Giant Robo the Animation: The Day the Earth Stood Still

I fell in love with this series from the very first opening frames. After having seen countless animes with interchangeable characters, plots and visual styles, Giant Robo was an unexpected masterpiece. At first glance it looks retro, but nothing can be further from the truth. If anything, Giant Robo is ahead of its time (or perhaps one of the only ones on time). Highly stylized (to say the least), Giant Robo eeks every scrap of possibility out of its animated format. There is no attempt to recreate reality here. Characters have incredibly long, thin legs (and--in one case--nose), run faster than cars and have super powers way cooler than anything else I've ever seen. The soundtrack is outstanding in an original sort of way (opera!) and the pacing keeps viewers on the edge of their seats.

My biggest gripe with the anime is with the characters. While I found many of them to be interesting and likable a few of the main characters were a bit too typical for my tastes The protagonist boy, female lead and the master villain all seemed to be characters I had seen before. However, nearly all of the secondary characters make up for this single flaw.

What Giant Robo does have is great style and enough audacity to try something new. In each of the seven episodes there are numerous breaks from anime convention that set this anime apart from most others. Unfortunately, to go into details would spoil just about everything. Plot twists abound and Giant Robo does feature one of the most powerful endings I have ever seen.

I could go on and on about this anime, but that would be pointless. If I haven't convinced you by now to see it, I'm not going to. And if you've already seen it, you'd just agree with me.

Personally, it ranks as my second favorite anime (following the flawless Mononoke Hime).

Giant Robo should have really sucked. It had a retro-futuristic style (think Astro-Boy), it has some really cliched characters and the story doesn't start out in any exceptional way. Except... as the story progresses, these things start to change. Characters lose their one dimensionality and start to have human motivations. Plot twists drive shake everything the narrative has led you to believe. There are times when it appears the story just can't get any bigger, but it does!

What makes this series great is giant cast of characters (each with unique abilities, some of which are very original), the twisting of convential anime plot lines and that it doesn't rely purely on shock value or huge explosions to keep you interested. Having seen a lot of the MD Geist-style anime (read: very very bad anime in regards to plot or characterisation), it is great to see a series that doesn't insult my intelligence.

There are some negatives to this series - the whiny boy who controls Giant Robo, the voice acting for some of the characters (I saw a dubbed version), there are some really cheesy moments and some anime conventions are still followed religiously (eg the girl (Ginrei sp?) is mostly useless... except when she isn't). A big let-down is the additional episode on the final tape - because there are 7 one-hour episodes, a filler episode called "Barefoot Ginrei" was after the final episode. It doesn't really add anything to the story, and the fact that Ginrei's feet aren't the only things that are bare may have been the reason it was included.

Despite this, Giant Robo deserves any accolades it gets. Go out and see it.

Witness now the dawning of our tomorrow. Shining brighter than the daybreak of light is the brilliance of the Shizuma Drive. Our only reliable future of energy, which includes dependability in every home and the Earth's only answer to the waste of atomic and oil energy.

But beware, for our shining future has also cast a dark shadow of revenge - BIG FIRE, an underworld organization, who's only goal is absolute world domination!

Do not panic, for we are protected by the international police organization formed by the Experts of Justice, keeping our world safe from the evils of Big Fire. Amongst their ranks is the bravery of one boy who commands the mightiest robot of all - a young boy called Daisaku Kusama. ..

The set up and intro may sound cheesy, but it's far from it. I am shocked - nay, stunned that it took me this long to get around to watching this series. Everyone should immediately drop whatever they are doing at this moment and watch Giant Robo. It's that cool.

The more observant of the crowd might notice that GR looks a LOT like a series called Johnny Socko and his Flying Robot. Or one might dismiss it out of hand as just another "Giant Mecha fighting" series. Giant Robo is neither. It is very loosely based on that Johhny Socko - but very, very loosely, and it is SO much more than just Big Robots beating the hell out of each other.

The plot revolves around the last sample of the prototype Shizuma drive, Big Fire's efforts to obtain the sample, and the Experts of Justice's attempts to keep it out of their hands. Along the way, villains turn out to be not quite what they appear to be, good guys die, the golden egg that is the Shizuma drive isnt quite the blessing that everyone expected - basically the plot undergoes so many twists and turns, that the view ends up is nowhere near where they started. It's like Babylon 5, but animated - and better.

The animation is a cool retro look, like the animated Batman series. The music is a grand symphonic score, worthy of John Williams, the story - I cant get enough of it. It's a bit confusing when characters get introduced in waves - you cant tell 'em apart sometimes without a score card. But stick it out - this series is WELL worth the trouble.

It's a nearly all ages film - no sex or nudity, plenty of violence - but it's all cartoon-ish, and way over the top (like a Jackie Chan movie). Some swearing, but not excessively so.

Right in the beginning you can tell Giant Robo is different. Set in a retro-future where the heroes and villians fight it out in tailored suits, and the robots look like 50s atomic toys, this series is my all-time favorite Japanese animation - in the company of Akira, Evangelion, Mononuke and Ghost in the Shell - where each episode is better than the last, and for those of you who watch all 7, the end comes far too soon..

Giant Robo has to be one of the best Anime series out there.

Giant Robo actually takes you to another time and place, where everything is different and every single person has there own idea of whats going on. It's an awesome commntary about the world that works even better now (2001) because of out energy crisis and our lack of leadership.

I've watched Giant Robo a million times and while I know who's suppose to be the good guys and bad guys, there's just so much involved that you loose sight of who's right and who's wrong, everybody's ideas make since, they all seem to be trying to save the world. Sure there are a few loose cannons that have no control, but our leads, who's right?

If you want to be a real nerd (which isn't a bad thing), watch this with friends and see the conversations it sparks.

***1/2 (9)