Kikaider #1: Lonely Soul Bandai 100 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles 08/05/2003

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I know you people, those few fans this site have, probably hate it when I get it in my heart to watch anime I actually like and not just anime that I despise and want to rip into for the perverse pleasure it gives. As you might know, I only watch anime when I'm going to review it. This leaves precious little time for me to watch the true greats like Votoms and much more time spent in the meticulous fervor it takes to dismantle something that so many fans hold dear, like Arjuna. Such is the way of life. If it weren't for me then you and you and my one other constituent might have to ponderously plod through the rows of the local Suncoast or Best Buy without rhyme or reason to their trek. Far be it from me to allow that to happen! How I wish it weren't though. The normal anime viewer has plenty of time to behold the recent classics of the robot genre, shows like Gasaraki and the remade Cyborg 009. This is not my lot in life, not by a long shot. Consider yourself blessed, young viewer, that yours is not the same as mine. You, my beloved reader, are free to let your passions roam unhindered in the film of wonderful anime, the stuff that dreams are made of, stuff like Perfect Blue.

Stuff like Kikaider, even. I've heard people rail on this show for whatever reason, its animation I guess being the foremost complaint. I think these people need to examine where they're coming from. I mean, this genre's got practically 60 years of history behind it, and that's just counting the start of anime. There's a whole lot of 'everything else' that came before it. There's a ton of animation there that got washed up before we were even BORN. Hate the animation? No way! I'm grateful for it. I love Metropolis for its complimentary Tezuka-styled flair, despite what Rin Taro might've said about how good old Osamu would've likely hated the hell out of it, right to his grave (which he is already in). I love Kikaider for that ultra Ishinomori flavor it brings to the table. Fat hips and twig legs? We could do worse! Plus, you know, we were watching Cyborg 009 one day last summer and Andrew mentioned how he dug the style. When Andrew says something like that, anime fans would be smart to shape up and listen to the man. He's a font of knowledge, and as normal a person as you can expect that still watches anime, albeit more rarely than most.

If you're not from Hawaii in the mid 70s, you probably don't know too much about Kikaider. Let me enlighten you a bit. Originally conceived by someone who could quite easily be called "The man" (Shotaro Ishinomori), Kikaider is a sentai show with a lot of heart. The story of a young robot, Jiro, and his quest to rid the world of the evil automatons brought to life by the malicious Doctor Gill. While this is going on his has plenty of time to get some soul searching in, whilst banging chicks (okay, just one chick) in a very tasteful manner. Kikaider is about as human a robot as you'd be likely to find in the Sci-Fi genre. Way more human than those stupid ones from Short Circuit. 'Number 5 is alive', my ass! Jiro carries around an acoustic guitar that tends to be more for smashing the hell out of giant anthropomorphic mantis robots than it is for banging out any "Nirvana: Unplugged" hits. You'll find no complaint from me in this regard, because I really hate anthropomorphic robots, maybe even more than Jiro does and kiling them is his freaking job. So I'd have to imagine that he hates them a whole lot, because... he's not getting paid for it. Killing robot spiders is one of only two jobs I'd do for free, so it seems that Jiro and I have some common ground.

When he's not running around bashing robots (which is pretty often), Jiro spends his time at home with his adopted brother and sister, trying to unravel the mysteries of life. Though, unschooled as he is in human culture, most of the time this just ends up with him choking the hell out of his kin. Someone needs to sit Jiro down and explain to him the concepts of morality and conscience. It's not gonna be me though, because I'm afraid his powerful robot hands would snap my neck like a chicken bone before I got the third word out. More so than any other 'humanoid androids' I've seen hanging around, Jiro doesn't take guff from anyone. Yeah he does. Jiro's actually sort of a tool, but that's part of his charm. You've seen the "innocent robot made for destruction goes out and saves the world while learning about love" plot before, but Kikaider brings a somewhat fresh look to it (and not just because he totally wastes every robot mantis in sight). Kikaider is not a life shattering piece, it's not even a piece that'd make me think about whether or not being rude to my parents on the phone the other day was alright. No, but it's pretty good anyway. Ishinomori's works tend to impart a slick, undercover sense of morality between all the robots blowing each other up with lasers and exploding needles. I don't know if this Kikaider is quite the social commentary that the Cyborg 009 manga was forty years ago, but I don't think it really needs to be.