Kyôshoku sôkô Guyver

The Guyver sets out the story of Aliens that landed on Earth millions of years ago, creating and developing life on Earth. The Chronos corp. set up an acheological dig, and recovered the aliens lost technolodgy to create bio-morthic monsters called "zoanoids." They also acquired 3 individual power units known as "Guyver" that transform the user into a powerful combatant mech. In modern day Tokyo, a test subect escapes from Chronos, Japan, and takes the 3 units with him in ransom to salvage his stolen humanity. During the pursuit of the test zoanoid, a bomb is triguired by him, and blows the units out of sight, at random locations. A young boy called Sho Fukamachi uncovers one, and bonds with it to become "Guyver I." Sho soon finds himself up against Chronos' bio-morthic mutants, and learns that they wont stop pursuing Sho and his loved ones until the units are back in their possession. The Guyver portrays an epic story filled with sorrow, anger, vegeance, and teh struggle to live as a normal "human being." The Guyver is indeed one of the memorable animes ever produced, although people have different tastes, and might disagree with me. The Mech design and armour is beautiful in it's own way, and each episode has crisp, gothic animation. The first six episodes is worth checking out if your into anime, mech, or even Japanese robot shows, but the remaining six is another matter...

Watch DATAs 1-6...NOW!!!

Based on the mildly popular cult manga series of the same name, this Guyver OVA is the 2nd attempt to bring Guyver into animated form following the bloody but brain-dead "Guyver: Out of Control".

The basic plot seems to be quite a faithful adaptation of the first 2 books of the guyver manga series. Sho and his friend Tetsurou come across an alien artifact in the forest which bonds to Sho and grants him powers of the bio-booster armour known as the Guyver. Along with his girlfriend Mizuki, the trio soon gets swept up in a larger than life thickening plot involving the evil Chronos coporation and their genetically enhanced soldiers known as Zoanoids.

Not bad, but not entirely good either as the plot premise seems more on the juvenile side compared to other anime.

There are some interesting character development and a good fleshing out of Sho's reluctance over the responsibilities of his power. However once past the first 2 episodes, the series descends into predictable territory and starts to follow a "monster of the episode" formula commonly seen in the kid friendly tokusatsu shows like Masked Rider. The characters also fall strictly into your typical anime stereotype roles like the damsel-in-distress girlfriend, reluctant angst-ridden teen hero, hero's helpful best friend, deep voiced devious villain etc.

The violence would be what makes this otherwise mildly scripted show so appealing with the older teenage crowd and it is careful not to go overboard like the previous OVA. Sadly, the animation is quite mediocre for a 1989 OVA production. On the technical side, the animation is stiff, the art is inconsistent and the character designs are nothing special. To top things off, we are greeted with one of the cheesiest synthesizer score that sounds like a reject from the 60s Ultraman series. The theme songs are firmly stuck in the 1980s with campy lyrics and a slightly juvenile melody that does not fit with the violent and sometimes darker nature of the Guyver mythos. Thank goodness you can just turn off the subtitles and just giggle at the silly childish sounding melody. The English theme song starts with a nice alternative-rock styled electric guitar riff but soon goes down the drain hole a painfully slow tempo coupled with a horrendously messy feel.

On the plus side the monsters and the guyver designs look great and the fight scenes are a real treat as more time and effort seems to have gone into animating them. The art style has a dark moody feel to it with heavy blacks and thick shadows that lend itself well to the feel of the show.

Sadly, compared to other anime of its time, Guyver falls short on many levels. Fans of the manga would definitely want to pick this one up just to see their beloved characters and stories in animated form.

I thought that this had ALOT going for it! I wasn't *that* into Anime when i first saw this buttttt it was quite a good show! I just didn't like it after eposode 6 when the animation got really crappy :(

This show has ALOT going for it and i remember watching it and thinking "WOWWWW" hehehe, it was something that you can watch and then go racing off into the sunset as lil' kids pretending who you were! LOL

I didn't like the fact that the guyver (at times) appeared TOTALLY INVINCIBLE against the normal types, and the fact that Guyver 3 was SUPER strong, but when fighting the ONE boss, all types of things would happen to him? I mean, the unit has got TONS of weapons that it could use, and then it gets its but whipped? (Btw, i DID like the wholesale cloning done at the end of eposode 6!! Highly orginal i think!) Butttt like most Anime that i've seen recently, it seems that your SUPER strong, until something comes along and then gives u a good but whipping, and like all good guys you just come right back again and kick its but... Fun?

Watch this even if you don't really know what Anime is all about, its a good starting point, and then you can move on after this to more "harsh" stuff, at very least when you watch some other Anime, you won't have to worry about things like "What the HELL was THAT all about!?!?"

"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

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!!!!