

None of this, however, is to say that Great Mazinger is perfect, and while I do think that it solved a lot of the issues present in Mazinger Z, I also think by doing so it created some different problems. The first is that because of the more serious approach to the series and the battles, the more comedic side of the series feels a little out of place and a little more annoying than it did before. I'm talking specifically about Boss, Nuke, Mucha, and Shiro, the holdovers from Mazinger Z. Boss and his gang especially went from probably my favourite characters of Mazinger Z to my least favourite in Great Mazinger, all because they didn't really fit with what the show was tryng to do. Similarly, Shiro felt much whinier and much more childish than he did in the previous series because he was contrasted with adults instead of teenagers who also tended to act a little childish. The result of these characters being there and plotlines still being written for them was that there were times when the show felt confused, when it wans't sure how campy to be or how serious to be, caught between the light-heartedness of Mazinger Z and the more serious direction Great Mazinger began to lean in.

This series also has a big issue with pacing. There are a number of episodes where the majority of the episode is just the battle. And while I do in some ways prefer this to Mazinger Z spending half an episode on nothing, I don't think the fights are interesting enough to warrant 17 minutes, either. There are also a few times where an episode ending showed the enemies celebrating the defeat of Great Mazinger only for it to appear a moment later safe and back at the SFI, with no acknowledgement from the antagonists. There were only a few of these instances but they were pretty jarring and screamed of the staff trying to fit as much in as possible. Speaking of cramming, Sayaka's inclusion in the last two episodes literally came out of nowhere. She kind of just shows up in a scene, and it's as though she's always been there, which again speaks to issues with pacing. It's more on an episode-to-episode basis rather than the pacing of the series overall, but still, it does leave things feeling a little cheap.
The question, of course, is does it hold up today? To be honest, I'm not sure. I think it's far more watchable than Mazinger Z, mainly because of the improved animation and character writing, but as with its predecessor I think you can leave it on the shelf unless you're a mecha nerd. One thing I will say is that it's influence, while not comparable with Mazinger Z, is definitely underrated. I only realized while watching how much of an impact it had on my favourite anime, Gurren Lagann, with it's Drill Punch and Thunder Break and two-faced enemies.

But while Mazinger Z might have had a greater impact, I do feel like Great Mazinger is the better show, and, at least for me, far more enjoyable. It takes some really great steps forward and while it doesn't always work perfectly, I have to give the series credit for trying and ending up in a pretty cool place.

I think it's fair to say Great Mazinger is the forgotten younger brother of the franchise, but I don't think it should be. It's a good show in its own right, and I hope it one day it gets that respect.

Mazinger Z is a certified classic and one of the most influential anime of all time. It single-handedly began the mecha genre as we know it today by introducing the concept of a human-piloted giant robot, it's been referenced in countless other series, manga, and games, and while it was airing in Japan had some of the highest audience ratings ever seen for an anime. It is, without a doubt, in the anime hall of fame.

So why does no one talk about it?

The story of Mazinger Z is as simple as you can get. A bad dude named Dr. Hell and his crony Baron Ashura ... have created an army of mechanical beasts to take over the world. Enter Kabuto Koji, a hot-headed, motorcycle-riding teenager who is given the power to control his grandfather's ultimate creation: the giant robot Mazinger Z. With some guts, some quick thinking, and the help of his friends at the Photon Light Institute, Koji manages to save the day and defend Tokyo from Dr. Hell and the mechanical beasts.

And this is pretty much the entire series, because after the first few introductory episodes the story becomes a campy, monster-of-the-week series that sees the exact same formula play out every episode: Dr. Hell/Baron Ashura/Count Brocken hatches a new scheme to defeat or steal Mazinger Z or destroy the Photon Light Institue, trouble ensues and they almost succeed, and then Koji comes in, often at the last minute, and saves the day in Mazinger Z. It's simple, it's effective, and it's pretty boring--so boring, in fact, that if you look up whether to watch the series or not on google, most people will tell you to only watch a few episodes or skip it all together.

