Kyôshoku sôkô Guyver

This adaptation of Guyver could have been a retro action classic. Its not a masterpiece by any means, and it isn't humorously bad. But as a dark, animated Tokusatsu show, its very fun. It has a plot, cool designs for our hero and the monsters, brutal action scenes, good pacing, even a good soundtrack! Usually I'm not a fan of "simple" stuff, but I'm biased towards retro sci-fi anime, so Guyver was close to scratching my itch.

But as I got deeper into this 12-episode OVA, it dawned on me that there was no time for Guyver to finish. And finish it did not. Guyver is based on a manga...that's ongoing to this day. While it changed parts of the story, it still followed the manga closely. It didn't create its own plot and ending, and didn't even have enough time to finish the second arc. Its like Guyver, a direct-to-video anime, somehow got canceled.

Booooooo!

So, does Guyver merit watching at all? Maybe. Again, the series is pretty awesome while it lasts. There's nothing to take away, though, and retro action is a niche few can enjoy. If you like the idea, you can watch it if you got nothing else to do. Just be prepared - what you're watching isn't art, and you're not getting an epic final battle. A shame, but c'est la vie.

We finally discover what the guyver is in the last installments to the series.

The story line in this installment is far superior to that of the first, but the quality of animation is largely inferior. There is another down side and that is the way that the final episode ends.

I enjoyed this as you finally learnt the truth, and the arrival of a new mysterious adversary was superb!!!!

"Guyver: Bio-Booster Armor," an Anime' adaptation of the hit Manga created by Yoshiki Takaya, is a good effort but is not particularly memorable in many ways. I'm a huge fan of The Guyver, which you could consider the Japanese equivalent of Spider-Man because you can see the great amount of stress placed upon the hero in his battles against evil.

But "Guyver: Bio-Booster Armor" doesn't really hold you the way it should. I guess for the time it was on television (the late 1980s), it was good for what it was but when compared to the Manga itself and the far superior 2005 series, it simply pales because not a whole lot was done with it and plus it condenses much of the material, so it seems rushed and important, or key, character-driven scenes are lost and don't really connect with one another. The writing doesn't seem all that good either, so the dialogue seems a bit hokey (which could be because of the American dubbing). The animation is what "Guyver: Bio-Booster Armor" has working best in its favor, although that too seems dated.

The plot: high school student Sho Fukamachi accidentally activates an alien suit of armor, called a "guyver" unit, that transforms him into an exponentially enhanced mechanized warrior with a vast array of weapons, powers, and abilities. He becomes the quarry of the Chronos Corporation, a powerful conglomeration with designs on world power. Sho uses the Guyver's abilities to square off against Chronos and its army of shape-changing foot-soldiers, the Zoanoids, human mutants that can turn into monsters at will. He must use the Guyver to defeat Chronos and the Zoanoids while protecting his friends and family from their terrible onslaught.

6/10

This version blows away the earlier Guyver anime and the lame American versions. The most accurate to the original manga. High school kid Sho Fukamachi comes across the Guyver unit. It allows him to merge with an alien symbiont that turns him into a living weapon. Chronos, an evil organization comprised of humans altered into "Zoanoid" bio-monsters, wants the Guyver unit back with them. This show has cool characters fighting genetically engineered monsters, with nifty tricks like Bio-Lasers, etc. (Not stupid Urotsukidoji-esque demons!) The bad guys are a pre-X-Files global conspiracy that our heroes, mere high school students, must struggle against. The thing I love about this show that I never see mentioned is the ongoing theme of "don't trust anyone over 30" that seems to be present. With a few exceptions, the series' adults are all evil!

Between this disappointing animated entry and the horrendous 1991 Guyver live action movie starring Mark Hamil, I honestly suspect a curse of sorts that was placed on the Guyver franchise name during that year.

Part 2 of the Guyver OVA sees material from the mildly popular manga, books 3 to 5 in particular, crammed into 6 short episodes.

On a whole, this feels like an after thought at best, created just because the studio had some leftover cash and did not know where to spend it.

It not only carries on the flaws of part 1, but ends up making a whole batch of new flaws and mistakes. For starters, if you thought the plot in part one felt truncated and confusing, part 2 is a lot more so. You get smacked with the convoluted origin of the guyver units, the coming of the Zoalord Balcus, Hyperzoanoid team, Aptom and the lost numbers, even a subplot involving Sho's dad.

Ooooh……..boy………..

Visually, the look of this second part is obviously inferior to the first. Animation and art detail suffer the usual problems that plague most anime TV series. For an OVA (which usually has a higher budget per episode and longer production period) such standards are highly disappointing. The action involves a lot more standing around talking and blasting brightly colored power balls at each other akin to stuff like Dragonball Z; less of the more savage, in-your-face, hand to hand battles that came before.

The conclusion to the series seems like it was aborted pre-maturely and leaves viewers hanging. Plot threads are hardly tied up as the story rushes toward its disappointing end.

Watch this one if only for the sake of continuity or if you're a long time guyver fan.