#280: Hellsing (2001–2002)

Studio: Gonzo

Director: Umanosuke Iida

Screenplay: Chiaki J. Konaka

Based on the manga by Kouta Hirano

Voice Cast: Crispin Freeman/Jōji Nakata as Alucard, K.T. Gray/Fumiko Orikasa as Seras Victoria, Victoria Harwood/Yoshiko Sakakibara as Sir Integra Wingates Hellsing, Bill Morgan/Unshō Ishizuka as Peter Ferguson, Ralph Lister/Motomu Kiyokawa as Walter, Steven Brand/Nachi Nozawa as Paladin Alexander Anderson, Isaac C. Singleton Jr./Takumi Yamazaki as Incognito

Viewed in English Dub

 

Hellsing, the original TV adaptation, was felt as a big deal in the day with hindsight, running with the Kouta Hirano manga that would gain traction in the West through its initial Dark Horse publication and a premise easy to sell, that set in Britain, vampires exist and the country has a group known as the Hellsing Organisation, lead by Sir Integra Wingates Hellsing, to stop them. This is in mind that, however, she does have one vampire initially on the payroll under her command, Alucard, a true anti-hero if one who has less interest in terrorising humanity, but gleefully waiting to fight powerful vampires whilst hating those who act like damned ghouls than the lineage he comes from. The original series was also part of a big moment for the studio that made it, Gonzo, who were properly founded in 1992 in a previous form working on animated cut scenes for video games, but started animated productions in 2000. This was an important point, as after the initial projects, Hellsing began in October 2001 at a time to prove themselves on not only a title like this, but also a huge franchise crossover with Final Fantasy Unlimited (2001-2002), a tie-in to the legendary RPG video game franchise from Square Enix.

Unlimited was cancelled from its intended fifty plus episode run, to trying to complete itself in twenty five, whilst it is telling Hellsing Ultimate (2006-2012), existing as an ultimate retelling of the source manga, left Hellsing 2001 as an abridged curiosity. Gonzo in its original form would survive up to 2009, before being absorbed into its owning company and be refocused as an animation studio, but even in spite of surviving, that initial version was lost which was a huge name. One which made a music video for Linkin Park, one which had big titles announced over the years in the 2000s, and made crossovers like Afro Samurai (2007), which was a collaboration with the West directly with Samuel L. Jackson in the lead role. Brutally, the flaws which made them also very divisive back in the time when I got into anime in the 2000s, as their titles were prominently released in Britain through the late distributor ADV Films, can be found with revisiting the thirteen episode Hellsing series.

Hellsing when it started was a nostalgic trip when it began, to the point this was a rare case of watching the English dub on purpose. A huge factor for this decision was that, alongside voice actor Crispin Freeman as Alucard, a role he became beloved for among others, this had the inspired idea which continued to Hellsing Ultimate that, since this is set in the United Kingdom, the dub would have British voice actors and regional British accents. Even the "fifteening" done here, infamously what Manga Entertainment did in adding additional swearing to multiple English dubs of theirs to up the age rating, befits the tone. If moments do feel shaky, there is, however, something very appropriate in general for this series and that added a nice additional layer reproaching the first episodes. Some of the actors are British, prominently Victoria Harwood as Sir Integra, who began her career in British television in one-off episodes of the likes of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, whilst you have K.T. Gray as an American actress performing in an accent for another important figure established in episode one. That is the second female lead with Seras Victoria, a police officer who is sent out without realising it with her team to a vampire disguised as a priest rampaging in Cheddar, only to be turned by Alucard in one of his humane moments when he realises, to kill said vampire, he has to shot through her and offers the chance to live as his servant if she wishes not to die.

The series has a distinct style, a mood with interesting use of colour and having shots which feel more abstract for the "cool" tone, an action-horror at heart rather than meant to be scary, and whilst the later adaptation as straight-to-video episodes was ultra-violent, this can still be lurid. The music as well is very idiosyncratic, very good and very distinct, particularly in mixing in more electronic pieces. Sadly, composer Yasushi Ishii's career in animation is not as large as one would hope, considering how striking the score here was that he was brought back for Hellsing Ultimate if just for one episode. The use of Shine by Mr. Big, an odd choice of a US band who got big in Japan, has always stayed with me as actually suiting the tone, almost charmingly ironic for its lyrics and jaunty tone. Probably some of the best moments of this entire production is just the style, in terms of playing to the more overtly abstract images with its characters - be it drenching the screen in pure blood red, or decorating environments in just primary colours and some silhouettes. Alucard is revealed to be so powerful his body deforms to produce dog-like entities from his own body, or to melt and/or reconnect even from severe injuries, and in times when the macabre nature of the supernatural is played with, alongside its score, are some of the strongest scenes in terms of style for its own sake. The sense of freewheeling style is found in the next episode previews which take on a more goofy humour, breaking the fourth wall as Seras is interrupted hosting them, offering where this spin could have had more overt ambitious within its limits in story options.

There is the immediate sense Hellsing should have been twenty plus episodes long. This is not helped by the fact this was being adapted as the manga had not reached far enough major events for Kouta Hirano's story, which is felt in how the original promo video has the real antagonists of the later Ultimate adaptation and the manga, the Millennium group, a group never seen in the 2001 anime series who are literally Nazis with vampires and werewolves among their rank. Personally, however, this would have not necessarily been a problem for this adaptation, even if a blasphemy to fans of the source material, if it had managed to tell a story of its own with some interest. I have always felt Gonzo's true curse was always slipping in the midst of their productions, be it slipping in pace or rushing their finales, something which could not be blamed on a case like Final Fantasy Unlimited where outside circumstances were also involved, and is felt here.

