Shin Getter Robo: Resurrection ADV 100 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles Released: 09/11/2001 Reviewed: 04/18/2006

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Getter Robo, and really, all Go Nagai creations, are about as wild as anime gets without the peculiar inclusion of tentacle monsters. Unlike the myriad of tentacle rape cartoons that are slowly seeping their way across our boundaries, Getter Robo shows actually have something going for them. And it's not just because they have giant robots battling each other (though that's something like 80-95% of the reason). Regardless of the fact that most of these concepts could only be thought up after a night of indulgence with beer or psychotropics, there's heart in a Getter Robo show that is not to be matched. It's what I've come to call the "Man's Path" anime. Joel disagrees with me on some of the specifics, but the general idea is this: it eschews common morality, holds some idea (being a giant robot pilot, for example) as the highest standard, involves violence on a non-trivial level, shows a genuine ignorance of what a realistic female character is. Women in these shows are either relegated to super-secondary roles or are created as hyper-agressive men with boobs. I like these kind of shows because they're true to themselves. They don't usually go out of their way to speak in big words that they don't know the meaning of. They're the antithesis of the Matrix movies, as I discussed last week. They're brutal, but they're honest. Plus, a whole heck of a lot of stuff blows the hell up. And that's good too.

So what is Shin Getter Robo about? Well, it's a few years after the cataclysmic war between Earth and a set of jerk-hole aliens. A rainy night heralds the return of these interstellar badguys, known as Invaders. They've decided they're going to come down and try to mess things up just one more time. And who's gonna stop them? The invaders have the convenient ability to posses someone's (preferable an evil round eye, like an American) body and make them do awful, awful things. Now, these creatures were supposedly wiped out on the moon three years back by the squad of Getter Robos built for that express purpose, but the observant viewer should by now realized that indeed they were not. After their alien's supposed defeat the leader of Getter Squad killed the creator of the Getters, Dr. Saotome. This caused the dissolution of the team and forced Dr. Saotome's young son Genki into a life of autism. In the present time Musashi and Benkei, two of the team members, are conscripted to drive a truck full of sensitive cargo for the military. Surprise surprise, they come under attack from the Invaders once more. Through many plot twists and turns we find out that Dr. Saotome is STILL ALIVE and not only that, but he has his eye on the cargo being transported by the most lovable glutton members of the Getter team. The cargo contains a capsule with his star robot pilot, Go, a quietly insane man with a strange connection with to the Invaders. This is where Saotome's "killer" Ryoma comes in. It is decided that he is the only one able to stop the mad doctor and into Getter 1 he goes, off to foil the fiendish plot and now, ironically(?), given license to commit crime he's been in jail for all this time.

It occurs to me people who make Getter Robo series probably just throw darts at a wall until they get something that makes a semi-plausible plot. Black goo from outer space trying to kill the human race. Yeah. That's pretty weird. But ask yourself if it's any stranger than DINOSAURS FROM THE INSIDE OF THE EARTH. Dinosaurs from the inside of the earth who have ROBOT TANKS and aren't afraid to use them at the slightest provocation. Here's a hint. It's not. Nothing will be. Ever. But the creators of this new Getter Robo certainly give it the old college try. There's more than enough in the way of bizarre tertiary character designs and giant alien doctors made of stone that I think it's got a suitable air of "Nagai-ism" to it. You can't fault them for trying, that's for sure. Yeah. That's pretty freakin' crazy, even for stuff from Go Nagai, who decided that a good idea for a super heroine would be one who didn't wear anything but a mask. It's natural. That's just the kind of thing that he and his successors do. And if they want to make a naked super heroine once in awhile, and if they want to make a live action movie about it ten years later, still weird but I guess it's all right. That's that crazy ole Mr. Nagai for you!

But nothing is perfect, we're all told that from a young age. I find the dub to be seriously lackluster and inflection is off like 90% of the time, which is a failure rate that even dead gerbils can't aspire to. As I've discussed in the past, the desire to watch dubs is literally coded into my genes even when I know the original language is far superior. Even as I type this I'm experiencing a strong pain in my gut. I will say that I did like the rhyming thing weird alien doctors Cohen and Stinger had going on, but I think that has more to do with hastily applied voice filters than anything else. We're told from a young age that there's beauty in imperfection. Whether or not this is the last ditch effort of an ugly person to get some action on a Saturday night is not my place to decide. I will say, though, that despite its flaws Shin Getter Robo is quite perfect at what it's trying to do. In these first four episodes there's more robot ass kicking and Ichiro Mizuno opening themes than a sane person would be able to tolerate. Shin Getter Robo: All the staggering doubt and uncertainty of a nightly beer binge without the myriad of regrettable consequences the next morning. No hangovers, no dry mouth. Sounds to me that Shin Getter Robo is about as perfect as things get in this world.