I watched Gaiking over a year ago at this point, and I've had my notes for this review sitting on my computer ever since. Since I don't spend nearly as much time writing anymore, I never got around to fleshing out those notes into a full review. Rather than trying to finally write cohesive paragraphs out of these thoughts, I'm just going to post all of my headings and year-old bullet points so there is at least one MAL review out there for this series.
How does it look?
A little wonky, but I think pretty good.
I can't compare to much from that era since this is the first classic super robot anime I've watched.
If you can't stomach old animation, you definitely won't enjoy this.
There is lots of good stock footage for Gaiking launching and using named attacks, as well as the Daikuu Maryuu (DM) using its Volution Protect.
Sometimes a different animator comes on with a style that has a sketch-like aesthetic which I really like.
The Gaiking itself looks awesome, but the DM is kinda derpy.
It basically looks like a fat caterpillar with a dinosaur head
I suppose the pilot suits for the crew are pretty typical for classic sci-fi, but that's exactly why I love them.
How does it sound?
The theme song is admittedly not great, but at the same time I've had a blast singing along with it for the past few months.
The soundtrack is pretty decent.
There is a nice range of emotion in each of the orchestrated tracks.
Of course, everything has a crispy 70s quality to it.
The voice acting is just fine, nothing to write home about but nothing to lament either.
What does it present?
A VERY episodic series with very few multi-episode arcs.
There are a handful of 2 episode stories, and the finale technically spans 3 episodes.
Everything else is self contained with a nice ribbon tied on the story before the credits roll.
A typical episode goes like this:
The Zelans cackle about having a new plan to defeat the DM.
The Daikuu Mari-Crew goes to investigate a strange phenomenon somewhere in the world.
They discover the phenomenon is linked to local history or mythology, and it was in fact caused by some kind of robot that the Zelans planted on Earth in ancient times.
Gaiking launches and cleans up shop.
Story:
The overarching story of the Zelan homeworld being sucked into a black hole is only touched upon a few times.
Their army is stupidly evil and their people are super pacifist, so there's not much subtlety at play.
Characters
I think the characters are actually one of the series major strengths.
Most of the main cast has a few episodes dedicated to them, or to conflicts between certain members.
And that's the end of my notes! So who should watch Gaiking? I would recommend it to any mecha fans like myself: someone curious about classic mecha anime that doesn't want to committ to a high episode count for something like Mazinger Z. It was fun enough to turn my brain off, enjoy the cartoony shenanigans, and shout Gaiking's attack names along with them.