Chiaki J. Konaka is an odd choice for the main screenplay. There are flashes of his career style, a very unconventional storyteller who esoteric plot structures and details, but for me this is arguably one of his weakest works. Even in mind he had been involved with some unconventional work by his standard by this time - namely Futari Ecchi a.k.a. Step Up Love Story (2002-4), four episodes of an erotic romantic comedy about a newly wedded heterosexual couple figuring out their love life. That at least had only four episodes to work with, and was interesting as a real tangent for him, an imperfect work in some gender politics but mostly a wholesome comedy about adults who love each other that, even if for a targeted male audience, was horny in a positive way. Hellsing in contrast is something he could have worked with to interesting areas, as it could involve conspiracies involving the Vatican, who are antagonists to the Hellsing Organsization, and the weird place a vampire or two are within working with vampire hunters, let alone Seras' position as a vampire who refuses to drink blood and feels complicated emotions of her place. This is in mind that, least to stay faithful to the source, it is a violent work, but also one about bombast. The tone of the source can be summed up that, when Seras gets a new weapon from Walter, a butler who is a former (still dangerous) vampire hunter who uses razor sharp wires, the aforementioned Harkonnen is both a direct reference to the version of the character from David Lynch's 1984 adaptation of Dune, and uses depleted Uranium shells, only possible to be carried by a super strong undead officer like her. The tone of the source which would be emphasised for Ultimate - a story which can get really nasty and gory, but is also a story created by a manga author with a thing for fire arms, wacky comedy and vampires with guns being cool - could still have Konaka's voice. There are moments of idiosyncrasy as he is having to create a new story by the midway point, but this is instead a compromise.

He does introduce for this version of the story a microchip turning people into artificial vampires, which is interesting as a concept, or the likes of a snuff film episode, but this is absolutely a case of a work which could not adapt the intended version, because it was not put to page yet, and the issue Gonzo were faced with here of only thirteen episodes to work with, likely with the possibility they could have continued on but not earning a second season. They have to paradoxically adapt as much as they can from the source but not enough time to complete their attempt to close this narrative off cleanly afterwards. This is felt with one of the other prominent details which yet has to be abruptly ditched by the last episodes, that in this world there is a Catholic versus Protestant slant, where the Vatican has their own vampire fighting forces, including their own agent Paladin Alexander Anderson, an artificially superhuman killing machine, and are openly antagonistic of the Hellsing organisation. This as what happened with Chrono Crusade (2003), a work which helped me get into anime but, also having read the manga, was effected by not having the whole work and needing to take liberties, some of which may make revisiting the adaptation be an example of nostalgia failing. That at least had a good twenty plus episodes even if it had to rush in the final episodes a new plot, so Hellsing is in a worse place attempting to compensate with orchestrating a new narrative, but struggling with few episodes to get to this.

It adapts up to the attack by the Valentine brothers, two vampires who storm the Hellsing headquarters, becoming the whole more fleshed out massacre in the second Hellsing Ultimate episode, and afterwards is fully on its own narrative rails after establishing the plot threads beforehand. The set up for a new narrative does promise a lot of interesting details if this had been its own show - a female vampire, permanently a child yet wise beyond her physical years, shows the moral issue of the Hellsing Organisation's goal to eliminate vampires when she lives in peace, a brief flicker of Konaka's style. Then there is the new villain, another vampire in human servitude of actual power named Incognito. He is a cool concept, a figure with idiosyncratic markings, body paint, and a long limbed figure who is a really cool character design. He comes with a huge caveat that he is meant to be a vampire from the African continent, and in the 2000s of all times, there are details in his portrayal which have not aged well at all. Alarm bells ring, alongside tribal music in his introduction, where a term (I apologise for having to quote) is brought up of him coming from the "dark continent", evoking all the problematic stereotypes of African black magic and occultism as depicting by white racist colonialism. It is a shame as, even as a villain, a vampire from a drastically different world to Gothic Carpathian Europe is distinct. With tribal paint that is part of his ability to even distort environments to cut people to ribbons, and as someone who can produce a grenade launcher attached to him by a gold chain that has magically touched spikes in shells as ammo, Incognito is a really fascinating concept to have, appropriate too for the tone of the source. It is a shame he fell into some tasteless nods to old problematic culture and gets little time, either, to be fleshed out.

Hellsing is okay, even if it just eventually ends up with vampires shouting at each other as they use super moves, its many flaws not dissimilar to so many anime before and after. Ultimately, and this is not an intended nod to the Hellsing Ultimate adaptation, this project was always going to struggle with the hindsight. This just belongs to a long list of anime over the years where the production tried, and whilst there are virtues, I can say it does not become iconic. Alongside the fact I like horror anime, so titles like this do stand out more, the knowledge that this kept happening for Gonzo is more tragic. They would have the likes of the Full Metal Panic franchise for the first season in 2002 and titles which are held in good regard, such as Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo (2004-5), held as their best animates series and one of the most distinct of the 2000s even aesthetically, but from the shows I remember growing up with and revisiting, they struggled reaching the finish line for the series they produced. Saikano, known in the West as She, The Ultimate Weapon (2002), which came a year later to Hellsing, is an admirably strange and bleak anti-war story, but that also has a strangely rushed ending, and then there are the likes of Yukikaze (2002-5), their celebration of their own anniversary which spun out of control, taking a long time for a few episodes to be created, and also ended up with a rushed ending despite being a straight-to-video production where a tight schedule for release would have not been an issue.

