After Go Nagai’s great success with Mazinger Z, he went ahead to pursue making another great super robot classic series. And this time, it is about having three air units that can “combine” into a robot. In three different ways. I keep thinking of myself “Oh, really? How on earth could they design something like that?”. So I questioned my doubt. And my curiosity grew as I researched and found out the truth further on how three futuristic warplanes have the capability to ‘transform’ into 3 different robots, with each of them can perform unique functions that’s different to one another.

Though it’s part of Go Nagai’s signature, the majority of the credits go to Ken Ishikawa, Go Nagai’s protege. He was the one notably contributed the ideas on making Getter Robo series a running success after so many years since its Getter Robo days, including several re-incarnated series during the 90s and 00s like Shin Getter Robo, Neo Getter Robo, Getter Robo G, New Getter Robo etc. It ran as part of the manga series with its main publisher, Shonen between 1974 and 1975, covered in 5 volumes. It was later converted into TV series and it become another great mecha anime sensation again, for Go Nagai.

Getter Robo story begins with a story with a brilliant scientist by the name of Professor Saotome, who invented the three planes that come with hidden special abilities of thwarting the evil plots of their nemesis, Dinosaur King, from Dinosaur Empire. The special planes are powered by Getter Ray, a rare source of energy ray obtained from outer space, which were originally used for deep-space exploration of solar systems, galaxies and beyond. However, this scientific project was called and “redubbed” for far more important use as Earth’s greatest defense against the might of the invading Dinosaur Empire whose attempts are nothing short of evil ambitions to take over the world, for they claim to be the ‘true rulers‘ of Earth since they existed several million years ago.  As the story unfolds, we learned that Professor Saotome went on a hunt for three pilots who are capable of riding such scientifically sophisticated machines. So a talented martial artist(Ryoma Nagare), a delinquent loner(Hayato Jin) and a judo expert(Musashi Tomoe) were called upon to take up such honorary task to defend the Earth, and they learned the secret powers of their Getter planes.

This robot series was helmed as the first Super Robot anime in history that produced a groundbreaking concept of merging (or combining) units into one super robot. And not only one type of super robot can be formed but in three types! Each robot is unique in its own way to handle different situations/struggles our Getter heroes face in the heat of battle. I was pretty dissapointed the fact I remembered back in the early 80s as a kid there was Getter Robo G whose licencing rights were bought by American company Force Five Series and later relabelled as the Starvengers and I couldn’t comprehend why is that Getter Robo was never queued to broadcast in Malaysia before Getter Robo G. Was it because of no money, or demand for Japanese robot was nonexistent? It’s a mystery to me. Nevertheless, it’s good to know that after all these years I finally know the truth behind the great legend of that is Go Nagai’s Getter Robo.

Anyway, I digress. The concept of combining units is this (at least in Getter Robo Universe). Getter Robo has 3 transformations, Getter 1, Getter 2 and Getter 3.  The three planes are named Eagle (red plane), Jaguar (white plane) and Bear (yellow plane). Getter 1 transformation goes with Eagle jet, Jaguar jet and Bear Jet, in an order.  Getter 2 transformation goes with pushing the previous order ‘up’ having Jaguar first, Bear second and Eagle last.  And lastly Getter 3 transformation goes with pushing Getter 2’s order up having Bear first, Eagle second and Jaguar last.  Here’ the illustration

Getter 1 Transformation – In this order

Eagle + Jaguar + Bear = Getter 1

Getter 2 Transformation – In this order

Jaguar + Bear + Eagle = Getter 2

Getter 3 Transformation – In this order

Bear + Eagle + Jaguar = Getter 3

The 3 Getter Robo come with unique and amazing fight capabilities when facing tougher mechanical monsters dispatched by the Dinosaur Empire with notable signature attacks. Getter 1 being very agile with its Tomahawk, Getter 2 with its highly-powered drill arm that can penetrate on any type of surface, and lastly Getter-3 with its overly-stretchy arms that extend up to several hundred metres in range to grasp any opponent to do a ‘throw’ ie Hammer Throw (as Musashi’s a judo expert). And they’re all come together along with Professor Saotome’s support and his children, Michiru and Genki Saotome to thwart the evil attempts of Dinosaur Empire’s conquest for Earth domination.

