#272: Bio Hunter (1995)

 

Studio: Madhouse

Director: Yūzō Satō

Screenplay: Yoshiaki Kawajiri

Based on a manga by Fujihiko Hosono

Voice Cast: Kazuhiko Inoue as Koshigaya, Toshihiko Seki as Komada, Chikao Ohtsuka as Bokudo Murakami, Tarô Ishida as Seijuro Tabe, Yuko Minaguchi as Sayaka Murakami

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Recreating Wicked City (1987) in the opening, this feels like a throwback to eighties ultraviolent anime with breast dentata and someone actually getting their hand bitten off. We still got violent anime in the nineties, especially in the straight to video market, but notably, this has a connection to the past that, whilst in a screenwriting role, Wicked City's director Yoshiaki Kawajiri is involved in this production. This does mean this feels like a return to the films he and studio Madhouse made in the eighties, only with another director taking on the reigns in Yūzō Satō, and also the unfortunate sense of this feeling like a weaker Kawajiri work, still worth a rediscovery, but having to be compared to someone who became more interesting when the more controversial aspects of Wicked City were being removed from his own work. There is also the difference here that this is, in context, a very late era OVA. Whilst many would still be made into the 2000s, they changed in mood entirely as different technology was being brought into animation production, changing them even in how they look right down to the use of colour even next to works just from the early nineties.

Molecular scientists and professors Koshigaya and Komada work in an illegal but virtuous side job for the sake of humanity, in which this world has a "Demon Virus" which mutates people into flesh eating monsters. Like the young woman in the opening who becomes host to a few on her form like parasites, faces and mouths appearing on her body, whilst another later on eventually has gone so far he is effectively undead and controlled by the parasite in the centre of his chest, this has the potential to be a huge problem for humanity as a whole, as well as allow some of the most creative aspects of the production, meaning our leads have had to research ways to stop cases and also kill them if need be. One of our leads is infected himself, able to control his condition as far as be able to shape shift back and forth in forms, thankfully at first just needing to eat a ridiculous amount of food to sate an evolutionary take on yokai and monsters. It is certainly a shift for its original author Fujihiko Hosono, who contributed the source to another curious one-off OVA Judge (1991), explicitly a supernatural story about the supernatural judge of sinners, especially in his case those who are practice corrupt business tactics. Touches like this make Hosono's work quite a curious one in how he shifted tones per manga.

The condition our lead Komada has will still become a problem over this one-off story, alongside the angst of his position, especially as control is slipping and a young woman comes into his life named Sayaka, connected to a grandfather and famous fortune teller who has gone missing. Her existence, more of a damsel sadly for most of this, raises the question of whether he could ever in his position fall for someone or end up eating said girlfriend if the control vanishes entirely. A serial killer who chews on intestines and eats the livers of young women is connected to this, unfortunately connected to a powerful politician and his armed goons who are a credible threat to both leads. As an hour OVA, you only have enough time for a short tale, though this is an adaptation for what was actually a very short manga from Fujihiko Hosono himself, and possibly told the entire tale there in animation here.

Revisiting Bio Hunter, it feels like an object from a different time period, one which should be approached with in some caution due to this streak of transgressive sexuality, namely having female victims to these monsters being undressed, which will be understandably uncomfortable for some. Most of this film though is just gore, from the blood to a severed hand moving independently on its own free will on a rescue mission, and a set up to a literal punch line with a heart being ripped out. Truthfully, alongside its weird mishmash of scientific rationalism with occult leanings it still wants to get into, including trying to rationalise fortune telling as a superpower, the leads are the least interesting thing as in many of these, next to the mood and tone. It loses a bit of this due to Kawajiri sticking in the screenwriting position. Whilst Yūzō Satō became a veteran by the modern day, this does miss some of the tonal choices which did make Kawajiri's work his own, such as his trademark for a "Kawajiri Blue" in depicting night-time scenes.

