The Mike Toole Show

Super Robot Island: Final

Last time, I wrote about how I was hanging out in Baltimore, waiting to see Grendizer t-shirt, YOUR argument is invalid!”

...yeah, we got past that little disagreement. Oh shit, I'm talking about super robots again!

This is actually going to be our final visit to the magical, mystical, myth-tastical Super Robot Island for some time, simply because, as near as I can tell, with this column I'll have at least mentioned, in ing, every single damn minor-to-midrange robot show from the sixties until at least the year 2000 (the big guys, like the Brave series and Daikengo!

wait a minute, who the hell is that

We're in some pretty strange waters at this point. Daikengo was, in some respects, a typical Mitsuki Nakamura pretty much invented while at Tatsunoko.

After going freelance, Okawara was one of the busiest guys in anime for something like six years. He signed on with Yutaka Izubuchi.

So here's a Yattodetaman and Ippatsuman, are notable because they bring super robots to the forefront of the action-comedy franchise. Actually, Yattodetaman's robot, Daikyojin, isn't the central character, but just a frequently-used player; in Ippatsuman, however, the title character pilots Gyakuten-oh, a bona-fide super robot, in the service of his company Time Lease, a rental agency battling with the incompetent Skull Lease to be the #1 leasing company in the... yeah, whatever. Anyway, Okawara has kept the fire burning with Tatsunoko over the years, and has been more than happy to share his artistic wealth with many creators and studios.

I'll close off this look at Kunio Ōkawara's lesser-known robot heroes with two more oddities. One of them is 1990's Iron Leaguer. Iron Leaguer takes the super robot concept and hitches it to sports in a way never seen before, with a whole team of battlin’ sentient robots who specialize in a variety of activities. The leader is Magnum Ace, a valiant baseball pitcher, and he's backed by the likes of Mach Windy (Soccer), Bull Armor (football), and Top Joy (basketball). While the series is loaded with the requisite stock footage attacks, its pitched battles between good sports-bots and evil sports-bots are tons of fun to watch, and are a genuine showcase for Okawara's creativity. It's a shame we didn't get this one in the states!

There are a few final titles I need to give some shout-outs to. There's War of the Flying Saucers from 1975, an interesting 30-minute theatrical feature starring the UFO-riffic super robot Gattaiger, a direct prototype for UFO Robot Grendizer. There's 1982's Gear Fighter Dendoh-- er, just Gear Fighter Dendoh. a flashy super robot arms race between the humans of GEAR and an invading army of evil alien robots.

After all's said and done, we've got something like a hundred ‘pure’ super robot shows, by my reckoning, between 1963 and 2000. That number seems a little low, actually, but either way that's a ton of hot-blooded heroics, rocket punches, and shining, gleaming face-bots. What is it about the faces, anyway? Gundam really gave us the idea that face protectors were just as good, if not better, than robot mouths and noses, but both versions persist, both inside and outside of the pioneering Kunio Ōkawara's body of work. The Gundam look is pretty impressive, but there's something weirdly macho about a robot that actually frowns and grimaces. Maybe every robot should have a face!

...or maybe not. Now that we're way past 2000 and have a decade-plus of NEW super robots, which is your favorite? Do you like fanservice to new and strange places? How about Super Robot Wars, with its huge cast of hilariously-named pilots? Maybe you're a true traditionalist and are just waiting for the next remake of a classic from the 70s. Last question: roboface, or not? Sound off in the comments!