Part of the problem is that it's old. 70s animation simply doesn't hold up today the way 80s or 90s animation does. It feels really cartoony, and doesn't really have anything that the modern anime fan associates with the medium. The movement isn't very fluid, the character's mouths don't always move, and in the early episodes, a lot of the fighting is just Mazinger Z standing still. The music isn't much better in this regard, and even though there are some highlights, it gets tiring listening to the Jet Scrander theme every time Koji uses it.

Where the series really shows its age is with its characters. A lot of them feel like stock characters--and while part of that is due to the popularity of Mazinger Z and the show really codifying the tropes of the hot-blooded mecha protagonist and the pseudo-action heroine into popular anime culture, the show doesn't really help itself by eschewing pretty much all character development in favour of action. There are some exceptions to this, like when Shiro comes to accept the death of his parents in one of the final episodes, or how we see Baron Ashura getting more insecure about their position as Dr. Hell's right hand as their failures mount up over time. But for the most part, these all happen within self-contained episodes, and it's pretty clear the show is far more interested in the giant robots and the toys they can sell than the characters inside of them. But honestly, I think that's fine.

Despite the series feeling like a bit of a slog at times, Mazinger Z never tries to be anything that it isn't. It finds its formula early on and sticks to it, for better or worse, and rides it out for 92 episodes. But as the series goes on, the animation gets a bit more fluid, the soundtrack gets slightly more interesting, and the writers figured out how to tell better stories within their established formula. Take Episode 52, for example, which sees Koji on the brink of death and Sayaka and the rest of his friends distraught over possibly losing him. Sayaka sort of takes charge by piloting Mazinger Z and Boss steels himself to die for Koji and calls him his best friend. Another episode that absolutely nails this formula is Episode 67, my favourite episode of the series, where Koji meets a girl named Erika who turns out to be a cyborg and a spy from Baron Ashura. Sure, things end up the same way at the end, and Koji is the same person in Episode 68, but the highlights of this series aren't when the formula is challenged, but the little emotional moments within these episodes that make them stand out.

The final 7 episodes serve as a sort of capstone to the series, and even though it still follows its episodic formula, you can feel the tension heightening in preparation of the final battle, which comes and passes with the death of Dr. Hell and Count Brocken in episode 91. Episode 92 serves as a transition to the next series, Great Mazinger. Mazinger Z is destroyed and Koji and Sayaka are shipped off to America to study, which is to ultimately make way for a new protagonist, Tetsuya Tsurugi, to take the spotlight and defend the world from and even greater threat, the Emperor of Darkness. And so the series ends with the promise of more cool robot fights on the horizon, and of course more robots to turn into action figures, Mazinger Z all but forgotten in the final scene of its own show.

So, to go back to the earlier question: why does no one talk about Mazinger Z? Is it the fact that no one wants to watch 92 episodes of episodic, campy slop? Is it the fact that it's been surpassed by a ton of series that it inspired? Or is it the fact that the things that the show does are so ubiquitous that we forget where they came from?

I think it's all of the above. And I also think it's because mecha as a genre just isn't important anymore. But Mazinger Z inspired countless other mecha anime in the 70s, which in turn inspired things like Gundam and Macross, which inspired things like Gunbuster and Evangelion, and so on and so forth. Needless to say, without Mazinger Z, the anime industry wouldn't even be close to the same as it is today.

But does that make it a good show? It makes it an important show, for sure, and it's definitely iconic. But if I wasn't a mecha fan, it's likely I would have just left this on the shelf, and unless you're really into mecha or the history of anime, I think it's safe for you to do the same. All in all, it's 92 episodes of campy and formulaic giant robot action that really doesn't stand the test of time.

But it was important enough for its time that it doesn't really matter. Just like Great Mazinger takes over in the last episode, so too did other mecha series take over where Mazinger Z left off, turning the genre into a bonafide gold mine of storytelling and character writing, and giving birth to some of my favourite shows, none of which would have existed without this 1972 toy commercial.