There is enough here which evokes the atmosphere a lot of these anime had. Even without the monster designs - the final villain a host with the creature in his chest, and a discomforting nod to tentacle symbolism of Urotsukidôji and its ilk - it has something of its own that, even as a slight story, does stand out with interest. By this point however, whilst Ninja Scroll (1993) does have some discomforting scenes, it showed that this type of action anime, with tangents into horror, fantasy and/or science fiction, from Yoshiaki Kawajiri was far more than this, whilst Bio Hunter is more of a curiosity in his filmography. It is entertaining for what it is, but just missing out something to make it stand out more than this or its style.

#271: Cromartie High School (2003-4)

 

Studio: Production I.G

Director: Hiroaki Sakurai

Based on a manga by Eiji Nonaka

Voice Cast: Takahiro Sakurai as Takashi Kamiyama, Norihisa Mori as Tabata/Takeshi Hokuto, Ryo Naitou as Yutaka Takenouchi, Takaya Kuroda as Masked Takenouchi, Takuma Suzuki as Shinjiro Hayashida, Tetsu Inada as Akira Maeda, Norio Wakamoto as Shinichi Mechazawa, Youto Kazama as Noboru Yamaguchi, Megumi Hayashibara as Maeda's Mother

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Cromartie High School was an early series in my interest in anime, one of the many ADV Films licenses brought over the United Kingdom. The origins of Cromartie, even before the first chapters were being published in the year 2000 by its creator Eiji Nonaka, comes from the Japanese "yankii" (juvenile delinquent) manga of the 1970s and 1980s. Cromartie High School, without all the music references and surreal tangents, is a deadpan parody which images these archetypes if they were dense, clueless and/or were hung up on the littlest details even when considering whether to go to a rival school and fight the yankii there.

Our introduction to this titular school is Takashi Kamiyama, who is not someone meant to be there, but with the first episode explicitly telling the audience the reason for ending up in there has to be read in the manga. Suffice to say, he is not the sort of student to end up in Cromartie, a place of ruffians and hooligans. He has at least some intelligence, where in a world of doofuses he will be King, the lamb sleeping among lions (and a gorilla) as Shinjiro Hayashida, a fellow student who befriends him, states. He is the most imposing figure and can become a) the strongest delinquent in the country in a competition, all because of knowing in a quiz yogurt is made with milk, b) will defend his title by hosting a quiz himself to confuse his challengers.

Before you get to the gorilla, Mechazawa the robot student or Freddie Mercury - yes, that Freddie Mercury - the joke is undeniably the idea of the sixteen year old rebel who wins fist fights, or is supposed to if fights ever were to break out in this series, like those Takashi Miike made Crow Zero 1 & 2 about between 2007 and 2009, when they do not live up to these expectations. This is done with both absurd touches but also their own idiosyncratic personalities. Most people may have motion sickness on transport which they live with, but imagining the head of the first years, an imposing figure named Yutaka Takenouchi, having to hide this to keep his toughness status, and looking so even when struggling, is inherently funny. The innocuous undercutting a trope is one of the funnier types of humour throughout anime, and Cromartie provides this in many ways which succeed. This is before the show is also proudly strange, such as providing an entire one-off episode, each less than twelve minutes each with opening and ending credits, about a wise gorilla sushi chef who helps mend the wounds between father and son with a banana sushi. Without highlights like that episode, which goes so hard with the premise that you have messages on the screen reminding viewers this was still Cromartie High School, some of the funnier jokes in a pure matter of fact tone involve adding the banal and ordinary to heightened anime tropes. These weird characters, alongside how magnificently dumb and charming they can be, have to contend with ordinary things a viewer has to put up with, like whether they have gotten off the right stop on a train, only with the bombast of their reactions to these events being these archetypes the combination which adds different layers to the gag.

