The Guyver - Bioarmatura potenziata

The Guyver OAV is a great series, don't be put off by the original "Out of Control" anime, this is a lot better, and gets you right into the story. You follow Sho Fucamachi, his best friend Tetsuro, and the girl of his dreams Mizuki as he battles against the evil Chronos corporation who want the Guyver Unit that has bonded with him. Along the way they find an ally in Guyver 3 (the coolest of all the Guyvers) and help from the mysterious Mr Murikami.. just what powers does he have? This was one of the first anime series I've seen, and it's excellent, even if you know nothing about the genre, it has a great storyline, and the revelations in the last few episodes are especially gripping. The animation isn't great, but it's 10 years old now, so give it a break! Enjoy :)

(apologies for bad spelling of Japanaese names! I have the dubbed verion ;))

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.

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!!!!

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!!!

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.