So, thanks Mazinger Z. You were pretty cool.

Shine, our star! Shine forever!

Yoshiyuki Tomino is without a doubt most famous for the creation of Mobile Suit Gundam, the show that eschewed the often campy and commodified super robot genre in favour of a more mature, realistic look at what would happen when robots the size of buildings are used as tools of war. But two years prior to this, Tomino directed a little anime called _Muteki Choujin Zambot 3_ in which he takes his first swing at deconstructing the super robot. And despite the show's flaws, I have to say he did a really good job of it.

The series starts out like a ... lot of mecha shows did in the 70s: aliens attack, preteen boy falls into the cockpit of a giant robot, and miraculously saves the day (in Zambot, this is done through sleep training--the three pilots supposedly endured months of training in their sleep to turn them into ace pilots). Cue monster-of-the-week battles where the good guys always win and eventually become the heroes of the earth. For the first couple of episodes it seems as though this is what Zambot is. It sets itself up as a generic, kid-friendly show where the heroic Jin family takes down the evil Gaizok to save the world. But just as soon as Zambot turns down this path, it immediately throws it off-course, because while Kappei and his cousins Uchuta and Keiko do always save the day, it's never done without collateral damage. Often times, it's cities and towns and the lives in them. Many times, it's interpersonal relationships between the pilots and their friends. Whatever the case, the series never lets the Jin family--and by extension, the viewer--forget that battles involving giant robots and aliens are dangerous, destructive, and most importantly, horrifying.

There are many scenes throughout this show that emphasize civilians fleeing as a battle begins (a few minutes into the third episode, a woman screams to be let onto a bus that has just filled up and is about to leave the city--only for she and everyone on the bus to be frozen to death and disintegrated a second later). There are also a lot of scenes that emphasize the sheer scale of the battle, but not in an "oh-wow-robots-are-so-cool!" kind of way, but an "oh-shit-this-thing-could-crush-us-at-any-moment" kind of way. My favourite example of this is in episode 5, where the Zambot cuts off the wing of an enemy and it falls onto a ship below.

The angle of the shot tells you everything you need to know about _Zambot_'s priorities. It's interested, at the end of the day, in the humans affected by these robots. Even when Zambot is fighting, it often feels like a backdrop to the human drama of the episode. While it does play into a lot of the conventions of the super robot genre (hot-blooded protagonist, named attacks, monster-of-the-week storytelling), it's also challenging this formula by giving us a lot of this from the perspective of the civilians on the ground. This is why after the wing falls on the boat, the show spends the next two minutes following Kouzuki as he is separated from his sister by the explosion of the ship and he and his mother are broken up by the resulting tsunami. And in a more direct reference to the formula, there is a moment in episode 19 where Butcher the Killer wants to send out a second monster to attack the Zambot and his assistant essentially tells him that they've already sent one out today. "I don't care," says Butcher. "Today is a bargain sale!" Meaning, forget the toys that this show is supposed to be selling--let's win.

Now, I'm not going to pretend like Zambot is perfect. There are a lot of issues, especially looking back on it 46 years later. The pacing is slow in certain parts, which makes it hard to binge. The animation for the most part is outdated and nothing special. The soundtrack is repetitive and in my opinion doesn't do the best job of highlighting the show's emotional moments (although the opening and ending are FIRE).