Kamiyama's friends include Hayashida himself, whose purple Mohawk has a mind of its own and more secrets to it; there is Maeda, who puts up being the one dismissed and also frequently kidnapped by rival schools; Takeshi Hokuto, who is introduced attempting a coup to rule the school with his lackey, only known as Hokuto 's lackey and not able to say his real name aloud, only to realise he transferred to the wrong school; and more characters including a figure, later on, who is an older man in a mask who, attempting to hijack a plane in one episode when introduced, hides among the students whilst wearing the mask still. Gorilla the gorilla is literally a gorilla, and Freddy, literally based on Queen singer Freddie Mercury, based on an iconic concert costume with him shirtless wearing red suspenders, is as close as they could get away with. Freddie in this interpretation is more a big older man with a magnificent moustache, never talking and with even his friends wondering of what transpires in his mind. Then there is Mechazawa, played by Norio Wakamoto, a prolific voice actor who started in the late seventies and has a very distinct voice. Mechazawa is a literal robot, who does not realise he is one as a student, but does get rebooted like a PC, and does end up crashing a motorbike and ends up becoming one afterwards himself, allowing multiple parodies of Kamen Rider heroes if imagining what would happen, rightly, if the police arrested the driver for not having a motorcycle license.

Kamiyama, a lovable goof who yet has more smarts, is our centre but in the twenty six episodes, this show switches to other characters a lot, and this is always a good thing throughout, even when it comes of a pair of actors in a fictional comedy show in the world, Pootan, who are deadpan in the humour whilst wearing giant cuddly bear-like costumes with their faces visible. My favourite character is actually Noboru Yamaguchi, the leader of a rival school with a giant afro, whose real passion is as a connoisseur of comedy who wants to become a comedian. His stuff is hilarious even if you have no real knowledge on the intricacies of Japanese comedy, including the language barrier, whether debating in internal thoughts the structure of a punch line mid-meeting with his underlings, who are misinterpreting his behaviour, or assigning a ventriloquist as his second-in-command, which leads to the issue whether he or the puppet is actually given the position.

The cast is all male, with the one segment about an all-girls' school just redesigning your original cast as "princesses" and the voice actors not changing their vocals, a really good final episode gag especially as it clearly references the music video for Queen's I Want to Break Free even by accident at one point. There are some cameos with female actresses in the cast, but Cromartie, as a story about young male delinquents being goofballs, is an example for me to rediscover, in showing how talented the male voice actors in this series, from Takahiro Sakurai as Takashi Kamiyama to Tetsu Inada as Maeda, are. Surreal comedy anime has been a genre where I have seen how talented a lot of female voice actresses are for the medium, entirely because they have to turn on a dime in terms of the bizarre scenarios the writers and directors provide them, so Cromartie is just as rewarding in the Japanese dub to see this for male actors, the subdued reactions from many in this case adding more to the moments for how they bat off scenarios that, rightly for a viewer, would be ridiculous if they ever transpired. Even this becomes a joke, with some knowledge of voice actors, in that they hired Megumi Hayashibara. By that point she would have been a megastar in anime voice acting, most famous for many in the West for Rei in the Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise, but someone who would have been huge by that point for how many roles in leads and main cast in anime in the nineties, also a prolific singer and musician who would be heard singing the opening and ending themes for many titles she worked on like the Slayers franchise. They cast her, in a cameo, as Medea's mother, who only makes one sound; if you get that they choose such a prolific actress for just making a single noise, and probably how expensive that would have been to cast her, unless she did it as a favour or thought was hilarious, it is funny and one case, for a show which is mostly able to be gotten for its humour without context, able to even add little in-jokes to anime in itself once in a while for an additional layer.

Many moments in this, some of the funniest, are about taking strange and elaborate tangents within an idea. Many times, the joke begins with Kamiyama and the cast debating the logic of a scenario, with layers suddenly being added to jokes that would be funny in another show already, such as Maeda trying to imaging himself as a cat for a week, to the point of wearing cat's eats, when Kamiyama argues no human being really knows how to fully communicate to a cat, even when it comes to petting them. Even with some cultural differences to consider, such as the references and debates to Japanese stand-up comedy tropes, a most of this works without the context needed because it is entirely about characters over thinking scenarios and/or being idiots. Some jokes are just punch lines to pure weirdness, like the only logical reason a train announcer would require a green grocer and a sumo wrestler to help in one of the carts.

It is a series that could have continued, ending without a dramatic climax or a tearful send off, but it manages to be consistent, feeling right when it closed out without any moment it stumbled, with no weak episodes or having petered out. I roared a few times, chuckles or snorted many times, and ultimately the best take to describe why you should watch Cromartie High School is that this fully succeeds as a comedy on a gut level.

