Metal Skin Panic Madox-01

Viewed on Tubi.

After it's dropped off it's transport, a young mechanic stumbles upon an experimental military mech & manages to get stuck in the thing. Of course he has his priorities, and sets out to meet up with his girlfriend before she leaves to study abroad, with the government/military getting in his way in an attempt to reclaim the machine (which gets dangerous when a trigger happy Vietnam vet, bored of the post war peace, defies orders & sets out to destroy the mech to boost his own ego).

It has it's moments, with some fun action, a few humorous situations, and the short 40-something minute runtime keeps things at a brisk pace (that, and it really dedicated some immaculate attention to detail to the mech's mechanical elements in a way I'm not sure I've seen elsewhere, especially in modern anime). That said, it's short runtime also means it's never able to get enough depth to be anything more than a potentially amusing distraction, and it's in desperate need of a remaster (it's clearly still in SD, maybe not updated since it's original VHS release, and it shows).

To understand the comedy here, you have to recall that in the 1990s, Tokyo had the most expensive real estate on earth. Trashing whole buildings with a runaway battle suit is a big step up from what the Blues Brothers did to a shopping mall. This is basically a one joke comedy - the running joke being that the military's most advanced machine has locked itself around some random guy who hasn't read the manual and is in the thing backwards! The action animation is very well and thoroughly executed here. So many direct to VHS anime projects cut so many corners with speed lines and by moving cameras over still images that you wind up with rather static action shots. But here, fully animated, current and authentic tanks, gunships etc. are thrown into the fray as the military tries to stop this run amok machine leading to nicely elaborate action sequences with great looking cityscape backgrounds. The characters are a bit throwaway, but that is to be expected for the period. For what it is, a one-joke action destructo-comedy, it is effective and well executed entertainment.

This sure looks very 80's-style by now. That doesn't have to be a bad thing, and there are some elements to like in Madox-01, but unfortunately there are a number of flaws as well that just make it fall in the average category.

For starters, the video seems to have trouble deciding whether it wants to be serious or silly. The box will probably promise non-stop hilarity, which is really just a lie. Anyone expecting an all-out comedy will be badly disappointed. There are one or two chucklesome moments in the film, but they're pretty mild. As such, the only real "joke" is that a highly powerful military mecha ends up in the hands of an average joe, and he gets stuck at the commands of the machine despite himself. Granted, such a set-up has ample opportunity for comical moments, but very little of that actually happens, apart from a bit of fumbling around with the mech. It's more light-hearted than some other mecha films, but it's not of a purely comical nature such as Urusei Yatsura or the Tenchi Muyo series, for example.

Instead, it's mainly light action fluff, with a good deal of explosions, chaos, and millitary devices. The story is actually not as daft as it sounds, and works pretty well. Alas, this being just a short 45-minute OAV, it never delivers -quite- enough to really satisfy the viewer. The battle at the end is quite intense, but otherwise, this is rather thin on the ground in the action department as well as in the comedy department.

In an action romp, it doesn't matter that the characters are rather flat. And one-sided as though they may be here, they're still enjoyable to watch. It's just a shame that they don't get to do -quite- enough exciting things to give this film any kind of impact. Also, the mecha somehow seemed rather bland in design. The idea was probably to make them look more like realistic warfare engines, but it doesn't quite work. The Madox lacks any kind of spunk to it's design, it could just as well be one of those police mechs from Bubblegum Crisis. Oh sure, it's supposedly the most advanced combat tool ever made, but then again, don't they say that about each and every mecha in a Japanese film?

So, while it has a certain charm (and the music's nice), Madox-01 is pretty much entirely disposeable. There certainly is not enough in here for you to go out and buy the tape at full price, but it makes a nice rent if you want an odd hour's worth of light blasting action. But after watching it once, there's nothing more to remember about it. You might as well forget you've ever watched it.