Wow I did not expect that ending. After mazinger Z and his allies completely get decimated by these new battle beasts, just out of no where great mazinger arrives with a new pilot and the father of Koji and shiro end up being alive. A great transitional moment into the next series “great mazinger” which I will be watching next. Loved the stark contrast between koji and this new character arch type. If that would have been Koji, he would have started some kind of heated argument and you see how the author chose to subtlly showcase that this is not the same character. This was also Go nagai that wrote this piece and it was beaituflly executed.
Ok well over all when it comes to monster of the week 70's mech series, this is pretty much about as simplistic and bare bones as you can possibly get both in characterization, stories, and animation. It had its somewhat great moments and I think what kept me invested was seeing Baron ashura and his many antics and conquests to try and take down mazinger.(But certainly not as great as "Berge Katse" from Gatchamon. ) Loved the episodes showcasing the many mazinger upgrades as well and some of the stories were inventive and quite interesting in early parts of the series. It then built up steam quite a bit around the mid portion of the show and things started to gradually become more intense how ever it lost alot of steam around the last 1/3 of the series which i felt that i just wanted things to move on to the final episodes already. The final battle against Dr Hell was also a bit lacking. It felt kind of like just your oridinary battle episode a regular foe and i expected more out of Dr. Hell. How ever it was completly redeemed by the very last episode which was a big shocker and elevated the story and budget above the standards of this series.
The beginning of the series helped set the foundation of what was to follow and helped establish the characters very well and it felt fresh with each episode offering new and unique ways for Dr hell and his minions to win against the good guys. However, I feel what ultimately ruined my experience was as the series went on, many of the stories and idea’s the writers threw in felt very nonsensical and rehashed to many times. To the point where it felt that mazinger kind of suffered from an identity crisis and the writers even forgot what the initial character motivations were, especially on the antagonistic side.
For example, in the premise of the story Dr hell’s main goal was always to conquer the world. World domination was his ultimate goal and many of the MECH beasts that were deployed did just that, started blowing up cities and creating massive destruction in its wake but the writers of this series sort of shoehorned in the the idea that Dr hell and his minions are trying to take over and infiltrate the photon light institute and there where many episodes where he also wanted to destroy the photon light institute. So, you get this constant sudden change of character motivations and goals for the main villain and it just felt a bit strange to see that. It got the point where the writers relied to heavly on the concept of "lets take over that photon light institute because that is our primary objective". Some of these moments were treated in like a comedic fashion and it was silly and just outlandash at times.
The series had some decent moments but lacked consistency and especially when compared to something like Gatchamon which aired even before mazinger, was quite a great deal a much better series with greater characterization, larger world with bigger set pieces, greater story arcs, etc. In Mazinger it is mentioned quite frequently that some how these characters are going to school, but we do not even see them attend school except for maybe a few episodes. I realize the series is targeted towards japanese children and needs to mainstain that thematic element of mechs and fights but the world could have been fleshed out a tiny bit more to showcase some other locations in the mazinger verse instead of just consisting of the battle ground locations. Overall, I would give this probably a 7/10. The ending really caught me by surprise and im hoping great mazinger is quite a bit improved over this classic series but will see. With all that being said, it can’t be overstated just how influential and important this series is to pioneering the mecha genre with many of the common themes and tropes you will see in many shows to follow. It certainly left behind a great legacy for mecha and that is something I will never forget.
|