#270: Machine Robo - Revenge of Cronos (1986-97)

 

Studio: Ashi Productions

Director: Hiroshi Yoshida (Revenge of Cronos)

Takao Kato, Nobuyoshi Habara and Kiyoshi Murayama (Leina: Wolf Sword Legend)

Kiyoshi Murayama (Lightning Trap - Leina & Laika)

Screenplay: Hideki Sonoda

Cast: Kazuhiko Inoue as Rom Stol, Yuko Mizutani as Leina Stol, Hiroko Takahashi as Diondra, Junichi Kagaya as Kirai Stol, Kōichi Hashimoto as Rod Drill, Minoru Inaba as Grujios, Shigezou Sasaoka as Gades, Shinya Ohtaki as Blue Jet, Sho Hayami as Narration, Toshiharu Sakurai as Triple Jim, Yousuke Akimoto as Gardi

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

According Neil Nadelman, a translator who worked for the defunct anime distributor Central Park Media, Machine Robo may have been licensed by mistake¹. It is hearsay, but an amusing anecdote to sell a series when I heard of this through a podcast Anime World Order. This alongside the premise of this eighties anime was enough, when he talked of this in 2007, to win me over to wanting to see this series, a goal which took a good decade to even get to. Back in the day, when Central Park Media were still a distributor in the United States, they had only gotten up to three DVD volumes with five episodes on each, in a weird time when we thought separating anime series on multiple separate releases was a good idea, before it was clearly given up on. With the company going bankrupt in 2009 and the releases in the early 2000s, this was not a case of the series being caught up in the collapse of its distributor either.

People may have encountered this series in some form back in the eighties through GoBots, a toy line which was imported over to the West during the boom of the original eighties Transformer franchise, which got an animated series and a film, and used designs from Machine Robo. Machine Robo itself was originally a toy line which crossed over into animation, with Revenge of Chronos the first Japanese series for the original country of these toys' origin. This series proved something of an idiosyncratic creation with hindsight, as Ashi Productions' series may also be known if you had never seen it for the characters appearing in Super Robot Wars. Tactical strategy games which act like officially sanctioned crossover fan fiction, these games even if only starting to be licensed officially in the West have been translated and made available to mecha fans, the genre in its centre, allowing one to see the menagerie in this series cross paths with characters even from mainstream crossover franchises. Case in point, Super Robot Wars MX (2004), for the Playstation 2, allowed these characters to run amok in one of the bleakest stories in anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion (1997), which just raises questions of how they cross. One can imagine, if you have seen that film, the last stand by the character Asuka by herself against a group of manufactured biomechs, one of its more traumatising scenes of the franchise, is suddenly interrupted by Rom Stol, the male lead of Machine Robot, this goofy eighties show, making an elaborate speech about good conquering evil and telling the villains they do not deserve to hear his name.

Over forty seven episodes long, this is set on the titular planet of robots, Cronos, invaded by an evil force called Gyandlar. Led by Gades, they are marauding in search for the Hyribead, an ancient tool allowing one to live forever, even if it means killing the father of Rom Stol. After this, set up in the first couple of episodes, Rom takes the family heirloom of the Wolf Sword, and goes with his sister Leina and comrades out to find the Hyribead. It is a show, just to get this out of the way, where Vikung-fu exists, combining Vikings with kung fu to make the most powerful martial arts possible for Rom and his friends to take on the forces of Gyandla. Gyandlar, when not having a ranking system for minions who fail and get knocked down three ranks, have their scumbags but a surprising amount of members who disagree with the lack of honour they show, one such figure a male samurai-like figure Garudi, who will gain greater importance as more of his secret past comes out. This is, openly, a very absurd show. Production wise, there is some great designs for this robotic cast, but you also have a production which is clearly having to produce episodes each week for over a year. The repetition of villainous grunt designs that eventually happens has to be addressed in the final episodes after a while, and the size discrepancies between the cast in particular stick out. Rom, when he uses Vikung-fu's ultimate abilities, gains two levels of robotic armour, the last turning him into a giant with a lack of a practical size guide for characters in general between hulking behemoths and normal humanoid sized ones. There are also things no one cared about the logic for, such as one of Rom's comrades Triple Jim, a Transformers-like robot humanoid who, able to transform into a car, is the friend of Leina's who is only slightly bigger than her, but when he turns into a car is able to be used by her as an actual vehicle with comfortable leg room. The logic of Cronos as a world does raise questions anyway, but that needs a large part of the review to elaborate and the set up of actually watching the show needs to be addressed first.