What will kind of make or break the series depending on how you look at them are the characters. Pretty much everyone outside of Kappei is a stock character from the 70s, and you could likely copy and paste them into any other mecha and they would fit just as well. But Kappei is an interesting one. He starts out as this incredibly annoying, arrogant, whiny little kid who is thrown headfirst into this battle to save the world, but treats it all as a game. He doesn't understand why civilians hate him and his family, and he doesn't understand why his friend Kouzuki has betrayed him after Kouzuki is separated from his family as a direct result of the Zambot's actions. But over the course of the series, after seeing the destruction the battles cause first-hand and losing his own friends and family, Kappei comes to realize his responsibility as a pilot of the Zambot and sees himself as more of a soldier who needs to protect the earth. I really liked Kappei's arc, and his being the main character, that really boosted the show for me, but I can understand how he would be too big of a turn-off for some. Kouzuki has the inverse character arc, where he begins blaming Kappei and the Jin family for everything before realizing that they are not responsible for the Gaizok attack and coming to understand that they're the only ones who can defeat the enemy. I like Kouzuki's character development, although there are some parts I wish were fleshed out a bit more.

The Gaizok are another interesting bunch and another example of this show beginning to blur the lines between super robot and real robot. Butcher the Killer and his minions are in every way the campy villains of a kid's anime. But for me, this plays into the show's favour. The contrast between these goofy villains throwing rock concerts and taking bubble baths on a giant alien mothership and the absolute destruction and despair that they are unleashing below is honestly really terrifying. Butcher the Killer isn't really that scary on his own, but when you see what he's capable of doing the humour of his scenes evokes more of a nervous laughter than anything with the thought that he could very well destroy the world. Once again, this is Tomino taking the standard super robot formula of the 70s and turning on its head.

Actually, I think that's the wrong way to phrase it. This show doesn't really turn the genre on its head, like Gundam did two years later. Rather, it just plays everything straight, without the overriding inclination for everything to work out.

Perhaps the most important part of the series is the end (where, by the way, the animation gets surprisingly amazing), which is where "Kill 'Em All" Tomino first got his nickname. While we're not even close to Ideon levels of despair, the last few episodes of _Zambot_ feature the deaths of most of the main cast save for the mothers, children, and civilians. And even though these deaths are sort of gratuitous (Uchuta and Keiko ramming into the Bandok comes to mind--come on, Tomino, LEAVE ME A SHRED OF HAPPINESS), I think they do two really important things: first, they double down on the series' darker themes. If this is really the war we're led to believe it is, it makes sense that people die. That it all happens in the last two episodes might be a little convenient, but I still don't think the sense of despair of the last few episodes was misplaced, and if anything it heightened the finale for me. But the second thing it does is leave Kappei as the only person able to answer the series' central question: are humans inherently selfish creatures that don't appreciate others, or are we inherently good and able to thank one another for being there for us?

At the end of the series, Kappei is the only participant of the final battle left alive. Keiko, Uchuta, Ichitaro, and their fathers and grandparents all gave their lives so that Kappei could defeat the Gaizok, save the earth, and live. And after the Gaizok is defeated (the true Gaizok, the supercomputer that was commanding Butcher), it asks Kappei why he fought if no one on earth is going to thank him for saving them. Kappei eventually falls back to earth and is surrounded by a crowd of people who rush out to him, calling out to him as a hero. But I personally don't think this is much of an answer to the Gaizok's question. Are the people cheering for Kappei out of appreciation and a new understanding (which was hinted at throughout the series by a few civilians who intended to change public opinion)? Or are they just cheering for him because they're finally safe?

I don't know the answer, and I don't know if Kappei does either. The earth is safe, but at what cost? The people are only seen cheering for him--do they care about the fallen Jin family? I think the last shot of him looking up into space, remembering and realizing what's happened, is really fitting. There is no definite answer, only a memory that he--and the viewer--has to carry.

It took me reading Haikyuu!! To realize that I like sports manga. It took me reading Slam Dunk to realize I love them. This is a manga about high school basketball, and it's a masterpiece. And this is me gushing about it.

First thing’s first: the art is spectacular on the whole. While there are some drawings that felt slightly off (the shot of Haruko after Skuragi’s confession comes to mind), I was constantly in awe of the artwork from beginning to end, and this only heightened whenever a double spread showed up. Without a doubt some of the cleanest and most emotive art I have ... ever seen, manga or not. Just look at this double spread of Shohoku coming back from a timeout:

Nevermind the background, the layout, the sheer coolness of the shot; what really jumps out to me here is how you can feel the personalities of all five of these characters jumping off the page.

