Mar 15, 2016
NOTE: This is in review of the dub, which is a required watch if choosing this anime.
Story:
I know what happened, but wow, was it stupid. Mazinger 7 ends up saving a bunch of children in this space-train that he attaches to his crotch and drags around space. Some stuff takes place that is barely passable for acceptable. For instance, the King dies and his Prince seeks revenge, but to do so, he puts the entire train of children at risk, in-so-far that the train is attacked, nearly destroyed, then crashes against a snowy planet. My first thought after that scene was, "Holy crap, every single
...
one of those children are dead. If not yet, then frostbite will get them." Then the end of the film re-attaches this train-penis to Mazinger and they leave happily ever after.
This story seems to have a lot of things that are very strange for a film directed towards children. There's a dance number that has some racy imagery, a torture scene, a reference to suicide, and a somewhat shocking android death that is quite graphic. Granted, it's robot parts that are splayed apart, but it's still a shock considering the rating.
It's a real mess. Even the description above isn't accurate. I'm not quite sure what the writers were intending to create, and I have no interest in seeing the original vision. A lot of things sucked in the story, and the above isn't even half of it.
Art:
Repeated Scenes: The Anime. Oh my gosh, so many scenes are repeated. Near the end, a repeat scene is shown with Mazinger 7 flying while dodging bullets. Not only is it a scene I've seen before, but the background is supposed to be the sky (as the previous Mazinger 7 scene was the sky). In this one, it was space. They literally took an entire scene out of its original context and placed it here, layered over some laser bullets, and called it a day. This isn't the only time where the background was in conflict with previous iterations. This happens countless times.
Some enemy ships had the same color scheme as Mazinger 7 which led me to believe they were all on the same side. However, when I watched that ship drop the equivalent of a Hydrogen bomb on it, I realized my mistake. While this specific instance isn't common, the problem comes from the fact that the enemies are all blue so kids can easily spot an enemy outright. However, when a seemingly powerful enemy is the same color scheme as the bad guy, it's gonna throw children off.
And I've gotta mention this again. Talk about phallic symbols in your children's media. Mazinger Dong flowing in space filled with children is one of the worst character design choices I've ever seen in my life. Cracked me up at first. Then it got sad. Then it got pretty funny again when it did a loop-de-loop.
Sound:
I mean, the songs are pretty good. Nothing special, although 2 of them were pretty neat, and 1 of the two was like an intense, chill, techno track that I actually wanted to put in a playlist for later listens. I'm sure I'll never find it, but one can dream.
Since this is the dub, and because this is an oldie, it's to be expected that it's sort of poor. However, this goes beyond anything I've ever heard of before. It reminded me of those days where my Elementary school teacher would play popcorn to see who would read next in class. Then you get stuck on that one kid who loves to read out loud but has no stage presence what-so-ever. It's monotonous and hard to understand half the time. Hilarious at first, I must confess, but I grew tired of it very quickly.
Character:
This is my third time re-writing the character review.
Just know that it's bad. They're all bad. Everything about these characters are bad. The villains are bad. The protagonist is 1-dimensional. The supporting cast empty and irritating. Holy cow, what terrible characters.
Enjoyment:
I nearly fell asleep. I found it funny at first, cutely niave, but then I realized I had an hour of movie left. So many scenes are dragged on for no reason. I couldn't wait until this was over.
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Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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