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.

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.

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!

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 ;))