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

Mazinger Attack - Rocket Punch

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?

Mazinger Attack - Breast Burn

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

Mazinger Attack - Koushiryoku Beam

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….

Mazinger Attack - Rust Hurricane

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.