For starters, Machine Robo itself is very episodic, which is not necessarily something you may have not experienced if, like me, you tended to avoid the huge franchised through your youth getting into anime, the ones which lasted forever, or even the fifty plus episode series. This not that far past when Fist of the North Star's animated television adaptation was started in 1984, important in mind to how much the original manga for that franchise really codified tropes, and how this originates from a toy line which would have benefitted from adding new toys for the audience, as more characters are added over time in the show. Depicting the whole story in forty four episodes, the last three were compilations of the series before the next series was started on air, one just letting the narrator describe the characters in detail, and the last two retelling the whole series in digested form. It is telling that you can boil down the pre-Emerald City narrative of this series, a good twenty plus episodes, down to the initial episode setting up the premise, Rom Stol and his allies going through episodic stories which you would have likely seen in anime before and decades after throughout this length of programming. It is incredibly silly, gleefully so as I wished when wanting to see this series. It does completely repeat the same beats over the episodes without fail, in which Rom will suddenly catch villains off guard, making an elaborate speech and then saying they do not deserve to know his name, a trademark the show eventually starts to make jokes about, and then beat the enemies eventually for that episode. Blue Dragon, his first armour upgrade, is useless and needs to give way to the Vikung-fu set, which gets the job done. His allies include the jet plane humanoid samurai named Blue Jet, who is mostly red, Triple Jim, who has a crush on Leina but is the noble putz in their relationship, and Rod Drill, the goofball. Leina sadly suffers through a casual streak of sexism here as, since she is a girl, there are numerous jokes about her being a girl wanting to enter the battles and being constantly kidnapped/under peril, with her jealously about the many women who are attracted to her brother raising questions about their relationship. Thankfully, she does get good moments to counter this, and these characters do become the real reason to enjoy Machine Robo, alongside its goofiness. Attempting to binge this in large amounts is detrimental to really enjoying it, whilst having taking a few months to even finish this, I was able to soak the world and story in that I became fond of over the time committed.

Machine Robo is helped, unintentionally and intentionally, by being an odd duck in its world, which feels like was being fleshed out mid-production. A place of "Romtro" apples and the "Master Laster", cat people predating the Beast Wars: Transformers franchise in the West, who are never seen again, and a character named "Trim Sponsor", even an episode about a multicolour desert where the blue sand has giant sand mantra rays, it goes through a lot of changes as the production goes. Despite Gyandlar coming from outer space, Cronos is initially suggested to be closer to period Japan, even with tropes of Japanese chambara tales of noble samurai even in the villains' side, with rural communities and that begin agriculture despite it being once said these robots use battery sources for sustenance. There are also the robots closer to their toy line and Transformers, and those who are very humanoid like Rom and Leina Strol, Leina effectively just a female character in a blue helmet and appropriate costume, her design in appearance and long brown hair not even hiding that she is supposedly robotic. This is before you get into how there are no humans in this world, with these the main species in this world, and these robots going on with discussion of the afterlife, due to how many characters will be killed in episodes, and do return as spirits. As this story goes on, more overt science fiction tropes and fire arms are introduced, such as an episode about a city which became decadent and lazy due to the power it produces from a volcano, and it tries to make sense of the two very different types of character designs only to become more compelling for the strange juxtapositions of its plot and lore details it throws in like multiple kitchen sinks.

