Giant Robo
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Giant Robo (ジャイアントロボ), is a tokusatsu, anime and manga series created by Mitsuteru Yokoyama. It is similar to his famous manga/anime series, Tetsujin 28 (the OVA version of Giant Robo features characters from Tetsujin 28), only Giant Robo has more fantastic elements.
Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot is the name given in the U.S. to the 26-episode tokusatsu (live-action) series based on Giant Robo, produced by Toei Company Ltd. in 1967.
The later 7-episode OVA series was produced by Mu Films in an interval between 1992 and 1998, it is considered as one of the best of the "retro-anime" produced in the 1990s, and also one of the greatest anime series ever to be produced. It is available on six VHS tapes by Manga Video and three DVDs by Media Blasters.
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The 1967 Series
The original tokusatsu TV series aired on NET (now TV Asahi) from October 11, 1967 to April 1, 1968, with a total of 26 episodes.
The plot
Image:Robo1967.jpg The Earth is under invasion by a terrorist group called Big Fire (Gargoyle in the US version), led by the alien Emperor Guillotine. The group captures scientists to create an army of giant monsters to rampage the Earth. But fate stumbles on a little boy named Daisaku Kusama (Johnny Sokko in the US) and a young man named Jūrō Minami (Jerry Mano in the US), the latter is secretly Member U3 of the top-secret peacekeeping organization, Unicorn. Daisaku and Jūrō are shipwrecked on an island after the ocean liner they were on was attacked by a giant sea monster called Dracolon, and are captured by members of Big Fire. When trying to escape, they end up in an elevator that leads down to a huge construction complex where a giant robot is being built! Pharaoh-like in appearance, this indestructible humanoid robot is being built by captive scientist Dr. Lucius Guardian, who decides to give the two escapees its control device, a miniature transmitter built into a wristwatch. The robot can only be controlled by the first voice that is recorded in its electronic brain (but he first needs to be charged up by atomic energy). Dr. Guardian helps Daisaku and Jūrō escape, only to be shot to death, but not before he set an atomic bomb that destroyed the base, the resulting explosion activates the giant robot, which moves to Daisaku's every command! As the controller of the robot (heretofore known as "Giant Robo," or just "Giant Robot" in the US), Daisaku is invited by Jūrō and his chief Azuma to join Unicorn as its 7th member, U7! As U7, Daisaku fights the evil forces of Big Fire with the help of U3/Jūrō and Giant Robo.
Weapons and functions
The Giant Robot has numerous weapons systems which Johnny can command the robot use:
- Finger missiles: Fired from the fingers with an undetermined number of rounds
- Eye beams: A twinned energy blast from the eyes.
- The center V on the chest can launch and ram against the enemy to force it back
As a security precaution in case Johnny is forced to give unwanted orders, the boy can give an seeming line of gibberish into the communicator before doing so "Od ton yebo redro!", claiming it is a communication test. However, the Robot is programmed to play the message backwards as "Do not obey order!" With that message, the robot is programmed to take it as a signal that his controller is captured and regardless of any subsequent order, the Robot will launch and trace the signal to rescue his controller.
What's Robo Saying?
It's generally known that Giant Robo doesn't speak, but every time Daisaku gives him a command, he responds with an echoing, roaring "MASSHHHH!!!" (In the OVA , it lets out an echoing "AOOOOOOHHHHHHHMMMM!")
The US Version
The entire series was first broadcast in the United States in 1969 and became quite popular in the next few years. In 1970, several episodes were edited together to create the movie Voyage Into Space which has now reached cult film status.
While recently released on DVD by Toei Video in Japan, the 26 episode series and the movie have never been officially released in the United States, with the exception of the first eight episodes, which were released on videocassette by Orion Home Video. However, bootleg copies of the entire U.S. version of the series have long been available on both VHS and DVD.