Gonzo always had a sense of being cursed, the curse for me always that they struggled at some point within productions to be able to finish their narratives and pace them carefully, or simply that in the timeline of 2000s, their titles which got prominent advertising were not the ones people fondly remember as even hidden gems from the decade. I got into anime in the 2000s in my teen/young adult years, so Gonzo as mentioned were a prominent name thanks to ADV Films, and my youthful memories, whilst acceptable to properly critique these series nowadays, is that I found myself viewing a show like Trinity Blood (2005) or a Burst Angel (2004) and finding them not sticking to memory, which is alarming as Gonzo were a company sold as prestigious in terms of the look of their shows and, ultimately to their fall, with a lot of higher budget productions in their schedules. Hellsing itself has virtues but it was clear from the get-go this project's pace to just thirteen episodes was against itself, and considering its premise even without the burden of the source material, there were many times here too for the good moments where this felt like a sedate take of a more wildly over-the-top horror-action story. This version of Hellsing clearly meant enough for me as I owned the old ADV Films collected version back in the day, but watching that exact set for the first time in a good decade, I held no nostalgia in terms of a high bar, always with knowledge this was a flawed production. Revisiting it, I realised this from the first episode.

#277: Casshan - Robot Hunter (1993–1994)

Studio: Tatsunoko, Artmic

Director: Hiroyuki Fukushima, Masashi Abe and Takashi Watanabe

Screenplay: Emu Arii, Hideki Kakinuma, Hiroyuki Fukushima and Shō Aikawa

Based on Neo-Human Casshern

Voice Cast: Takeshi Kusao as Tetsuya Azuma / Casshan, Yumi Touma as Luna Kozuki, Hirohiko Kakegawa as Admiral Montgomery Dr. Lester, Ikuya Sawaki as the Narrator, Issei Futamata as Akbone, Isshin Chiba as the Operator, Junichi Sugawara as Barashin, Juurouta Kosugi as Commander Tork, Keaton Yamada as Dr. Kotaro Azuma, Kenichi Ogata as Elder Asari, Kenji Utsumi as Buraiking Boss

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Tatsunoko, over its decades of existence since Tatsunoko, has been retelling and rebooting its franchises repeatedly, always trying to keep them in consciousness, and to their credit, they take artistic risks to do this. It is not just the nostalgic market or all the video game tie-ins over the years, but how their retellings of their most popular characters over the years can vary from the pretty radical, or in a case like this, at least stepping up to the new decade they were made within. It does not always work - rebooting Speed Racer (1967–1968) in the nineties led to an animated series Mach GoGoGo (1997) which most may not know of, a take which told one giant race for a large portion of its length alongside changed the character dynamics. Some have been really drastic, like Gatchaman Crowds (2013/2015), readapting its tokusatsu team dynamic that some may know from its Westernised Battle of the Planets form, and turning it into something which striped the costumes, changed the tone, and was a superhero series over two seasons about mobile phone and online technology's potential to corrupt but also do good. Casshan himself has had some really idiosyncratic takes, created in 1973 as a superhero of android form defeating the robot empire of Buraiking Boss, who have enslaved humanity as this nineties re-adaptation sets up.  I think if I was to return to it, I would even defend the 2004 live action film, which was done in then-era CGI green screen with more emphasis on philosophical dialogue, for at least trying to be different. The 2008-9 Casshan Sins adaptation is the more radical for being a depressing epilogue to the original story, suggesting Earth is doomed anyway, as there is a rust-like virus even kills robots, and Casshan has to accept he is to blame for it over the series.

Robot Hunter is the least radical of the three, closer to its source premise even if with dashing of more adult content for the straight-to-video market, four half hour episodes released between 1993 and 1994, compiled into a feature length work for the Western Manga Entertainment release. In the world, robots have taken over and enslaved humanity, effectively predating The Terminator in the 1973 source material if with the caveat that, rather than kill us all, the Buraiking Boss realised we could be useful as slave labour in his robot factories. Casshan is spoken in reverence here, before his real introduction, as someone who will save humanity. He is actually Tetsuya Azuma, who in this story was a young man who willingly sacrificed himself to place his consciousness into an android to fight the Buraiking Boss, someone who, as in a lot of Japanese anime in terms of moral complexity, saw the only solution to preserve the Earth's natural resources and save the planet was to take over the planet.

The biggest issue with this adaptation is its length. It is nearly two hours long altogether, but if ever there was an anime that needed more episodes or lengthier ones over the forty minute mark even, Robot Hunter could have done with more elaboration on plot details. His father created Buraiking Boss whilst his mother's soul, literal and not metaphorically, was preserved by Buraiking inside a mechanical swan who without him realising she is passing her son information on his plans. There is enough in that in it, let alone the other plot aspects, to add greater melodrama to the proceedings. There is enough here even in this simple premise to pull form for at least a few more episodes, to elaborate on its science fiction premise, not just Casshan himself, accompanied by his android dog, man's best friend with flamethrower abilities, but also the human resistance. They still have enough forces and resources to fight back around the globe, but having to fight on the back foot. This includes the female lead Luna Kozuki, a love interest from Casshan's past that is yet emphasised as a member of the human resistance who is capable of handling herself.