It really comes obvious that, because these are meant to be robots, you could have gotten away with some gruesome content the television adaptation of Fist of the North Star had to work over, that you can have robots cut in half, crushed or Rom briefly, never doing this again, pull off a Fist of the North Star technique of causing a steel arm explode with one touch. This may seem tasteless, but it becomes almost a sick joke that, more in the pre-Emerald City episodes, you have characters introduced in that episode only for them to die and the leads to morn them over their improvised graves way too many times to not seem perverse. That one of these characters is a woman who is revealed to be a decoy bomb made into a woman just raises more questions, in a world where these are sentient robotic figures who just exist and non-metallic alikes as well. The female cast in general also however show that, wanting to have their cake and eat it, the production design the character to be as human and feminine in design as possible, hyper-feminized in some cases as well. You do get a cool female villainess in Diondra - imposing in her distinct character design as a sadistic giantess in golden armour, with Hiroko Takahashi's booming voice helping greatly - but there are many others who, still stylish in their designs, still emphasis this. A character in Episode thirteen, a martial artist named Ruri, despite her ball joint design is drawn as a shapely figure in lycra, peculiar with hindsight as her tribe in her flashbacks seemingly are born in lycra shaped to their bodies throughout life as a layer of skin, which is one of the more idiosyncratic examples of this. It is less of a complaint but one of the many contradictions and quirks to this show in general, and if there are any criticisms of it, it is entirely the issue of casual sexism you do need to put up with throughout the series if thankfully not straying into anything actually offensive. It becomes more a curiosity as, eventually, I did find myself trying to imagine an alternative world version of this where they did have a Transformer-like member of the cast who was not male and how that would change the perception of this.

The pre-Emerald City stories arguably have the more absurd moments, or I became fond of these lovable oafs on their journey that I started actually engaging with the story as it was fleshing out. I cannot deny that, when I first learnt of this series, it was through an episode of Anime World Order with the aforementioned Neil Nadelman about "lame anime". A long running anime podcast, that episode was recorded in 2007¹ back at a time when the few DVDs released for the series barely scratched the surface of the whole series, with the podcast lasting for so long that they existed when Discotek Media in the USA released this whole series in 2022 on standard definition on Blu-Ray; back then, the enticing nature of their review was as much the ridiculousness of the premise. It was sold on things that could be seen if you owned those original DVDs, which got over fifteen episodes, such as Vikung-fu, where nothing is remotely about Viking long ships or involving runes, or the rock men, part of an interesting idea this show never leans on that these are not robots truthfully, but humanoids that, unless you are the very humanoid ones like Rom and Leina who cannot transform, have bodies made between a variety of materials. That latter detail shows how this series could have expanded into something really idiosyncratic than it already is as, by the time of the final battle between forces of good and evil, you have characters made of metal, rock like the rock people who can turn into boulders to crush enemies, the fossil tribes who can even combine into a giant dinosaur, and the abruptly introduced "Gem People", three figures who, in an attempt to try to wrap up the plot later on, are the  guardians are sacred items which make up  and actually explain what the Hyribead may be.

The clear sense the logic was improvised on this show helps it in the end, and I admire this is in the context where I had a bias to wanting to see Machine Robo, and went out of my way to get the series when Discotek Media releases are a nightmare to acquire outside the USA. Despite this bias, I was able to accept the absurdities and got on the wavelength. It is not a show to attempt to binge all nineteen hours plus of in a marathon, an ill advised choice simply because, repeating the same plot structures over many episodes, this shows was meant to be seen in snippets like its original broadcast run. Instead it becomes, with its male narrator Sho Hayami being appropriately bombastic, a bolt of energy just to go through a couple of episodes at a time and witness what transpires this time, such as the episode presenting a Transformers' Death Race, which is neat.

The world grows as this goes, even if some details are ignored and never talked of, making this a surreal and fascinating world, from the horrifying Iron Eaters, a giant plant-like entity that digests robots, to electromagnetic jelly fish floating in the air. You do have to accept that the first opening theme tune, the awesome Machine Robo Hono'o by Martin, is replaced by one which is cool, but both not as great and also frankly egotistical in the translated lyrics for heroes to sing. There is also screen flashes, something which the Discotek release warns of, this issue of strobe effects which would stop being acceptable in Japanese animation after the "Polygon" incident of December 1997; whilst the incident has been exaggerated in the West, there was an episode of the first 1997 Pokémon series we never got in the West, Dennō Senshi Porygon, which caused photosensitive epileptic seizures in people and children, and led to TV Tokyo and other broadcasters establishing a series of guidelines for animated programs² which would have prevented the likes of Machine Robo having such strobe effects as readers should be warned of.

