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Total Recommendations: 3

If you liked
Overman King Gainer
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JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken (TV)
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I'm fairly certain King Gainer was influenced by Jojo, or at least is influenced by the type of Manga that it stems from. King Gainer has that flavor of procedural battles, that are all oriented around strange gimmick powers that the characters have, how those gimmicks bounce off of various elements like the environment, or the personalities of the fighters, or how each gimmick stacks or counters other gimmicks. The characters also have that unhingedness that's required for a work like this. Ookouchi Ichirou (Code Geass, most famously) is also serving as writer on this series, so you'll get that kind of bombastic-ness. Pointing out all of these similarities to Jojo is strange to say though, considering that the director/creator of King Gainer is Tomino Yoshiyuki, who's been working in anime for longer than Jojo's even existed. As far as anime is concerned, Tomino is as old as they come. You might think of Jojo as a classic manga, older than dirt, but Tomino likely sees Jojo as a hot trend (in 2002) to try to take advantage of. It's like Tomino's the old guard, looking at Jojo and the manga like it, and trying to replicate it and modify it with his classical style, while retaining the appeal. The Jojo TV anime was a bit a letdown for me because of how un-adapted all of the fights were. It's composed of lots of stills that very directly display a beat-by-beat replica of the manga, with no room to have fun. Anime is ultimately a different medium than manga, and while the imagery can broadly be translatable, and I certainly am not a sakuga-freak that thinks everything needs to move all the time, the excitement of Jojo's manga was pretty badly deflated for me by this adaptation. Every shot in Jojo lingers for a second too long, just to make sure that you never miss any piece of visual information. It just reeks of manga adaptation, rather than feeling like a composed, flowing, video work. If you don't know what I mean and need a really direct example, rather than King Gainer, I'd recommend the Jojo OVA, which is really well-directed. This is what I mean by saying King Gainer feels more "classical". There's no source material, and even if there was, Tomino is not the kind of director to just lie down and directly adapt material. There's lots of interesting direction, a great sense of cinematic flow, rather than the boxed-in feel of the Jojo tv anime. Did you know that the famous cubes you see in action scenes these days are actually from this show? I'm not kidding, they're called "yutapon cubes", and this is the very first time that animator starting using them. This is the kind of show where a unique animator-based expression can crop up. This is what I mean when I say Tomino's directing is good. However, this is a recommendation with a lot of asterisks. If you don't like Jojo *that much, and get kind of annoyed with it when it's indulging too heavily in what it is, and wish it progressed more, or wasn't so monotonous, or had deeper characters, then King Gainer isn't going to be the answer to all your problems, but if you're curious about a show with a similar general vibe, I think I'd recommend it. Koyasu Takehito who plays Dio in Jojo, is also in King Gainer, playing a character that's pretty similar to Dio. It makes me wonder if he was type-cast as Dio because of this show. Then again, he may have just been type-cast based off of Zechs, from Gundam Wing, but then that would just mean he was being type-cast as machiavellian blondes, which is an archetype Tomino cemented anyway. Does that make Dio a Char-clone?

If you liked
Kidou Senshi Gundam ZZ
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Dead Heat
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This is so much like ZZ that it practically doesn't even register as a different show to me. ZZ Gaiden basically. The Director is Kawase Toshifumi, who worked on many episodes of ZZ as a storyboard artist and director, many Tomino-isms that he learned on ZZ carry over here, such as the use of cut-out paneling to zoom in on specific parts of the frame, action choreography sense, and character staging. Though there are still some techniques used here that set it apart from Tomino's sensibilities, like the heavy use of background animation. The Character Designer, Kobayashi Toshimitsu, was a frequent drawing director on ZZ, and the style remains largely intact. Tons of key animator crossover too. ZZ's use of lots of varied, difficult to drawn angles for the faces, heavy squash and stretch for quick motions, great mechanical drawings with high quality in-out motion are all present. The drawing style just completely exudes ZZ. The designs are perhaps a bit more warped and funny looking, but that adds to the tone Dead Heat is going for. Endou Akinori was scriptwriter for both, and there are tons of similarities in the story department as well. Very similar sense of humor, has the same basic setup of a scrappy group of kids being given experimental machinery and managing to pull through with white knuckle determination. The main character is voiced by Yao Kazuki (Judau), has a similar personality, along with a similar overall dynamic with his group of friends. Some other ZZ actors are here as well. You wont get the political or dramatic intensity in ZZ, but other than that it's remarkable how similar these shows are. I like both these shows, but even if I didn't, I would have still written this recommendation because they really do just feel like the same show and am surprised no-one else has stated the connection between them.

If you liked
Kidou Senshi Gundam
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...then you might like
Mirai Shounen Conan
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The directors of both shows had worked together on many projects up until this point (Heidi, Haha wo, Akage no Anne). Gundam was created almost as a reaction to Conan, mimicking it in many respects, while still having much to say of it's own. Both shows have a worldview strongly influenced by their directors, on account of both directors storyboarding almost the entirety of their respective shows. Both shows also have remarkably high quality animation, having some of the best animators of their times push themselves to their absolute limits with uncommon production methods (layouts). Similar core themes of humanity's self destructive nature, and questioning if that human nature is set in stone, but hugely different approaches. Both are absolute must-watches for anyone interested in Anime's history.

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