In a word, Giant Robo the Animation has it all. With only seven double-length episodes, in total about the same length as a typical one-cour show, we are drawn into a story of good versus evil, of revenge, redemption, and coming of age, with mechas, superpowers, and martial arts, and loaded with messages about scientific progress and humanity’s future as a result. And most importantly, all of these elements blend together seamlessly, each feeling essential to the story and our enjoyment of it without feeling forced or claustrophobic in the slightest. The story it tells is in some ways simple, and straightforward with only a few twists and nothing too far out of left field, and yet everything fits into that straightforward framework without complicating anything in the slightest. It is an exercise in blending tropes and styles, an exercise in telling an honest, uncomplicated, and familiar story that stays fresh from scene to scene, multifaceted and exciting enough that anyone can enjoy it to the fullest.
From the opening introduction that we see at the start of every episode, we get a sense of just how these themes of morality, coming of age, science, magic, robots, and meet. As a bold orchestral soundtrack heralds a shot of the sun appearing on the Earth’s horizon, we get a minute and a half rundown of the world, where a breakthrough invention called the Shizuma drive has allowed the world to run on infinite energy, bringing with it a golden age for the world. Behind the scenes is a battle between the BF group, hellbent on subjugating the world for their master Big Fire, and the International Police Organization (IPO) that keeps them under control. With a few quick shots of the BF mechs followed by the IPO members jump, flip, and karate chop their way across the screen, accompanied by small instances of supernatural powers, we quickly see how the two radically different genres of mecha and wuxia/kung-fu are naturally set in parallel. The opening shot of the BF group too, in their pointed black hoods surrounded by fire, give an almost farcical sense of villainy, especially juxtaposed against the smiling energetic figures of the IPO, framed in a much brighter shot. Finally we meet Kusama Daisaku, a young member of the IPO who commands the world’s greatest robot, the titular Giant Robo.
However, it would be disingenuous to call the BF group the true villains of Giant Robo the Animation. While their name and resources are invoked from the start, we only see the evil organization bent on world domination in the background, or on the ground fighting the IPO in hand-to-hand or robotic conflict. The real mastermind is a man of unknown origins named Genya, a newcomer to the BF group who is put in charge of an operation to subjugate the world once and for all. Or perhaps the mastermind is the ghost of Franken von Fogler, one of the five scientists who created the Shizuma Drive and the only one to die in a tragic accident during their development, an accident wherein he attempted to shroud the world in darkness by harnessing the power of three experimental Shizuma Drive prototypes of limitless power, for which he was later vilified by his colleagues and the world at large. As Genya sets about collecting the three drives, Doctor Shizuma himself is taken into custody by the IPO for hiding the final drive from Genya and the newly revived Doctor von Fogler, all the while suffering from an immense guilt that he has carried with him since the accident all those years ago.
Things move quickly from there on out, as the entire story of Giant Robo the Animation is very tightly packaged with little excess room beyond the extended fight scenes and mass operations and counter-operations on both sides. It isn’t long before we learn about the accident, about Shizuma’s guilt and the true nature of Genya, and about the many threats the final prototype poses to the world at large. Fights break out, and people on both sides die even as we grow attached to them. We see Daisaku go through mental agony as he reconciles his identity as the son of a former BF operative, who had initially built Giant Robo for the sake of world domination and not for peace (although the work itself is dedicated “to fathers everywhere,” as a progressing plot reveals a more nuanced and hopeful view of the ambitions of fathers passed on). There are partnerships, loving relationships, and rivalries established within and between the two factions, and there is a constant sense of familiarity and a depth of relationships between all the characters we meet, pushing home the fact that they have had a whole life before we came on the scene.
While all the characters have a balanced mix of lighthearted comedy and serious devotion to their causes, coupled with powers and tools that set them aside in our minds, both factions have one character in particular that stick out to me beyond the central figures of Genya and Daisaku. For the IPO it is Ginrei, another key member of the police who acts both as a femme fatale figure and as a nurturing presence for the young Daisaku. She is strong and trusted by everyone in the force, despite the tension she bears going into the Genya case that are slowly revealed as we pull back the curtain on the whole affair. Her story is the most tragic, her role in the show operatic. On the BF group side it is Alberto the Impact, embodying all the struggles of loyalty, rivalry, and devotion that run throughout the story perfectly, as well as being the shining example of the classic kung-fu villain. While he holds a rivalry with one of the central IPO members, his personality almost makes me root for him in their fights.
Despite being an older work, there is an overabundance of striking imagery throughout the work, even beyond the Giant Robo itself. Shots of the accident of Fogler and Shizuma are portrayed in a near white on black color palate, flashing quickly enough to induce seizures in some but enough to induce tension and panic in most. Overhead shots of the cities and other locations in Giant Robo the Animation are often filled with a sense of space, but diminutive in the sense that Giant Robo and the eventual appearance of Genya’s final device tower over them all, making the large cityscapes feel small and fragile. The mechs themselves characterize a super robot show, somewhat more of a rarity in the 1990s after Mobile Suit Gundam had revolutionized the mecha genre with real robots, although director Imagawa Yasuhiro would later add Mobile Fighter G Gundam to the Gundam canon with all the robot wuxia of Giant Robo the Animation. Maybe because of being out of place for the time, the robots and other technologies are varied and impactual in their designs. But the most striking shots are of the Shizuma Drive, which itself seems to be a stand-in for Japan’s identity crisis over nuclear energy. One brilliant discussion happens as Daisaku stands on a pile of useless and broken drives as he agonizes over the future of energy, peace in the world, and the good that has come of new technologies. Another shows Ginrei trapped in the figure of a cross on a wall of Shizuma Drives, crucified by the technology that she has tried so hard to save.
Having come out in 1992 during the heyday of mecha, the headliner to the show is Giant Robo itself, with a bulky imposing design that would be unrecognizable from Yokoyama Mitsuteru’s original robot creation were it not for the Egyptian-styled head. In some sense it feels odd to push the Giant Robo/Daisaku pair as the central figures, as Daisaku himself is more of a passive existence whose only role is to command the Giant Robo to act as the story’s deus ex machina, or at the very least as the story’s benchmark for which side is winning. The Giant Robo is a unique existence in the world, a technology as ubiquitously recognized by the IPO and the BF group as the Shizuma Drive itself, and it is no exaggeration that the immediate success or failure of the forces of justice can be determined just by seeing whether the Giant Robo is succeeding or failing to subjugate the BF group members.
As for Daisaku, he is in the precarious position of being the only person able to command this monstrous entity, which means that the IPO can afford him little time to grow up and process his emotions as a twelve-year-old boy on the frontlines of humanity’s greatest battle. His mental struggles encompass every one of the incredible variety of moral and mental topics taken on by this contemplative work, from statements of family to the value of revenge, of technology’s relationship to peace. Reflecting his shifting preadolescent mind and also the values being taken on by this world at large, the Giant Robo acts a mirror of his state of mind, of his weaknesses and of his maturity, and his impotence is the Giant Robo’s impotence, his resolve its resolve. And here is why Daisaku is the central figure of Giant Robo the Animation , despite his lack of presence as a person or as a character: through the Giant Robo, the world is at peace only when he is at peace with the world.