Emerald City changes the pace when introduced as, whilst staying episodic, this last half sets the cast in one central location, at first defending it from Gyandlar trying to storm the heavily fortified location, to the final act where their big bad eventually have to step in and the final conflict begins. There does become too many characters, likely reflecting this having links to a toy line where you needed to sell the product through the show, but you start to be introduced to characters named Pro Truck Racer, who remind one for all the deaths in the show these are still characters from a series of toys for children, including a group called the Land Commanders who combining into one giant robot. By this point, where the production is even having jokes suddenly start to appear in a show that was mostly straight faced, there becomes a sense of the show just being an excuse to do whatever the staff wanted as they had to resolve what the conclusion is. This means the Gem People are abruptly introduced, but also the sense that, when Pro Truck Racer decides levelling a whole skyscraper to make a bridge is acceptable logic, that the staff where just creating content they thought would be fun. By this point, it is with the sense that they hoped the viewers who were watching really did not care and enjoyed such a sight for its absurdity, which I can attest to as one viewer. That the show manages to have a proper conclusion, tied up and feeling like a real ending, is a credit, even if it leads to a very esoteric one to continue the franchise.

Machine Robo would continue with Machine Robo: Battle Hackers (1987), which would come soon after the last episodes for this show ended. Lasting thirty one episodes, prominently the leads of Rom and Leina Strol would not join their friends in that tale, and notably, whilst tragically only passing in her early fifties, Leina is a very early role for an actress named Yuko Mizutani who, until her death in 2016, was prolific over numerous eras of anime as a result. It comes obvious that, for the four straight to video OVAs that allowed fans to follow these characters, Leina was deliberately made central to all of them even if not the dynamic lead in these episodes as a fan favourite character, at the same time as, being made between 1988-90, Mizutani was going on to a long and prolific career onwards. I will also mention another OVA that was just an extra, a music video compilation, one of two, worth seeing for new material, a comedic breaking of the forth wall with the cast out of character as actors; seeing the cast goof off, or the villain of Grujios, a slug character in a robot body who eventually ends up as a ghost able to possess the bodies, go gooey-eyed over a pet kitten is legitimately funny in context to seeing the show, and a credit that Discotek included it from the best surviving version for their release.

To explain the OVAs, I will have to spoil the ending of Machine Robo from here on, that the finale has the main characters transported to an alternative dimension after they have resolved the conflict on Cronos, the side characters returning for Battle Hackers but Leina and Rom Stol not returning to that series. The four OVAs, three connected together as Leina: Wolf Sword Legend, and a forth, really do feel like curious loose strands to loftier ideas which never came to fruition, attempts to extend the lifespan of these characters and especially for Leina Stol. Certainly they feel like projects to let staff gain experience, the first OVA explicitly name checking itself as the first directorial project for Takao Kato, future director of Keijo (2016), the one fan service heavy show that sounds so ridiculous it might turn a 180 degree and win people over.

This first episode begins with Leina literally recreating The Terminator (1984), with Arnold Schwarzenegger appearing naked in a metropolis in a new time zone, only here on top of a skyscraper with the Wolf Sword. She is now Leina Haruka, and here I wished this bizarre turn the series went into had managed to gain traction as this is the most compelling of the four we got. She becomes a new transfer student at a school, and gets into the kind of premise I find compelling, unnatural figures dealing with supernatural/ horror adjacent tales of entities targeting human beings, with Leina here immediately told when introduced to her class she will save the world by the student everyone else thinks is weird. It is a sudden switch to high school mystery, as girls are going missing, captured in an Alice in Wonderland time scape to live permanently ageless, and where I did not expect Machine Robo to get existential, in its villain talking about aging and the sense of time being lost in youth. This is one of those fascinating ephemera of the OVA world that let this tangent from an existing source happen, and barring the lack of science fiction pieces, this story of a time eater would even be something I would expect from an episode of Boogiepop Phantom (2000). It also means Leina gets compensated for being kidnapped all the time by getting to rock the Wolf Sword and fight supernatural villains, and the end credits is a cute piece showing it all as a film Leina is an actor in.