And so there lies a question I’ve been meaning to ask myself about. Was Getter Robo considered as the first “Transformer” ever in the history before the prime days of Transformers G1 that took over USA and the rest of the world? Well. Yes and no, depending on how you look at it. Facts gathered that even though Getter Robo succeeded in combining three units into one large unit, and its morphing capabilities into 3 robots suggest transformation is the valid description for this. However, another angle pointed out that a true Transformer is really a robot that puts itself in disguise of any object, be it cars, radios, trucks, construction equipment or even your Iphone! They can transform into robots that hold all the properties of their respective disguises, which shapes their robotic appearance. It makes you think logically Transformers do what they always do best. They always put into disguise. And they can always transform back to being robots again. Whereas Getter Robo can’t. It couldn’t fit in this category because the three units were not ‘transformable’, separately. So there’s no way Getter Robo is truly the first Transformers, so to speak.

But then again, you could also argue that if Getter Robo did not introduce this ‘morphing’ capabilities in its series, then it would have not inspired other countless super robot anime artists who incorporated this element into their own robot shows and continue to thrive their imagination to take place. Meaning, the Transformers as we know today oughta give plenty of credit to Getter Robo for bringing its own existence, doesn’t it? I really do believe it should. After all, you’ll come to know there are other startling facts behind the Transformers that the Japanese did invented the Transformers, whereas USA was responsible for the branding behind the titular name (and the catchy opening music).

Later on, I’m planning to add further interesting details about the series in regard of the plot and character development, once I get the original classics on DVD release in my hands.  More to come.

Evangelion’s team has been working alongside with Sony to bring in their new PS3 gaming product as part of their marketing campaign to unleash great scores of Eva’s anime in various media formats.  It’s a live news program, titled, The Misato Katsuragi News Project (or Katsuragi Misato Hōdō Kikaku in Japanese).  Basically, it’s just a news program show like any 6′o clock news you get on TV.  Except, we have our main character, Misato, is playing the anchor lady, who, of course, reads news to you. (see below)

"And now we bring you this special bulletin".....

This was rather an unexpected or unusual move from PS3 to pursue this line of development work for Evangelion project team. Certainly deviates a lot from a “gaming perspective” of the masses. However, it’s fascinating to know that this program actually collects real-time data from real events on this planet everything from politics, economics, sports, and (not surprisingly) anime industry. Once the data is collected, it gets relayed into the software and it will program to synthesize Misato to read out the news as if she’s actually reading them for the real-life audience like us! Part of the software features allows you to customise her hair, her makeup and her clothing, including the backstage.

The program will go live on June 6 in Japan.

Source: Animenewsnetwork.com

Just read news facts from AnimeNewsNetwork.com that American anime broadcasting company, Funimation, recently announced they have found a new lineup of cast members for the English dubbing of Hideaki Onno’s Evangelion remake, titled Evangelion 1.0.  The main characters, Shinji and Misato will be played by Spike Spencer and Alison Keith respectively.  Both have played their character role previously in the Neon Genesis Evangelion TV series during the 90s so their vocals are noteworthy to make a comeback.

You can find the rest of the english casts members on Funimation blog’s link here.

Recently, there’s been a huge hype with the greatly-anticipated film this year. Transformers 2 is coming out officially on 26th June 2009 in the USA (I still need to check with my film schedule in NZ cinemas as we don’t have any major announcements over the bottom side of the hemisphere!)

Anyway, Transformers the sequel is out after just 2 years since the first film came out, back in May 2007. The excitement with the fast cars, cool robot transformation (not too mention with a few great surprises from film fans favourite BumbleBee from its junkie Cheetah model to god-send hot rod Chevrolet). What great fun.

And looks like we gonna have another crazy fun ride again, with all new villians and robots to unveil, so I heard.

There’s plenty of people making such dubious comments on its very own Facebook pages.  Here’s the link.  After reading these comments, watching this trailer, who wouldn’t want to head out and watch this excellent film?

Also I was browsing a couple of online Transformers 2 (T2) forums and stumbled on a couple of wall posters produced by Paramount Pictures, thought it would be cool to share these.

One of the great anime legends of all time.  Such story.  Such epic.  Such fascinating story that comes with great scenes of robot-planes fighting scenes with a bit of love triangle that involves our young pilot hero, Hikaru Ichiyo who’s caught in between two women that are very important to his life.  The series captivated my former childhood’s heart and soul, at that time.  It had everything that any classic anime could attest to.  It became a grand masterpiece that any mecha fan in my time would consider as their past time favourites.  A fabulous series to watch and cherish for many years to come (which resulted a number of websites which brought up by several Macross fans all over the world to commerate them such as MacrossWorld.com and a Wiki site that looks into Macross’ universe in greater depth).

