New Getter Robo #3: The Hell on Earth Pioneer 75 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles Released: 07/26/2005 Reviewed: 10/11/2005

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This disc of New Getter Robo came out at a terribly unfortunate time for me. At the end of July I had just started a training period for what would become my current full time job. As such, I really had no time (or funds) to spend on anime... not even the kind where giant robots swing around awesome tomahawks. It's a terrible situation to be in, I know, but sometimes we all have to make difficult sacrifices for the greater good. And as time went by I totally forgot about the love that New Getter Robo and I shared. I was too enmeshed in my 9 to 5 world to bother thinking about how Ryoma and Hayato and Benkei were doing inside their various Getter Machines. Times were good for me. I spent my days devouring sushi at business lunches and cashing fat paychecks. But not too many weeks ago I felt a pull in my heart. Something was missing, and it only took a 50% off anime sale and a few minutes of my time over at DVDPlanet to remind me of what it was, Getter Robo.

Actually, it took quite a bit more than a few minutes thanks to the not-so-great support staff of DVDPlanet, but approximately eight days after the original order had been placed my copy was secured and ready for shipping. Some six or seven days after that I was able to get down and dirty with the Getter guys once more. It just took a brief stopover of stalwart giant robot companion Joel to get those juices flowing and we were back in business. So where did we leave our Getter pals? In tough water! The three jerks had managed to transport themselves back in time, something that should be a tenement of any truly awesome robot show, and become embroiled in a war involving some of the most famous heroes of Japanese myth. Hot damn that's exciting! The viewer is asked to throw their attachment to reality to the wind as evil sorcerers battle against large breasted women who command armies of men in flying sailboats. Any other should wouldn't be able to pull of something so positively silly... but this is Getter Robo, dangit!

And it only gets more excessive as time goes on, which I find positively delectable. There's a fair amount of melodramatic self-sacrifice, faked bad guy deaths and even more traveling through time. For no reason at all Ryoma decides that he's gotta shoot forward into the future, where the dastardly Saotome has fabricated a world in which everyone is attached to a flying robot... literally. Even little babies are born hooked up to their machines. No, these machines are not Super Deformed Getter Robos, as adorable as that might've been it's something that we're not going to be lucky enough to see in our lifetime. But Ryoma has no time to make pleasantries with this decidedly bleak and SD Bot-free future! He has to get back to the past to save the world from foppish, 600 year old Japanese sorcerer with giant monster female boob chariots, and yes, that is a very accurate description of the villainous transportation device. Ryoma knows that sultry babes can't look over their shoulders forever, no matter how awesome and sexy it would be if they could. If Ryoma wants to make his move and touch any hot boobies in the near future he's going to have to make it now!

The results are spectacularly satisfying, serving only to whet my appetite for the fourth, and final, volume of New Getter Robo. The testosterone injected directly into your brain by the radiation the TV emits while playing this show may cause your thought processes to reach dangerous levels. It's entirely possible that a lesser man will be gripped by these sensations, forced by their baser instincts to do such crazy things as scream super moves at the top of his lungs, karate kick demons in the head, and possibly even raise his fist in the air and shake it defiantly before he squares off against a villain ten to fifteen times taller than him. As far as I'm concerned, that would be nothing but an improvement in the field of anime fans. A good amount of them need to grow some balls and stop proclaiming Tenchi Muyo! to be the greatest thing to happen to the genre since Rumiko Takahashi. It's very possible that the sheer amount of masculinity this show continues to produce will cause the spontaneous generation of wayward masculine sex organs. And if you don't like that, then Ryoma has only one thing to say to you.