The OVA Series
Plot
Image:Grfight.JPG Giant Robo takes place in 2049. It is a retro-esque future where the invention of the Shizuma Drive has brought about the third energy revolution, ascending mankind into an age of prosperity that began ten years ago. At that time, Dr. Shizuma and his four colleagues began to develop the drives. They were to be the perfect energy source; non-polluting and recyclable.
With this new revolution there came a heavy price...
Dr. Franken Von Forglor (Renamed (Misspelled? ) as "Vogler" in the US ) , one of the five men who created the drives, went insane and activated an experimental reactor core that was being developed by the five scientists in their laboratory in Bashitarlle. A core meltdown ensued, causing a world-wide energy neutralization field and an explosion that resulted in the destruction of the entire city, and the loss of one third of the Earth's population. The event was entitled The Tragedy of Bashitarlle and became the greatest tragedy in the history of mankind.
Now Dr. Von Forglor, along with his associates, the would-be dictators called Big Fire, dispatch a giant orb to float across the world, draining the energy from all major cities and causing global chaos. Their super-powered team are called "The Magnificent Ten".
Against them are "The Experts of Justice," nine in number, a group of martial artists, scientific geniuses, and secret agents. Many of them have origins in Chinese folk hero tales, such as Tetsugyu, nicknamed "The Iron Ox". The One of them is youngster Daisaku Kusama (same name as in the live-action series above). Only the voice of Daisaku, the son of a scientist murdered by Big Fire, can control Giant Robo, a 90-foot tall war machine originally designed by Daisaku's father for Big Fire but now devoted to fight crime.
Giant Robo is not presented as a machine to command in an aloof manner but as a team member to be included in the team spirit. It cries when it can't smash through a force field; Daisaku then abandons it for a time but returns to ask its help in the fight again.
The only females in the story are Ginrei ("Silver Bell"), an expert agent who wears a white Chinese dress; Yoshi Blue Face, an expert agent from Chinese mythology; and Sunny, the young daughter of the Magnificent Ten's Lord Alberto.
Production notes on the OVA
Image:Groboart-12.jpg The title of the OVA series is Giant Robo: The Animation, with the added subtitle GR: the Day the Earth Stood Still. Begun in 1992, the episodes of this OVA were produced intermittently due to the involment of its director, Yasuhiro Imagawa, in other projects. Composer Masamichi Amano scored the gradiose yet beautiful musical themes for the project, considered by fans as some of his best work and a highlight of the series by itself.
Besides Tetsujin 28, Inagawa pastiched other characters from Mitsuteru Yokoyama on the series, including characters from Godmars, Babel II, Sally, the Witch, Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Tales of the Water Margin/Suikoden (the last two retold the stories in two of the Four Classics of Chinese literature).
OVA Character and Other References
Here's a partial list of the character and other references in the GR OVA:
- Big Fire - Babel II (Babiru Nisei バビル２世)
- Neptune - Poseidon (A giant robot, one of 3 protectors of Babel II)
- Garuda - Lopross/Ropross (A giant "bird", protector of Babel II)
- Achilles - Rodem (A shape-shifting talking black panther, protector of Babel II)
- Koumei - Kung Ming (brilliant strategist from Romance of the Three Kingdoms)
- Ryozanpaku - Liang Shan Po (location where the story of Water Margin took place)
Many of the characters in the OVA were taken from various works by Yokoyama, including Tetsujin 28 (Giagantor).
Spin-off OVAs
The Giant Robo OVA series spun off into three 30-minute videos (thought to be produced to distract the fans during the last-episode hiatus of the original), all of them starring the most popular character in the show, beautiful secret agent Ginrei. The plots and situations of these episodes are more comedy-oriented and tongue-in-cheek than the original series. These videos are:
- War in Heaven
- Forbidden Fruit
- Ginrei's Blue Eyes
On May 17, 2005, these videos were released officially on DVD by Media Blasters Studio.ja:ジャイアントロボ