She does emphasise the few moments of edginess this adaptation has too, not just the fact that, even in the apocalypse, she can dress resplendently in short skirt and immaculate ponytails. More telling alongside the few moments of blood, it is from an era where if even Chung-Li, the Street Fighter 2 video game character, had a gratuitous shower scene in the (uncensored) version of Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie (1994), and there is a blatant one here for Luna. That is crass to have to point out, but whilst she thankfully has enough moments of being a competent heroine herself, Robot Hunter's more curious aspects are these nudges of adult content which stick out more because most of this is not close to the edgier titles Manga Entertainment were realising in the United Kingdom for the "beer and curry anime" image on videotapes. Most of this could be shown to a younger audience than the one it has for a few scenes, rated as suitable for twelve year olds in Britain, and with content in live action that would be fifteen certificate if still tamer than most action films at that rating. Barring the few nude scenes, the grittiness of seeing people shot by the villains, and one revolutionary's unfortunate end, crushed under a bridge girder with lots of raspberry jam around him in one moment in episode three, it really is not a gritty adaptation whatsoever, with the robot enemies effectively allowing one to get away with cartoonish violence. Maybe it is over thinking this when the bar for edginess, even in terms of additional swearing added to the English dubs from Manga Entertainment, but it feels like a concession with some of these scenes for this release. The shower scene especially feels like fan service for the sake of it.

The actual production is solid, though this is a case where three directors and four screenwriters does evoke, even if not necessarily the issue here, of a title which lack a complete voice of one figure. There is Shō Aikawa among the screenwriters, once a notorious screenwriter of ultra-violent work who became a more acclaimed one, but there is also the consistent voice of Yasuomi Umetsu as one of the production's two character designers. Notorious for his work in hentai, and titles like Kite (1998) that could only be created originally under that genre, Umetsu is nonetheless well regarded for his craft and detail, and alongside Tomonori Kogawa as his co-character designer, you get a then-update to the franchise which is good and would have been spectacular to image with an expanded narrative which let the pair take the designs they had further. Even Luna's character design, despite my joke about her immaculate costume jarring against the world, is still memorable, alongside whoever (including other designers on the title) who decided to give the Buraiking Boss a Goth female robot henchwoman, looking like cyber harlequin in black eyeliner. (For obvious reasons as well, with its elaborate action scenes, the mecha designers and animators also deserve their credits for their hard work too). Working with Tatsunoko, the studio Artmic are a product of this era, with their last work in the late nineties. Their catalogue of films and straight-to-video work is a cornucopia of nineties and eighties anime aesthetics and tropes in a filmography, from Bubblegum Crisis (1987-1991) to Genocyber (1994), always collaborating with other studios on their projects.

All my issues are with the plot structure. The plot as it is mapped out makes perfect sense - setting up the world and Casshan, with the final conflict as played here between him and Buraiking Boss as well done as you could hope - but is more the sense we could have done with more story beats. There is teased more androids with the ability to control the ecosystem, living on an isolated island, who sadly never properly appear, and the middle of the production, episodes two and three, could have been have multiplied and increased into more tangents and depth to details like these figures, from episode three, or the main characters themselves. Casshan himself, alongside the limitations of his body, including requiring solar energy to power, has the additional primary crisis of whether he will lose consciousness and become a killing machine, whilst Luna, from the original series, has the conflict of needing to both help save humanity, but naturally concerned for the man she loved and hoping for the likelihood of him becoming Tetsuya Azuma again once the fight is over. There could have, in general, been more elaboration on the scenario, more emphasis on the human rebellion and the Buraiking Boss' forces, including a general sense of the grit and stakes at hand, especially with the uncomfortable idea leant into Buraiking's desire to replace humanity comes from his belief we humans will just destroy our planet, our failure to preserve it causing his existence to be. The slightness of some straight-to-video works has been a problem I have seen in quite a titles, and sadly this is a case, where everything here is perfect and could have been spectacular even as just a fun OVA, but we are just missing enough detail to nag.

#276: Venus Wars (1989)

 

Studio: Kugatsusha

Director: Yoshikazu Yasuhiko

Screenplay: Yoshikazu Yasuhiko and Yūichi Sasamoto

Based on a manga by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko

Voice Cast: Katsuhide Uekusa as Hiroki Senō, Eriko Hara as Susan Sommers, Gorō Naya as Gary, Hōchū Ohtsuka as Will Harris, Kaneto Shiozawa as Gen. Gerhard Donner, Shūichi Ikeda as Lt. Geoffrey Kurtz, Yūko Mizutani as Maggie (Margot Nakamoto), Yūko Sasaki as Miranda Cocker

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

You’re more dangerous than the tank.

Until 2015, director/animator/manga author/character designer Yoshikazu Yasuhiko retired from animation after Venus Wars. For a long time, this was his last directorial work, an acclaimed figure who is important for numerous positions in the seventies and eighties era of anime, including his involvement for the original Mobile Suit Gundam TV series in 1979. Admittedly, weirdly, despite his directorial career being straight-to-video and theatrical films that would have been seen as easier to sell at a time when TV series were not, we in Britain never get his work with great ease beyond Venus Wars itself. I can proudly say, as evidence of this, my first viewing of Venus Wars, despite being truly of the DVD generation of anime fans of the 2000s, was a Manga Entertainment videotape found in a charity shop, viewed on my grandmother old VHS player, with the stickers and catalogue of their titles all intact inside the plastic case.