That’s another thing I grew to love about this series: the characters. Sakuragi, Rukawa, Akagi, Ryota, and Mitsui are all so different and yet all so brilliant that when they are brought together on the court (or off it) you can’t help but to be entertained. They play off of each other perfectly, both as members of a team and as characters in a story, each one dealing with their own dreams and their own struggles. But these struggles (and the dreams) are never so intense that they feel larger than the story or too grand for a manga about high school basketball. All these characters, all these story beats feel real. That's what makes them so engaging.

The supporting cast from Shohoku are all pretty serviceable characters, but for me at least aren’t too memorable in the long run (except Anzai-sensei—I would do anything for that man). Where the side characters really shine is in the opposing teams on the court. Sendoh and Uozumi from Ryonan, Kiyota and Maki from Kainan, Sawakita and Kawata from Sannoh—even their coaches are cool. All of these dudes just seep personality and make every match Shohoku is in that much more memorable and impactful.

But ultimately, the heartbeat of Slam Dunk is in its central story, that of Sakuragi becoming a basketball player. Even though he proclaims himself a genius from the very beginning, we’re always meant to see him as in way over his head, as a brash and high-flying troublemaker who accidentally wound up on the basketball team, with no idea what that actually means. But with the way Sakuragi changes over the course of the manga, realizing his own limitations and moving beyond them (albeit always with his trademark self-confidence) makes it impossible not to root for him. And the manga never gets too big for its britches—this isn’t about Sakuragi becoming the genius he proclaims himself to be, and it’s not about him becoming the best. It’s simply a journey from innocence to experience, from an upstart punk to a bonafide basketball player. While the power to never give up might be a tired trope of shounen at this point, I always have a soft spot for series that make it feel real, that make it feel earned. Sakuragi is nothing if not dedicated, and I love him for it.

I won’t get too deep into the plot here, and this being a shounen sports manga you can probably guess the jist of it even if you haven’t read it. But I do want to point out how much I love the final match between Shohoku and Sannoh. The entire time—and I mean the entire time—I was reading this last match, I expected Shohoku to lose. I thought they would give it their all, get out-played, rebound for a last-gasp push and then come up just short. Needless to say, I jumped out of my seat when that last shot went in.

The beauty of this match, however, isn’t in the outcome. It’s in the feelings it gave me, in the way this manga got me to cheer for these characters as if I were in the stadium watching them and the way it pulled me along its emotional rollercoaster every step of the way. Every single story beat from the rest of the manga is resolved in this final match in the most beautiful, epic way imaginable. It would almost be a disservice to spell it all out again here, because no words could ever capture the pure hype, shock, and emotional investment I felt when I was reading. It’s truly one of the best arcs I’ve ever read in a manga, up there with Enies Lobby from One Piece and the Dark Tournament from Yu Yu Hakusho.

Just like Haikyuu!!, what I love about Slam Dunk is that it’s never a matter of life or death. At the end of the day, it’s just high school sports. It’s about the joy of playing a sport you love as a team, working together and coming together for the love of a game. Slam Dunk isn’t as explicit about this as Haikyuu!! is, but that idea is still at its core. It tells you that it’s never about the outcome; it’s about the experience of giving yourself fully to something you love and pushing forward with all of your being.

And out of all the incredible things Slam Dunk does, that might just be my favourite.

Let me just get the preamble out of the way: I'm not a Ghibli superfan. I like a lot of their movies, but I don't think Miyazaki is infallible. I also had literally no idea what to expect from this movie going into it, not even the setting. All I knew was the title and what the main character looked like, so it's not that the movie didn't live up to my expectations or anything like that.

Let me also say that me being negative in this review doesn't mean I completely hate it. It has a lot going for it. The animation is absolutely stellar, ... as is always the case with Ghibli. The music is phenomenal and fits the film perfectly. The opening scene is an 11/10 masterpiece that had me thinking I was about to watch the greatest movie of all time. Even the movie's first act had me intrigue in what was coming next, although I do think it dragged on too long.