For most of you are probably aware the fact that this series has two versions of plots ie it’s catered for two countries’ audiences only.  We have the Original Macross which was geared for the Japanese mainstream public (and other Asian nations), and then we have the English version which it was retitled as ‘Robotech Masters’ that targeted for the USA market. Solely.  So how did such a great program like this ended up in two different continents of the globe with different titles yet the visual content and character development are the same?

Well.  Before we unravel the details behind this confusion, let us take the journey back to the early 80’s when robot anime became a boon for Japan (and the rest of the world).  A young Japanese student named Shoji Kawamori, who always wanted to get into animation industry to show his artistic talents and gifted-story telling abilities whilst he’s still studying in Keio University.  At the time, it was a major difficult path for him to take as he’s studying and working on the story development of Macross at the same time so expectations and responsibilities soon overwhelmed him on a day by day basis.  Nevertheless, he pushed on and decided to take this mission, as if it were a destiny for him.  During those early years of the 80’s, it wasn’t certainly easy.  But he succeeded it.  With his long time university friend, Haruhiko Mikimoto, they both worked together studiously to deliver its great epic of drama.  This success didn’t not come with one simple iteration they both worked on.  Clearly, a lot of determination and preseverance made this possible.  Getting a large mixture of geo-political warfares, a complex triangle-love romance, incredibly fast-paced robotic-plane technology, heartfelt songs/music and several memorable twists of humour was the grand scale of plan they had in store for us.  As a avid fan, I would drop my had and applaud them with great sincerity.

At this time, Shoji Kawamori looked at the Real Robot subgenre for his Macross series.  And it worked out pretty well.  After all, you notably see that a lot of his mecha were designed closely on all of VF plane fighters models. They’re based on the actual XB-70 Valkyrie, a supersonic jet bomber that used in tactical warfare developed by the Americans several decades ago.

The story revolves around a alien spacecraft that landed onto one of the Earth’s shore in 1999 and a special military organisation came to that site to discover this technology was so advanced that it could prove very useful for the human race as part of global military strategy.  They reversed-engineered the technolgy and gave it a name SDF-1 or “Super Dimension Fortress” Macross.  When this project was completed in 2009, alien in a distant galaxy happened to arrive within the Earth’s solar system and detected heat source of the missing space craft as it belongs to them.  Soon later on in the story, a space war broke out, Hikaru become a better VF-figther pilot and he eventually meet up Lynn Minmay and Misa Hayase in the most unusual relationships, we started to learn bigger truths about the alien encounters.  Aliens know as the Zentradis after capturing humans, they started to believe humans were the ancestors of their race, known as the Protoculture. Meaning that human beings are “the first extraterrestial humanoid civilization in the universe that occurred over a million years ago.  This civilization had proven leaps and bounds in terms of advanced spacy technologies they used/researched to make their race more powerful.  They invented a sub-light travel velocity in time and space continuum.  And 100 years later, Zentradi were genetically modifed thanks to the expanding influence of Proculture spread into wider colonization of the universe.  The show gathered great accolades of fanfares around Japan and Asia all over.

On the other hand, we have the American version ie Robotech, which the production company Harmony Gold had obtained the licensing rights over Macross material along with the other two (Southern Cross/Genesis Climber Mospaeda) and re-edited the story lines and linking all three of them as a chronology that talks in a complete different medium compared to the Original.  In Robotech, the Protoculture was termed

“powerful energy source, a catalyst in genetic engineering, a hallucinatory substance, and the described “lifeblood” of two different races. As the “foodstuff” and the by-product of the Flower of Life, it is used by one race, the Invid, in “finding the ultimate lifeform through the ritualistic eating.” The Robotech Masters also call it “the lifeblood of our existence,” and say their “foremost goal is to control this life force by conquering Earth” — from Wikipedia.org

Whatever that means…  It makes little sense to me how and why Harmony Gold decides to create

such incredibly convoluted plot taking 3 mecha series merged into one so-called ‘chronology’ when in fact they bear no relevance against each other.  They could have just made a direct translation of Macross story (even dubbing!)  and tell things as they are and the story made more sense to common masses of mecha fans out there, so we don’t end up having divided opinions on who’s telling what stories and what. I never figure out why the American company took down this path of producing such translation, other than betting on the possibility of making a unique adaption of it series to call their very own “Macross” saga.  I must say they were doing it pretty well with their little piece of work.