Sadly this was not the direction they went with this episodes, as episode two properly reintroduces the male cast properly who transported over, all defeated in the opening on an alien plant by the big bad. Definitely, tragically, episode one was a complete one-off as this is sci-fi fantasy now. Leina still decapitates a dragon in the first few minutes, so she got more than the series, but this properly introduces the male cast, Rom's story again here, and with the decision to turn the more mechanical leads into humans. It is strange, for an example, to see a Bishonen Jet, a character now with a human head on the robot body with shades, which is a bit funny and matches the rest of the cast in Rod Drill and Triple Jet. It was also an excuse to have cast from the series back in new roles, audibly heard as you got used to them over this long TV series as I did. Truthfully, however, these are not as interesting even if still watchable. It would be a spoiler in any other context, a huge one, to admit the third OVA kills off Rom himself, and even undercuts the incestuous undercurrent by revealing Leina was adopted, but honestly, as an abrupt twenty to thirty minute piece, it feels like non-canonical content for what would have been a huge surprise to witness, with all forty episodes, in Machine Robo. In the series, it could have possibly been a big enough surprise it might have caused people to talk of that series with a new layer to it. More so as, for what is an abrupt curveball which loses power just for the slightness of the piece, it lets Leina be the hero, which would have been something that could have made Revenge of Cronos a more iconic series even if one with all its goofy moments.

The forth, its own individual piece, is not at all connected to its source and has wandered off in its own direction to the point it is weird even calling it part of this franchise at all. Called Lightning Trap - Leina & Laika, it is set in the then-modern day, and is about a military weapon named Bible, with a terrorist group named Blue Mary after it. By this point Leina is just a side character, just an ordinary schoolgirl with only one connection to the source, one bizarre touch, when she talks about dreams of her being a warrior fighting monsters. It is Die Hard on a luxury plane, with Bible a biomechanical robot kept in the luggage compartment with innocent bystanders, and emphasis placed as much on a new character named Laika Strange, a special agent figure clearly there to try to put over a new page in the franchise. It never came to be, and this proves a weird end to this version of Machine Robo. The next time, and the last, for this animated franchise came in 2003 with Machine Robo Rescue, a Sunrise production following a world where, with age no longer preventing kids from piloting robots, a group of them have trained to rescue people over fifty plus episode. It is also, helmed by all people, directed by Mamoru Kanbe, the director I know more for his horror work like Elfen Lied, which when this ended in the start of 2004 was the series of his that started in 2004 too, a few months on from, and is absolutely not suitable for kids.

As mentioned, the OVAs notwithstanding as curiosities thankfully preserved, I am biased towards this series, due to the time wanting to see it. As much due to the time to just watch this entire series as someone mostly used to anime where, even when episodic, sticks to twenty four episodes at their longest and reach the plot trajectory quickly. As an older anime viewer nowadays, I was never binging the fifty plus episode big hitters, or anything like One Piece which kept going for a decade, with the concern for the time consumption involved. Eventually the silliness of this particular show won me over, and I can label all the strange quirks and mistakes in this review all with a positive viewpoint as I enjoyed even those, as much because I came to the series wanting to see those too and enjoy them. The legacy of this series really shows in the inclusion in the Super Robot Wars franchise, where giant robot show fans made that series and give respect even to a production like this, something I can myself say in that my love for this, as much for the unintentional, was sincere and well rewarded with the context of knowing what I was wanting to watch after all this time.

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1) Anime World Order Show # 63a – Totally Lame Anime With Neil Nadelman, podcast episode for Anime World Order, released December 6th 2007.

2) Animated Program Image Effect Production Guidelines, published by TV Tokyo on their website.