Casshan: Robot Hunter ADV 105 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles 12/24/2003

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I have issues with this show going back to the dawn of time. Starting with its run on Sci-Fi's "Saturday Anime" to our failure to watch it at last year's Otakon (drinking takes preference over even Casshan) to even the dodgy spelling of its name among fans and creators/publishers, which has caused me to make up my own hybrid of it... 'Cassharn'. This comes through no purposeful actions of my own, but is simply how my fingers gravitate towards spelling it as I (too) quickly type this up. Thus, it's likely that "Cassharn" is what you're going to become used to over the brief few paragraphs I provide you with here. I suggest that you not try to use this is any kind of public forum, as you will only look like a moron while doing it. There's really been nothing to distinguish Cassharn over the years, not on this side of the Pacific Ocean anyway. Yet somehow the original 1973 show is getting turned into a feature length motion picture this very year. This Cassharn is the remake of a fairly unknown robot show of the late 80s, remade from another iteration of the show from the late seventies. But there's been a rash of resurgent anime and Japanese live action pieces in the past couple of years, the reason why unbeknownst to me. From popular to not so popular, there really seems to be no rhyme or reason to it.

But, in my opinion, Cassharn is the perfect thing to remake. There's a pulchritude of reasons for this, I'll hand to you the most popular one. Mankind hates when people try to tell them what to do, and Cassharn is a story about totally giving the finger to authority and them ripping them apart with the aid of a robot dog that shoots fire, and could totally kick Rush's ass if it came down to it. The moral of Cassharn, that robots are evil for trying to take out mankind, even though they're doing it to save the planet, doesn't really make any sense. In a way, I imagine Cassharn as a huge reactionary movement to all of Miyazaki's ecological ponderings viz a viz Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. Quite the contrary effect, Cassharn is a story about the title character going around ripping up environmentally minded robots while the Australian army hovers with its finger on the button. What's more, the admirals and generals of the human forces spend quite a bit of time collaborating in board rooms, talking about how much they hate that the "Black King" is going around RESTORING THE RAIN FOREST.

Which I think is pretty hilarious, in a way. If you've ever gotten tired of Miyazaki's preaching (even just a little) then Cassharn is probably the show for you. The 'Iron Evil' Black King, primary robot and lord over all the rest of them, was programmed with a mission by the famed Doctor Azuma. Unfortunately, BK-1, as he is known, interprets his orders to protect the earth a little too literally and starts eliminating mankind through a variety of super hot robot bitches and robot overlords voiced by the magnificent Mike Reynolds. Fortunately Doctor Azuma had a contingency plan in mind, and even more fortunately for us it involved putting the soul of his wife into a robo-swan. It's possible there's something more absolutely ridiculous than the hero communing with a robot pond wader who just happens to embody his *surrogate mother*, butI don't really care to know about it. Casshan himself is a cyborg (or possibly an android) send out to totally waste robots and save the human race. That's his second imperative. His first is to look totally badass while doing it. It takes almost the entire first episode for him to be introduced, but once he does the next 90 minutes are laced with the most astronomically awesome robot killing man will ever experience. Not once, but twice does Casshan karate chop through a robot while techno-lights go off in the background. Suffice it to say, if you have epilepsy this show will KILL you.

Cassharn inspires in me an excitement that can't be matched by much in this modern word. The fight scenes stoke a fire in my loins that I honestly have trouble containing. When Casshan punches THROUGH the spiked monstrosity sent to destroy him, it was all I could do to resist jumping up in my chair and giving the middle finger to the TV screen. "Slice through THAT, bitch!" I wanted to exclaim to the high heavens. I wanted to exclaim it so very badly, but stuff like that just isn't germane while in polite company. If you hate robots, Cassharn is probably the most useful thing you will ever see in your life. If you like anime with a purpose, and you're not me, you probably won't understand why I'm hyping this show up. Cassharn is the byproduct of a forgotten age where the heroes were good just because they were heroes and the bad guys were bad because they had spikey hair, and they had robot bitches as companions who would look totally hot if they were people. Cassharn takes that tired character that current anime like to refer to as an "anti-hero" and turn it on its head. Sure Casshan walks around without a love in his life, destroying everything in his path... but he never curses his farther once, or breaks down into tears for no reason at all. Cassharn flips the bird to every other action anime out there, and that's the way I likes it.