Overman King Gainer #1: Exodus I Bandai 125 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles Released: 02/22/2005 Reviewed: 06/07/2005

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This is what I knew about King Gainer coming into it: As far as things go, I think you could pick a couple things that would be less appealing than a crazy, dreadlocked, dancing robot. I find the sight of it almost hypnotic. While some might find the prospect of dancing robots and cast members ice skating around in space entirely inappropriate as the first 90 seconds of their robot anime, I must agree to disagree. The idea of it strikes me as positively... erotic.

Maybe you should forget I said that. Anyway: the opening to King Gainer, replete with not only dancing robots, but also dancing ermines and dancing Siberian princesses, is only surpassed in its energy by its ability to totally belie the true nature of the show. Gainer is a fairly formulaic robot affair. The people of Siberia are unfairly kept prisoners in giant domes, told that they have to secret themselves away there while the Earth tries to repair the ravages done by mankind. As you might expect, certain members of the Siberian populace don't quite believe that there's anything wrong out there. It's their belief that the Siberian Railway is using their circumstances to profiteer and they're not going to take it anymore! So a whole bunch of them uproot their city blocks (literally) and start chugging their way out of Siberia on their way to the mythical country of "Yapan". Yapan? It's like they didn't even try! But maybe that's supposed to be the joke. Gainer Sanga is notably not one of the people interested in leaving the safety of the dome. All he's concerned with is chilling out and having a good time playing his favorite videogames. Later, of course, we learn that he's been orphaned under mysterious circumstances that cause him to hate the Exodus movement via purely circumstantial evidence. You know, the kind of evidence that's easy to disprove later when we'll undoubtedly find out the murder of his parents was a huge conspiracy to inspire hate in Gainer towards the people that he was prophesied to one day eventually lead to freedom.

But that's just a wild guess, don' take my word for it. Despite Gainer's anti-Exodus sentiments he's dragged off to jail by a scantily clad woman (aren't they all!) for supposed Exodus conspiracy. He meets the mercenary Gain Bijou, escapes and falls into a suspiciously Jamaican robot only to be pursued by the very same scantily clad woman, now with silly hat and sidekick in tow. Despite the very best efforts Wendee Lee-voiced latex bitches, the Exodus somehow gets underway, dragging Gainer kicking and screaming. But hey, at least now he's got a robot to hang out with! Oh yeah, and somewhere in their they manage to "kidnap" a princess and her three pet ermines. I'm not certain whether or not she's a willing kidnap or she thinks she's just having fun, but I will say that Princess Ana Medaiyu is the least annoying little girl princess in the history of anime. Considering the genre's long history of annoying little girls (many of whom happen to be princesses), that's quite the accomplishment! Fear not, brave reader, because squirreled away in the engineer's headquarters of the Exodus movement is a precocious preteen with a butt ugly character design that has enough schoolgirl crushes on older men to compensate for five annoying ten year old brats. With that said, consider yourself lucky that Gainer doesn't have a lot of time to spend in the mechanics bay. And we're too busy taking notice of things like Go Nagai sideburns and stuffed animal defense mechanisms to spare a glance at one insignificant splotch on the radar. I mean, really, when your Bob Marley-bot is flying through the clouds dispensing rings of psychedelic death who cares what the pit crew is doing back on Earth? You've got fat, overzealous Siberian robot commanders to teach a lesson to! The final nail in the coffin is that Preteen #2 doesn't look nearly as slick as Ana does while doing this.

Dancing princesses and robots is not all that King Gainer has to offer, though god willing that would be a large part of it. What I adore about this show is that it's anything but a standard robot tale. A favored moment is when the hard-as-nails Gain Bijou prevents the suicide of a female spy. 'Instead of dying, why don't you make a baby with me?' He asks, with the ultimate in nonchalance. Instead of the female lead frolicking to his side, Gainer seems to legitimately piss her off with his at once overzealous and callow nature. The bad guys aren't as bad as you think, for a brief moment anyway. After that they go back to being the total jerkoffs you've always known and loved. I like King Gainer because it's too busy going tend different directions at once to focus on anything in specific. Inappropriate dancing? The dance encapsulates the show. I would pay $20 just for a DVD with the opening sequence. In conclusion: this.