Japanese grade schooler Wataru is chosen to become the hero in a parallel realm and travel their holy mountain Soukaizan, a fantasy world, structured like a videogame with various layers and bosses ruling each layer. Wataru is brought there by a dragon called Ryujinmaru, who can also transform into a giant robot. His ultimate mission is to fully liberate Soukazain, which is currently occupied by Demon Lord Doakuda.
Wataru is soon joined by naïve and energetic Ninja girl Himiko and samurai warrior Shibaraku, who often becomes the butt of many jokes.
Temporary guests are the shady birdman and know-it-all Kurama, Himiko’s ninja father and a rival type character called Toramaru. Although he’s clearly a fan favorite and often seen in promotional materials, he has a rather minor roll in the show until late episodes.
Animation and artwork is decent for a 1988 show, with the quality fluctuating between episodes. The spiritual sequel Granzort, released just one year later, raised the bar quite high. Later Wataru shows objectively look better, although I personally prefer the chubby look of Wataru 1.
The action is nicely animated but it has to be mentioned that Wataru also has its fair share of reused scenes for robot transformations and combat.
Character designs are simple, effective and fairly unique. I haven’t seen any characters that resemble the main cast. Most characters are drawn in a half chibi style. The characters, especially Wataru and Himiko, are cute, but without feeling forcedly so. Adult characters have chibi bodies with realistically drawn heads. It’s kind of gross at first but fits the tone of the series. I missed that by the time they largely dropped it in (Super Wataru, the 3rd Wataru series. The giant robots our heroes and villains use for combat share the giant head theme.
Music is good, not too many themes aside from the main theme and ending theme though. Sound effects are a standard affair, pretty much the same quality as in contemporary robot anime and up until the mid 90s.
Voice acting is excellent, with the only criticism I have is certain enemy character’s actors were reused of the course of the show multiple times. Mayumi Tanaka does an excellent job as Wataru, younger viewers probably know her more from her work as Luffy in One Piece.
The series creators seemingly enjoyed playing with Japanese language. Having a certain grip of Japanese language is not required to enjoy it, but certainly makes the experience better (e.g. many names are actually puns). What is required though is to kind of flow along with the action and gag oriented story. Real drama and thinking too much about real world rules ruins the enjoyment (e.g. most of Soukaizan should be dark as all the worlds are layered on top of each other)
Knowledge of the toy series and videogames based on Wataru is not required.
I recommend Wataru to anyone that enjoys gag based anime, cute characters (male and female alike), just a hint of shounen genre action and shows with an optimistic theme.
8 out of 10 points