If I'm being honest with myself, the idea behind this movie was amazing. There's enough drama inherent in the setup of Mahito losing his mother in a fire; add onto that that his father then married his aunt, his mother's younger sister, and you've got some serious intrigue. And this is what the first half of The Boy and the Heron does: builds up this tension between Mahito--the quiet, curious, sneaky boy protagonist who is polite to a fault, gets into fights, and who is hiding a deep, unimaginable grief over his mother's death--and Natsuko--his aunt who is now his mother and who is pregnant with his younger sibling.

Being a Ghibli movie, though, the fantastic and the supernatural are to be expected. And so it's not necessarily surprising when the titular heron begins to talk to Mahito and call him to the mysterious, off-limits tower. It's not really surprising when he is pulled into another world and meets a younger version of his mother and his great-granduncle, who was said to have disappeared decades ago. And if I'm being completely honest, it's not even surprising when this movie takes a shit on itself and transitions to a save-the-dimensional-balance plotline because every serious movie nowadays seems to love jacking themselves off with magical quantum physics.

People will say that I and others who didn't like this film 'didn't really understand it,' and while I'm not claiming I've figured out the plot, it doesn't take a genius to get what Miyazaki was going for. It's a story about grief, love, and life, and dealing with all of these things in reality. How do we make a world free of malice when that world is controlled by Imperial Fascists hell-bent on taking it over? How do we move forward after we lose somebody? How do we let go of our own fears and reservations to do so? The themes and ideas that the movie is trying to convey are all there, and honestly, I think they are really interesting. The problem is that the execution is absolute dog water.

Even though I said I liked the first half of the film (and I did), it has its problems. One of the problems I have with this film is that nothing is explained. Why does Mahito hit himself in the head with a rock? Why does Natsuko go to the tower? Why is the heron not actually a heron? (This, by the way, is to say nothing of the fever-dream, whiplash inducing second half where things just happen like a slideshow with the characters acting more like staples holding the pages of the script together than the people the story is about). Some people will say you can infer the answers to most of the questions, some people will say it doesn't matter. Personally, there wasn't enough there to get me engaged.

But I am almost positive that the details like that wouldn't have mattered had the movie not suffered from its biggest problem, and that is a complete lack of emotion and feeling. Other than the first few scenes that show Mahito and his reaction to his mother's death, this film is completely empty. Character development is on a speedrun: Mahito goes from not liking Natsuko to wanting to save her to treating her as his mother to being at peace without a single line of acknowledgement that his feelings are changing. This dude has the personality of a 2x4, and maybe that would be okay if I could understand why he acted in the ways that he did, but I can't. His feelings are never given the spotlight, and whatever moments of revelation he has regarding Natsuko and his mother are either offscreened or glossed over. The same goes for Natsuko and Himi (and even Kiriko and the Heron). These people aren't characters. They're hollow caricatures who are going through the motions of a heavy and resonant story without the weight to make their feelings real to the audience (or at the very least, to me).

Case in point: Mahito and Himi spend 10 minutes together before they are kidnapped by the parakeets. They are then reunited near the end of the film and they cry as they hug. "I thought I lost you," says Himi. Christ almighty, what the fuck are we doing here? In what world do these two have this kind of relationship? Is it because they are mother and son, and the tower somehow connects those feelings through time and space? SAY THAT THEN!! But I have a sneaking suspicion that that's not the case and the folks at Ghibli thought "yep, this is good." I say this because the same thing happens in Princess Mononoke, where Ashitaka and San fall in love despite having spent five minutes with each other and doing nothing but getting their asses kicked by Irontown.