Anyway I must digress. Macross is, without a doubt, considered the greatest mecha classic of our time.  People in my generation would remember how great the film gave us the sense of gravitation and we knew how other programs would find it hard to compete with the show that had this level of magnitude of success in its reins.  The romance, eye candy, the environment, the incredible dog-fight style scenes of robot planes vs Zentradi, the wonderful designwork  of Shoji Kawamori’s VF Fighters, the heart, the politics, etc etc.  And last, but not least, the music and songs that captivated our hearts and minds that render our thoughts to enjoy everlasting tranquility and peace while humanity fights against those that threatens human ideals, and (hopefully) bring an end to war. “Ai Oboete Imasuka” – meaning “Do you remember Love?” in English.  What a great song.

It’s truly gem to hear this over and over again.  I find that its unique quality that today’s mecha anime would find it hard to compete its standards unless there’s new generation of anime artists that could surpass Shoji Kawamori.  It could happen. We just don’t know yet.

Mazinger Z.  Yes, the greatest robot anime of all time in Japanese animation industry as anime industry analysts said.  I heard so much about it from many great accolades of fans(old and new) that the show trully defined its own special subgenre of anime , of that we all  now know as ‘Mecha’. The show’s popularity had grown exponentially over the years between 1972-1974  and many children at the time gave incredibly high ratings for it.  The scale of its popularity is almost comparable to likes of the Beatles’ mania that exploded throughout the 70’s!  But at a much smaller scale, matter-of-factly, within the shores and soils  of Japan. But sources gathered that it became a

major hit in Spain and Italy so the show made quite an impact that Mazinger Z is recognized as a symbol of ‘cult’ status just as much as what Beatles did in other specific continents of the world.  Yet, personally I never knew anything about Mazinger until last year when I run into Wikipedia, and looking up for all great super robot shows.  As I read the history on the developments of this genre, I arrived at the conclusion that (hence my post’s title) our infamous anime creator, Go-Nagai, delivered a simple manga produce that turned itself to be the great ‘mother’  of all super robot genre shows in our lifetime so far.  Without it, we would not have seen so many talented anime artists coming out of Japan to produce great mileage of robot series and ever growing fan base of robot anime enthusiasts out there, across the globe.

So what is Mazinger Z, truly?  What is it all about?

Mind you, I never watched this show in my country of Malaysia while growing up, but I distinctly remembered seeing programmes produced by Go Nagai, but it appeared under a different broadcasting agency called Force Five series.  And I saw the opening credits that went by saying ‘Animation created by Go Nagai’ for the shows of Getter Robo(known as Starvengers) and UFO Robo Grendizer (also known as Grandizer). I was deeply shocked about this because we lacked the public information that Go Nagai was truly

the great genius behind these shows and we didn’t have the privilege to watch Mazinger Z which started it all??  It doesn’t make any sense.  How can we supposed to acknowledge his great works of art when the media came and made us to think these programmes were made in USA, but it’s all because of licensing and broadcasting rights USA companies like Force Five Series can take and rebrand the product to get a different name and the kids just watched thinking these are memorable cartoons on Saturday mornings??  I felt my mind’s been plagued by these distortions and I find it sad I only came to know the truth at the later stages of my life.  Tsk…. Tsk….

But still, I’m glad to say even where I’m at in my life now, I finally get to know what Mazinger Z is thanks to the ever-growing presence of internet that lets you connect people in so many ways.  Especially in the mecha community field.  I’m glad this technology has allowed me to seek the bigger and better picture of what mecha anime industry is going about.  I’ve learnt heaps about this in particular.  Go Nagai pioneered the whole mecha genre inside out and that’s how many animators in Japan could produce several, if not all, successful anime programmes of this genre for last 30 years.  His visual concept of a person ‘piloting’ a robot as if he was riding an aeroplane was a genius idea in the making.  The coolest part of his design is that when giant robots are given special commands for attack, the pilot would yell the attack sequence and the robot will launch them.  And suddenly everybody’s gotten completely bonkers over this and soon many robot shows are following the same ‘format’.  Really ingenious and stupendous. So it would be fair for me to acknowledge that his series also sparked another new mecha subgrene, called “Real Robot”.  Go Nagai  was not involved with any of Real Robot developments.  It was one of other famous Japanese mecha artists and producers by the name of Yoshiyuki Tomino, who’s responsible for converting Super Robot mecha genre into Real Robot genre (click here on his Wiki page for more info). Yoshiyuki used to do a lot of previous work on Super Robot genre for several years before he’s decided to make Real Robot a success with his life-long series of Gundam shows.  Officially, he’s the godfather of “Real Robot” since then.  Thanks to ongoing success of several super robot anime series in the early 70s, 80s this part of animation industry enjoyed, Real Robot became a possibility.  You gotta give plenty of credit for Go Nagai how much impact his Mazinger Z did on Tomino’s works, including others.