This is a case of a small narrative within larger science fiction world building, how in the past established in opening narrative, an ice asteroid hit the planet Venus, changing its atmosphere into one which could make the planet habitable by Earthlings. Unfortunately, whilst civilization has developed, and in a funny touch in a background detail, is a far flung future where the musical The Wiz is still popular and performed, the habit of humanity for war is still here, as the story itself is set between a civil war between those for Ishtar and those of Aphrodita. In a world tense enough that Earth reporter Susan Sommers is given a gun alongside her camera by her contact when she reaches the planet, she and a team of battlebike racers, a motley group of punks with our headstrong lead Hiro, will find themselves dragged into total war when the Aprodita city capital of Io is taken over by Ishtarian forces entirely.

The eighties’ last year, including the weight of eighties anime production, is seen in all its splendor here alongside the synth driven J-pop, a film whose view of war really, sadly, is still relevant as the leads are forced into the front line as bystanders, the beauties of the metropolis like the shopping mall not safe from the ravages of war, and gunfights break out in the streets as Ishtar take over Io but loyal civilians are fighting to regain control. There is some humour, even Andrew the cat, the pet of Hiro’s love interest Maggie who is always hungry, especially when she forgets to get him cat food, and tries to give him a raw fish and a slice of bread in his dish, but even that joke is set in the context of her having to get shopping in a place now with curfews by the invading leaders. This is very serious action sci-fi as the battle bike team, when they decide to blow up an Ishtarian tank for revenge for parking on their battle bike stadium, kick off their involvement in the rebellion against the occupying forces as a result of this decision. Barring their one female badass named Miranda, they are guys out of their depth in a real war even if the older mechanic they are helped by is smuggling real firearms in the midst of this, Hiro himself among them a brash hothead who is stuck in the midst of this with no sense of duty until he sees the full issue of his home city being taken over.

Alongside one homophobic bit, which is out of nowhere and leaves a sour taste to a solid film, the real issue many might have is Hiro may be unlikable. He is quite angry and hostile for the sake of it most of the film, an arrogant figure even when he is entirely out of his depth, and when Susan the reporter and the battle bike team step back in the narrative, he is the figure meant to be followed as he will end up in the rebel forces hiding in the desert, forced to serve against his will initially until he realizes the severity of the situation, including Maggie’s life under threat in Io which changes his mind. This is, whilst a film with a potent theme in itself, also a work emphasizing its action scenes, which means that the plot is very simple barring the small details. It does not really even have a true antagonist – one is set up, leading the Ishtar forces, but he is just a grunt in the wider war machine for their side, out of his luck as attempting to keep Io starts to be a struggle. He is close to even being caught entirely were it not for someone not knowing how to fire a handgun, so he is as human as everyone else in the proceedings.

There is one interesting, and very curious experimental touch, a scene of real recorded footage of a vehicle of a desert location, to represent a camera strapped to one of the sci-fi monobikes, which involves animated figures drawn on the images. It is an odd but stand out attempt at experimentation, but for the rest of this theatrical feature, Venus Wars is very solid, very accomplished animation. Considering this was original a manga by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko himself, there is a sense of him really caring for bringing out its story into the other medium fully, especially as this alongside the film Arion (1986) came from writing manga first which worked as pitches for the filmic productions themselves¹. The composer, to really emphasis the production’s scale, is also Joe Hisaishi, who is already at this point working on the likes of My Neighbor Totoro (1988) and Beat Takashi Kitano’s first film when he contributes to this film. Most of the potential issues with Venus Wars is general is Hiro himself, and that feels befitting if you can expect this story idea of even a punk, one who is immature and not always someone you want to hang around with, having to grow up as he will when life is under threat. It is admittedly telling the studio behind the production, Kugatsusha, only made one other production with nothing else – also directed by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, it was The Poem of Wind and Trees (1987), a yoai straight-to-video drama, adapting a culturally significant Keiko Takemiya manga from the seventies, about a romance between two students at an all-boys boarding school in late 19th-century France. With Venus Wars produced after, there is the telling sense that, whilst an admirable production, it took so much to make the studio stopped existing afterwards.

Yasuhiko is known for being quite self defeating on his work, despite his eighties directorial work being acclaimed in the modern day, with his belief that on Arion, a fantasy epic based on Greek mythology, was made by himself “in a half-dead state”. For a time in Japan, he even kept Venus Wars off from being physically released on the likes of DVD with a very down attitude to the production¹. His retirement, instead focusing on a career as a manga author in the nineties, including works based on both the life of Joan of Arc and Jesus Christ, clearly came from a sense of burn out which looked to end a short directorial career were it not for returning in 2015 with Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin (2015-2016) as chief director. Likely to be his last film will be Mobile Suit Gundam: Cucuruz Doan's Island (2022), but that is idiosyncratic as it is an adaptation of an infamous episode of the original Gundam animated series, one which needed to be outsourced with notorious animation issues, that Yoshikazu Yasuhiko felt had themes and a story worthy of a re-adaptation. That in itself tells a lot of his attitude to his work, and whilst Venus Wars is not perfect, I already see a strong figure in Yasuhiko who has to be admired for his craft.