This fixation on going through the motions of a story whether the characters are developed enough for it to make sense drives me up the fucking wall. If the audience (once again, me in this case) can't empathize with or at the very least understand what the characters on screen are feeling, why should we care about them? Never mind that plot details aren't explained, or that the ending is atrocious, or that the world building makes no sense; the real issue I have with The Boy and the Heron is that it glosses over the journey in favour of the end goal. "But cosmicturtle0, how can you say that when the movie is LITERALLY about a journey!?" Because I only saw Mahito and friends moving through the world; nowhere did I feel them moving closer to an emotional resolution, until it was giftwrapped and shoved out the door at the end.

I am 99% sure there is a good movie here. It just isn't the one that I saw. That said, you may enjoy it for what it is, even if I didn't.

*SPOILER-FREE*

The original Gundam, the inventor of the "Real Robot" genre, thrived on a gritty, human depiction of what war might be like in the future, and it was so damn good at it that Sunrise spent the next 40 years trying to replicate and build off that success. Now I'm here after having watched all of the Universal Century (Gundam's main timeline), so obviously it's my cup of tea. But I don't blame anyone for not wanting to explore such a daunting franchise, especially when the entry point is 49 episodes of outdated 1979 animation.

Over the years, Sunrise has tried with varying degrees of success ... to create one-off shows that appeal to current anime tastes, which has sometimes worked (Gundam Wing, Seed, 00, and Iron Blooded Orphans all had their 15 minutes of fame). But all you need to do is check out the Mobile Suit Gundam page and take a look at the spin-offs the franchise has attempted over the past twenty years to see the types of stories it has insisted on telling. Hint: every single one has the word "war," "coup," or "revolution," in it.

For some people (me), it's an awesome thing. Giant robots fighting space wars--who could ask for anything more? But for the average anime fan who looks at upcoming shows and thinks, "hmm, what would I like to watch this season?", the thought of sinking your teeth into a full-blown political conflict with the weight of the Gundam name attached to it is a bit much to handle.

Enter the Witch from Mercury, a show that takes everything tired and stale about Gundam and tosses it out the window. Gone are the simple days of the Earth Federation vs. the Principality of Zeon, the enemy-of-the-week types of wars of the past, and in their place comes a modern story involving mega-corporations, political factions, revolutionary technology, and a school setting. It's a breath of fresh air for Gundam and for anime as a whole, because while this show does away with a lot of old tropes and repurposes them into something new, the core of what has always made Gundam great is still there: character drama in times of conflict. It's just that the franchise has decided to tell this story in a more modern way by leaning into current anime convention. And this is what make this show stand out

Nowhere is this clearer than in the characters. All the modern stereotypes are accounted for: the tsundere, the loud one, the shy one, the cute one, the popular kids, the losers-who-are-not-actually-losers. And of course, Suletta Mercury, not only Gundam's first female protagonist but also its first with red hair, and its first with a stutter.

Suletta has the tragic backstory of a typical Gundam protagonist, and just like her predecessors she's involved in something greater than herself, something she doesn't really understand. But by making her a nervous girl who wants nothing more than to be liked at school, the show is really able to explore both sides of its story: the school and political worlds. Both are blended together within her, as they are within every character. Because while Gundam has always made it a priority to explore its characters, pinning these modern, conventional stereotypes up against a background of space politics makes them into real, believable, honest-to-god people who feel like a product of their world, and of our current times. And this creates, as the original Gundam did, a future that we could actually see.

Because that's what Gundam is: it has something to say. It doesn't cheap out on its characters, or its stories, or its themes just to appeal to the mainstream (at one time, it was the mainstream). But what the franchise has seemingly had trouble accepting over the past twenty years is that that isn't the case anymore, and even though I'm a big fan of the Witch from Mercury and the direction that its taken, I have a hard time seeing it ever reaching those former heights. But that's fine. Gundam already revolutionized anime once, it doesn't need to do it again. What it needs to do is to tell the best story possible for the times we're living in.

The Witch from Mercury has figured it out. And hopefully, it shows people just discovering the franchise what its fans have always known: Gundam fucking rocks.