One other interesting element I find about Mazinger Z is how so many successful super robot series shared the same element of story-telling Go Nagai had for Mazinger Z ie “father-builds-robot-for-son-so-he-can-ride-it-to-save-the-world-from-bad-guys” part to  having every new enemy robot featured on every episode.  Examples for these are Toshi Gordion, Steel Jeeg, Groizer X , Mechander Robo, Invincible Steel Man Daitarn 3, Trider G7 etc.  It’s very refreshing to think back how great every robot anime I watched in those days all shared one common thing.  And that to me that’s the winning formula for making great mecha anime series, all the time.

I’m looking forward to watching the original series from beginning till the end now that I have the copy of its DVD release.

The boy wonder.  Well technically, not a biological one.  A robot made to mimic the life of a 12-year old boy in real life said to the world’s greatest hero for peace and harmony and thwart all evil robots on the earth.  Hence the title of the post.

I was originally hesitant to put Astro Boy (also known as Shin Tetsuwan Atom in Japanese) as part of my ongoing collection of all mecha series I love to keep in my blog, as the word ‘mecha’ supposedly meant a pilot controlling a robot from inside either within a cockpit or its chest.  (Tetsujin 28 is no different, but we’ll get into that point later).

Nevertheless, I decisively reserved this page for this ‘unconventional’ form of robot as this series made a lot of serious contribution to the manga/anime world all over, as we all know that Osamu Tezuka is the creator of the series.

Osamu Tezuka was hailed the “God of manga” from its sources on IMDB.com.  Several noteworthy anime/manga he created under his belt were recognized publicly in Japan and the rest of the world (including the likes of Walt Disney who once did request Osamu to sign up to do some production work on Disney’s animation).  His Astro Boy was rather interesting.  In terms of its craze and possibly unprecedented popularity.  In Japan, this was the very first manga series produced in the mid 1950s.  It ran for more than a decade.  It was so popular that it became a major hit as aTV anime series later on in 1963 by Mushi Productions.  His other manga artworks did come through as well, as clearly Osamu Tezuka was granting himself as a legendary status of the father of manga artworks for over 4 decades.  So it’s little wonder why Go Nagai has high regards for him when he shared his thoughts on Osamu’s humanitarian ways with the French presses at Japan Expo in Paris in Oct 2008.  (Click here for the interview link.)

Astro Boy Gallery

The series served plenty of credit, if not part of a direct contribution to the existence of mecha subgenre up to this point.  The elements of story-telling is all too common we all hear of late.  Good guys are brought up into this world to rid us the bad guys.  Its been a long lasting tradition that robots are designed by fictional scientists in the hopes to serve the mankind in order to achieve not only better use of science and technology in the right way but also accomplishing humanitarian ways that no military forces in any day of age could possibly do with their own resource.  Think Dr Saotome(Getter Robo, Getter Robo G),  Professor Ochanomizu  (Astro Boy), Dr Kabuto (Mazinger Z,  Great Mazinger, Getter Robo Series, Mazinkaizer), Professor Shiba (Steel Jeeg), Dr. Daimonji (Great Sky Demon Dragon Gaiking) etc etc.  Ironically enough, the AstroBoy comic creator himself was a medical doctor who used his talented surgical hands to bring this ‘fictional’ boy to life, in hopes on bringing great joy and entertainment for everyone of all ages and races.  After all, with Astro Boy’s eternally youthfuly looks along with Pinnochio-esque inoccence and his honest nature that gives the warm feeling that he’s going to help everybody to get through any obstacle in life, why wouldn’t children start to grow liking him, as much as the adults do?  It proves so since its debut 50 years ago.  I faintly remembered watching it so young that time but I guess in my country it wasn’t such a mainstream program every kid would talk about.  So I guess now I’m learning more about it, I’m starting to understand how greatly relevant this is to my personal exploration of mecha chronology over the ages.  It clearly shows its age and times now.

In my opinion, Astro Boy willingness to save every human being on Earth certainly gave Mitsuteru Yokoyama and Go Nagai inspiration to tell us normal folks that robots are used for good as long as they’re driven by the correct pilot, setting out to do things what is right and serve justice.  Giving them the image of heroic characteristic of any superhero character you can think of ie Superman/Spiderman.  But obviously in a different medium that Japan knows.

So without doubt, Osamu’s works has made these talented artists possible for us to enjoy mecha over the last 30 years and I’m sure it deserves its place on Generation Mech’s Journal.com for many years to come.   This is the beginning of it.