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1) Interview with Yoshikazu Yasuhiko on Gundam: The Origin (Animage, June 2015/Vol. 444). Originally printed in The June 2015 issue of Animage. Translated into English translated by Hyun Park and published on Wave Motion Cannon on January 31st 2017.

#275: Dominion Tank Police (1988-1989)

Studio: Agent 21 and Toshiba Eizo Soft

Director: Kōichi Mashimo

Screenplay: Kōichi Mashimo

Based on the manga by Masamune Shirow

Voice Cast: Hiromi Tsuru/Toni Barry as Leona Ozaki, Masaaki Ohkura/Steve Graf as Al, Ichirō Nagai as The Chief/Jesse Vogel, Jouji Yanami/Marc Smith as Buaku, Kōji Totani/John Bull as Mohican, Michie Tomizawa/Alison Dowling as Unipuma, Yūko Mita/Alison Dowling as Annapuma, Takkō Ishimori/Peter Whitman as Father (Chaplain), Yūsaku Yara/Sean Barrett as Brenten

Viewed in English Dub

 

Most will know Masamune Shirow for Ghost in the Shell, his 1989 manga which gained even further traction when the animation adaptations, in a variety of tones, started from Mamoru Oshii's 1995 theatrical film. Appleseed, his 1984 manga, had a few adaptations over the years as well. Dominion, alongside the fact that the original manga surprisingly only has one single volume in the end, completed over a year from 1985 to 86, and a few additional stories written after that time, may have been sadly become marginalised in his career. This is a shame as for this adaptation, this takes the route of a more overtly humorous but still dystopian science fiction work in his career. It may have not aged well for making jokes about police brutality, as this opens with the tank police comically having a suspect on a chair with a live grenade in his mouth for information and slapstick, but that feels like a deliberately absurd sense of humour which has unfortunately seen the decades after make it less comfortable. What has still stayed timeless, unfortunately but with weightier relevance, is the setting of Newport, Japan, where the environment for the entire world has collapsed, causing the atmosphere to become toxic until civilisation adaptive a natural resistance, and the police have been forced to have an entire division with military tanks to deal with the crime rates.

Despite the tone, including an extended gag (literally) of inflatable phallus being used as a police deterrent, the context for Dominion's setting, the severity against the humour, is one of the most interesting things here out of the gate, which is apt for how Ghost in the Shell, in its own variety of tones, had a lot to work with through its own interpretation of heavy science fiction themes. The atmosphere is decimated, leaving the air outside is toxic, as public service announcements warn of even if everyone has a resistance when the clouds roll in. Even if the first two episodes have a clear sense of humour, that its McGuffin is that a group are trying to steal urine samples from "healthy" people, the context is still salient and meaningful even in a more cartoonish presentation like a good sci-fi story should be able to, especially as the samples were taken from are those without the resistance of the toxic atmosphere but the physical health from a time before.

That your sympathetic heroes are the tank police, who stick said live grenades into suspects' mouths during interrogations, or set up spin the wheel game shows with them with throwing knives, is a sense of dark humour and a sense this is a Japanese production taking a gleeful humour to the trope of on-the-edge police. From director-screenwriter Kōichi Mashimo, it is in a context of depicting a form of police that is deliberately absurd, rather than realising how history would go after 1988 in the West particularly, and that makes this a lot bleaker humoured even if these particular officers are actually likable. Into this is our female protagonist Leona, a former motorbike officer who is transferred over to the group, initially viewed with hostility by their headstrong head Brenten. Another younger male member Al develops a crush on her, and despite the incident that sends their captain's beloved tank to the scrap yard in the sky during training, from its scrap metal comes Bonaparte, a mini-tank who is clearly a predecessor to the Tachikoma tanks from Ghost in the Shell, as cute military weaponry, that Leona can use with greater ease with the advantages of being a squat and faster vehicle in the team that suits her driving skills.

Whilst this straight-to-video production will get more serious with heftier themes, Dominion is a comedy at heart. It feels like the prologue to what should have been a longer franchise that could stretch this inherently fascinating premise further - New Dominion Tank Police comes in 1993-4, but sadly Tank Police Team TANK S.W.A.T. 01 (2006) by Romanov Higa, a one-off with 3D character designs, faded into obscurity and was clearly not well received, with no other adaptations beyond this let alone actual manga pages written. A shame, as the juggling of heavier themes with humour makes a good change, where despite all the property damage, including legendary pieces of art and historical artefacts in the second half, it is played with a madcap tone exemplified by the sympathetic antagonists, Buaku who is revealed as an artificially created android, and the two women who became the poster cat girls for this entire franchise, literally as they are superhuman anthropomorphic cat girls, Unipuma and Annapuma, who help cause mischief and mayhem. Buaku himself does get a weightier back story involving a portrait which used him as a subject which had more to it than others may know, but they still are part of the humorous tone. Even the English dub, which glibly steers the dialogue into more broad humour, and obsessed with the human urine subplot as an excuse to use the word "piss", is really fun even when it clearly breaks from the script. Whether it is letting the actress Alison Dowling behind the cat girls play with Jane Austin era English accents for a joke parodying Austin era stereotypes, or Peter Whitman as the Christian chaplain officer who talks of Christian forgiveness but is gleeful for mayhem, the British made Manga Entertainment dub, unlike some others which are funny for the wrong reasons, still shines.

