Kenzen Robo Daimidaler is a parody of the mech genre. I think it’s important to clarify the distinction between parody and satire in this case though as they are very often used interchangeably. A parody is an imitation that exaggerates for comedic effect. Satire is the use of parody or other humor for the purposes of criticism. This anime very much imitates old school mecha anime and greatly exaggerates and twists all the tropes for comedy purposes. However, this isn’t meant to criticize these tropes, but is rather basically a self-indulgent celebration of them that pretty much just wants to have fun.
The plot involves a mysterious race of what looks like people wearing penguin suits known as Penguins trying to steal the Hi-Ero particles from humanity but a group known as Prince trying to stop them and various mech battles between the two ensuing as a result. The mechs that Prince uses, Daimidaler, are powered by Hi-Ero particles, which are basically released when people get horny. Thus, Daimidaler is piloted by two people, one that actually serves as a pilot, and the second that is basically supposed to help the pilot get turned on. All of this is utterly ridiculous nonsense that is used to great effect. It actually acts like it’s being serious most of the time giving things fancy names based on dead languages or with characters throwing out deep sounding one liners or even monologues as you would expect from a mecha anime. It also has a lot of mecha, battle shounen, and sentai tropes such as the hardass mentor character, training arcs, secret bases with secret entrances, sudden entrances by the hero, yelling really loudly when fighting, etc. However, everything is so dumb that this contrast is just plain hilarious. It’s also utterly random, with completely random things like the characters just suddenly bowling while a character is talking about important stuff and such. On top of that, it also has pretty decent normal humor, so just all around the comedy in the anime is pretty solid.
In terms of cast there are three sets of main characters that matter essentially. There’s the original Daimidaler pilot pair, Kouichi and Kyouko that are heavily focused on at the start. Kouichi is a hot blooded and aggressive pervert. Kyouko is more calm and collected but also a pervert, though secretly and seemingly reluctantly. Considering their personalities and how Daimidaler operates, it should be clear where most of the comedy centered around them comes from. They have really good chemistry together which makes them pretty likable and they keep a pretty fast pace to their crazy antics so they’re just pretty hilarious to watch in general. There’s no real relationship development though, which disappointed me more than it should have to be honest considering I knew the type of anime it was starting out.
There’s also a second pair of Daimidaler pilots, Shouma and Kiriko. Their gimmick is basically fitting the bacouple trope, which is a portmanteau of baka and couple which basically translates to stupid couple. They’re basically just a really annoying couple and how annoying they are and how annoyed they make everyone else is focused on pretty strongly. This is supposed to be comedic, but it largely didn’t land at all for me, and thus the episodes introducing them were incredibly weak as the episodes are pretty much entirely focused on them and their annoyingness. It gets better as the anime continues on and they’re no longer the singular focus and their relationship also gets a bit more complicated in an amusing fashion that feels fitting considering how annoying they are, but I found them pretty unlikable throughout.
The last set of important characters are the Penguin Empire. They’re the villains in that they embody all the villain tropes while the ones they’re fighting against embody all the hero tropes, but in terms of actual good and evil it’s pretty nebulous. They never really try to do anything too bad and actually seem to care about preventing collateral damage a lot more than the heroes do. While I didn’t find them as amusing as Kouichi and Kyouko, they were way better than Shouma and Kiriko, and so I found them pretty decently likable. There are essentially three characters in the Penguin Empire. There’s the Penguin Emperor who commands all the other Penguins and seems to try his best to be a good caring leader. There’s Ritz, a super energetic human girl that joins the Penguins due to her penguin fetish and serves as their best mech pilot. And lastly there are the various indistinct minion Penguins, who have different names and I suppose are technically distinct characters, but with a few exceptions are all pretty much the same in that their main defining traits are that they’re pretty airheaded and kind of perverted and that thus essentially feel like a single character. They are focused on somewhat from the start, but get focused more and more during the latter half which serves as a good distraction from Shouma and Kiriko.
There are also various side characters on both the Prince and Penguin Empire side as well as a few completely outside of them. They’re not that important and never have enough of a presence for me to feel much about them in any capacity. Still, they spice things up in terms of comedy and such so I suppose they did their job.
The plot is pretty simplistic and for the most part just involves the Penguins and Prince getting into a bunch of fights. The mech battles are surprisingly decent. Though they start off a bit weak, with the mech designs being especially weak, by the end the action is a lot stronger and the mech designs too are much improved. As a result of these battles various character stuff happens which push things along in terms of characters. There are attempts at serious story beats wherein despite how ridiculous they are and how they’re very much focused on trying to be funny still somehow manage to have a decent amount of impact. This isn’t the case for all of the attempts at such though. It’s a mixed bag, wherein while some moments work quite well a lot also simply miss their mark. I’d say in general the ones that are supposed to be exciting, intense, or just plain cool work well, while moments that are supposed to be romantic, heartwarming, or anything like that usually fail. When they fail they fail really hard and it feels like nothing, not even the comedy is really working though, which makes certain parts of the anime feel like they’re really just a complete drag. Still, there are also a lot of pretty great moments that build up over time. In the end there’s a final twist where the true villain is the one trying to bring common sense into things and ruin everyone’s fun, which results in the anime shifting to trying to push a message about how perversion is actually good. It’s not handled that great, being way too heavy handed, but it fits the anime pretty well and results in an ending that’s pretty satisfying all things considered.
The art and animation are pretty solid and are very effective for the things that really matter. As mentioned, the mech designs I didn’t like much at first but the later ones were much better. The animation for the action was also really solid. The character designs all around were pretty good and the animation for them was also solid for the ecchi portions. The OP was pretty hype inducing and served as a good start to each episode. The use of the OP during battles was also well done. There was also a softer, slower version of the OP that was used as background music at one point that I also thought was pretty well done. The ED was okay. The soundtrack was pretty great when it was trying to be heroic. There were random tracks like one that felt like a remix of the US Army’s official song that felt pretty funny and thus fit. Outside of that the soundtrack wasn’t all that memorable.