The first act really works setting up the tone, dealing with Leona's first days and first encounters with who is being sent to get urine samples, something whose plot is ever fully explained, either as a joke or that there was an ongoing plot with the mafia group wishing them which never came to be. It does not take itself seriously, such as those aforementioned phallic police deterrents, or the complete disregard for property damage even if, in another context, the jokes about severe police tactics and arguing with the female major, clearly inspired from the American action films from the eighties being exaggerated here, would have aged badly now without that context. The last two episodes get more serious, with Buaku's back story and him teaming up with Leona when a suspicious private mercenary force get involved, which allows the world to get new layers. The juxtaposition is helped greater by the aesthetic of the era; we are nearing the end of the eighties and a golden era for hand drawn anime just from the mechanical designs in this production, but also in terms of this being a comedy sci-fi still set within a grungy metropolis which fully embraced the type of sci-fi which lead to cyberpunk. This is a comedy which is still set in a place you would not normally have for a location for this type of story, the rundown nature of the futurescape noticeable in that, for all its luxurious streets, it is barely functioning with its crime rates and poisoned landscape.

Strangely the first Dominion adaptation is split between two production companies, neither with large filmographies at all. Toshiba Eizo Soft was mostly a distributor, only doing production on this or two pieces of a horror anime long forgotten despite the manga being well regarded, called Karura Mau, an enticing one of young female shaman dealing with supernatural forces, beginning with feature length story, and then followed by a six part straight-to-video series. Agent 21, who worked on these titles too, were producing more mostly straight to video work, including hentai, some action, and Dirty Pair: Flight 005 Conspiracy (1990) for that legendary franchise, as well as infamously Dark Cat (1991), a horror anime that is not well regarded. Judging from the time periods of their collecting, tiny filmographies, all their titles come from that golden age of eighties anime and the straight-to-video boom for the medium, with the sense that as time went on they could not last. This is not to mention the end of the eighties Japanese bubble economy expansion that allowed straight-to-video culture to flourish, including live action genre films, collapsed into the early nineties, and whilst studios could survive into the new decades, and straight-to-video work was still alive and healthy up to the Millennium, I suspect these two studios were casualties to the market. Director-writer Kōichi Mashimo however was able to keep going, even founding the studio Bee Train, with his career including a series of television action series with female protagonists capable in gun shootouts like Noir (2001), the first of these. Whilst he had not really directed much into the 2010s, effectively retiring with Bee Train not creating any more productions when he stopped, he had a prolonged career from the seventies over a good few decades that outlasted the studios behind this production.

The set up for a wider world thankfully comes in New Dominion Tank Police, but already I get the sense this franchise could have been expanded further from the premise, which I think is a positive compliment to Dominion. Arguably one of the bigger reasons Dominion is obscurer now, alongside how significant Ghost in the Shell became in the West over other Masamune Shirow titles expect Appleseed, both in its animated adaptations but the original manga being a staple of the manga section of bookstores, is that this animated adaptation has not really being readily available. Lost to the online rips, and the Maiden Japan DVD release of the sequel long out of print in the USA, it is disappointing with the virtues it has that Dominion itself is not as readily available when it is very digestible and memorable.

#273: Cyber City Oedo 808 (1990–1991)

Studio: Madhouse

Director: Yoshiaki Kawajiri

Screenplay: Akinori Endo

Voice Cast: Hiroya Ishimaru as Shunsuke Sengoku, Kaneto Shiozawa as Merrill "Benten" Yanagawa, Tesshō Genda as Rikiya "Goggles" Gabimaru, Emi Shinohara as Remi Masuda, Kyousei Tsukui as Versus, Mitsuko Horie as Kyōko "Okyō" Jōnouchi, Norio Wakamoto as Juzo Hasegawa

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Madhouse would have success with Wicked City in 1987, one of their more infamous titles which helped when its director Yoshiaki Kawajiri pushed for a theatrical release and it paid dividends for the studio¹. That was however an adaptation, based on the work of author Hideyuki Kikuchi, and with Cyber City Oedo, Madhouse and Kawajiri decided to create their own original intellectual property, one which was meant to be a multimedia one. This came to be true as there was a video game, the 1991 game for the PC-Engine CD-ROM², and a novel¹. Cyber City itself, made for the straight to video format, was only to last for three forty plus minute episodes, never leading to anything further, but still became a cult anime in the decades after, even if by way of alternative dubs and music tracks being created for the images as we will get into.

Oedo is a cyberpunk tale where, with criminal sentences possible to reach longer than the average human lifespan, prisoners are forced to live in the orbit of space, presumably in a way to extend their lives to suffer for their cybercrimes. Three prisoners housed in an orbital prison are offered an alternative by Juzo Hasegawa, a police chief, that they can reduce their life sentences for each criminal they bring in, with each having to ability to return with life on Earth but with explosive neck collars permanently on that, able to be timed, prevents any prisoner to take this offer to flee once they are back in public. This explicitly nods to period chambara tropes places in the future as "Oedo" is likely a reference to "Edo", the original name for Tokyo, whilst in Japanese history, the weapon they are all assigned, jitte, if a science fiction version of a weapon, with sai-like blunt ends, that was used by police in Edo-period Japan. Beyond this, the straight to video series is a hyper-exaggerated world, where in episode one, the main location is a space-scraper, a skyscraper so comically impractical in height, now in orbit at the top, that if the central threat managed to disable the gyroscope fully and cause it to fall, it would have led to a natural disaster of cataclysmic proportions. This has a variety of tropes and clichés of this type of “cyberpunk” of androids, cyborgs with psychic powers, and one of our leads having monomolecular wire, a concept the likes of author William Gibson, a huge figure in cyberpunk fiction, among other writers were obsessed with where you have weaponised wire so sharp on a molecular level that it could cut through anything, even through the neck of a cyber enhanced saber-toothed tiger. The leads, interconnecting as regular characters, however do get the starring role each for the three episodes, Shunsuke Sengoku the lead for episode one in the space-scraper. Sengoku is your typical hothead, who is heroic as an anti-hero figure but also anti-authoritarian, with a love-hate relationship with Juzo and especially against the sentient computer that occupancies them. This computer is arguably the fourth lead and deserving it, as the deadpan retorts in the Japanese dub are very funny, all from the perspective as an AI which cannot understand some of the insults thrown at it, such as when it has to explain how, with an internal geo-map system, it cannot possibly “get lost” on command. For episode one, with Sengoku and his constant argument with this robot, you get a great first episode to begin this work, where the serious tone in spite of how absurd this is in truth works fully.

Rikiya "Goggles" Gabimaru stands out as a character that would rarely get to be a lead in an anime, an older man if with a Mohawk, the more conventional of the noble anti-heroes despite his visual look.  His is the type of macho melodrama, which is secretly sentimental and melancholic if filtered through acion tropes, encountering an old partner of crime who was also his old flame, involved in a conspiracy involving the corrupt military project of psychic robots. The owner of the monomolecular wire, and lead of the third episode, is Merrill "Benten" Yanagawa. Benten inherently stands out of the cast as, among very distinct characters in the history of anime, even minor ones, you have here an ultra androgynous final lead, a really distinct figure who is probably the most iconic for the whole production, bringing up a combination of glam rock feminization, with red lipstick and hyper feminine features, with kabuki aesthetic and a shock white mullet, aged in designed but entirely timeless. His episode also is the most idiosyncratic even in a very stylish and creative production, in that this brings horror tropes into science fiction with artificially created vampires. The result of this brings a gothic and moody sensibility to the proceedings with the first ounces even of tragedy to the production, as it involves a woman cryogenically preserved doomed in this life forced onto her by another, as it ups the gore in imagining an undead individual being driven out an airlock in space. It is this episode particularly where the show's ability to be serious despite also being ridiculous shows the virtue of this tightrope act, intentionally and unintentionally.

It is a ridiculous anime in a good way, where we are dealing with a premise where there is never a moment stopping to question its own logic or feeling contrived in a way that undercuts faith in the material. Cybernetic saber tooth tigers is a high watermark in the absurd, as mentioned earlier in the review, but found in episode three, this takes it further with them kept in a cryogenic hub in tubs among three hundred year old patients, a place in outer space connected to a hospital by a space elevator, and armed with lasers, with the anime managing to add more flourishes to these sort of moments. This is throughout each episode with all these "questionable" moments becoming highlights alongside the tone and style of the work winning you over. The seriousness of the production helps, feeling like the delirium usually found in a video game from this time, and helping this is how this is Madhouse at their highest of quality. Yoshiaki Kawajiri is an insanely talented figure in anime, even when he is in the animation department after his directorial career seemingly ended into the 2010s, but as much of the virtues is the entire staff too, where your mechanical animation director for an example is Takeshi Koike, the future director of Redline (2009), one of the most underrated theatrical anime in need of greater attention and showing where his work here before came from.

The audio is its own curious history for the OVA. I watched this in the original Japanese version, but the history needs to be marked how, whilst Manga Entertainment bought the license with great interest, they took their own decisions which added more to the story beyond a good pulp anime. They were known infamously for "fifteening" their dubs already, where to increase the age rating with the British film classification for all physical home releases, they added swearing into the dialogue alongside adding their own flourishes. This is an idiosyncratic production however in that they went further in changing the music track. I like the moody synth provided by composer Kazz Toyama, but if you are talking of Cyber City Oedo, specifically to its British release as the Central Park Media/U.S. Manga Corps release decided to not go forwards with this choice in the United States, you have to talk about this version as it is part of the legacy in the West. Rory McFarlane's contribution, combining hard rock, thrash metal and synth, even influenced by Mountain's Nantucket Sleighride (to Owen Coffin)¹, is a distinct score to hear, and thus it is worth talking about too as a highlight even heard in snippets. For Kawajiri himself, this is getting into the golden period of his career between the late eighties to the 2000s, one where you see here that, for all his notoriety with certain titles for their transgression, what his trademark was, whether the screenwriter of the story or not as in this case, his trademark where these kinetic stories of larger than life figures, in larger than life scenarios, which never for all their moments of absurdities feel entirely a high quality in grandeur for this era of pulp anime storytelling. Even Ninja Scroll (1993), which shared in the more notorious content of his career, showed this and, in spite of the knowledge Cyber City Oedo was not the biggest hit as Manga Entertainment hoped for¹, that would benefit from the virtues found here, in a period chambara tale, and gain even bigger status in Western anime pop culture among the other titles Kawajiri would helm.

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1) Taken from the documentary Inside Cyber City Oedo (2020), directed by Andy Hanley.

#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.