(This review was originally intended for the animeondvd.com website, before I found that they had stopped taking reader reviews.)

Giant Robo has had to be one of the most frustrating anime that anime fans of the '90s ever experienced. Not in terms of its quality—indeed, Giant Robo stands out as one of the best multi-part anime OAVs (Original Animation Videos, or made-for-video animated movies) ever made. But that was what made it so frustrating. When it originally came out, it came out in dribs and drabs, irregularly spaced over a period of months or even years—starting in 1992, ending in 1998. It came out so infrequently that the first five to ten minutes of each episode had to be spent in a lengthy recap of what came before. Sometimes it was so long between episodes that Manga Video had to find new voice actors for some of the roles in the dub.

But when it finally came out completely, fans knew that they at least had DVDs to look forward to. Or...did they? Manga Video kept pushing the release date back, and back, and back, and in the end Manga sat on Giant Robo so long (all the while releasing a stream of ultraviolent, pornographic schlock, catering to anime's worst stereotypes) that he should by all rights have hatched out. All fans of higher-definition video had to console them was a laserdisc set that was plagued with dubtitles, a Region 2 Japanese DVD box set reviewed in the region 2 section of animeondvd.com (which came with an amazing selection of extras, but lacked any English subtitles), or the cheap (and Engrish-subtitled) Chinese pirate set being sold on eBay—and the knowledge that, after their lackluster performance with titles like Wings of Honneamise, Manga would probably just have messed up the Giant Robo DVD anyway.

But now it's 2004 and that frustration is finally coming to an end. Apparently Manga Video's rights to Giant Robo ran out, because Media Blasters has snapped it up and started releasing it on DVD. And judging from the first disc in the set, the results are very encouraging.

Audio:

We'll start with the audio. I think it was largely the audio that first hooked me on this series back when I first got to see it at a local anime/gaming convention. It was the first anime I had ever seen that had a fully symphonic and operatic orchestral score, even featuring a version of "Dies Irae." The score comes from the same tradition as the Star Wars films', and does not suffer one jot by comparison to theirs. The music, performed by the Warsaw Symphony Orchestra, is big and bold and brassy and martial, and fits the material perfectly.

And to my delight, Media Blasters' presentation of the audio is more than worthy of the title. To begin with, they've gone the Japanese boxed set one better (or perhaps two or three better) in the audio presentation. The Japanese set only had Dolby 2.0 mixes for both the Japanese and English dubs; this new DVD has both 192 kbps Dolby 2.0 and 448 kbps 5.1 Dolby digital surround for both the original Japanese and the new English dubs. The 2.0 mix is a standard 2.0 mix, and it sounds very good, but there's really not much to say about it other than that it's a 2.0 mix.

The Japanese 5.1 mix is okay, but not great; there's a good amount of separation but only moderate use of the rear speakers for music and sound effects like battle sounds or Robo's growl; posters on the AnimeOnDVD forums have suggested that it's the result of an upconversion process rather than an entirely new mix. It's the new English dub that really shines in 5.1; it seems to make much more and louder use of the rear speakers than the Japanese version, and is the one that you should listen to if you really want to show off your speaker set. Watch a battle scene, like the third chapter of episode 1 (which features Robo marching through the streets of Nanking) in both languages to see what I mean.

Media Blasters has completely redubbed Giant Robo, with a new English translation and new voice talent. The new dub is a bit of a mixed bag. The translation is better (or, at least, it seems that way comparing it to what's in the subtitles, as I'm not a native Japanese speaker), and the voice acting is better, too—mostly. Some of the voices (Tetsugyu's, Issei's, and Youshi's in particular) are similar enough to the Manga dub that they might have used the exact same actors. (And for all I know, they may very well have; there are few enough voice actors in the anime dubbing field that it's certainly a possibility.) Of course, this isn't too much of a surprise, since both dubs are trying to match the qualities of the Japanese actors' voices as much as they can. But even with the similarities, they did either get rid of or tone way down the cheesy accents that were a hallmark of the Manga dub.

I don't really like Ginrei's, Daisaku's, or Taisoh's new voices, though; the new Ginrei doesn't sound as strong as Manga's did, Daisaku is way too growly (it's like he's trying to be Tetsugyu Junior or something), and Taisoh is mostly lacking the Jack Nicholsonesque drawl that made him my favorite character in the Manga interpretation. Oh well, I imagine they'll grow on me.

But the audio content on this disc doesn't stop there. There are two more audio tracks on this disc—but since they're both "Extras," I'll cover them down there.

Video:

Giant Robo has always looked good on the screen. The "typical" rule of thumb for anime is that animation quality goes from TV series on the low end to OAVs in the mid-range to cinematic movies at the high end; however, despite being an OAV, Giant Robo's animation quality and attention to detail surpasses many cinematic animes out there. Even the seiyuu remark on how surprised they were by the high quality of the animation. And as with the audio, Media Blasters gives the series the treatment it deserves.

I don't really have the best equipment for judging video quality, but whether on my 27" CRT TV set or my 19" flatscreen monitor, the quality is crisp and clear. There is no artifacting that I can see. Presumably Manga used the same remastered video sources as the Japanese 2.0 box set, so whatever animeondvd.com's reviews say about it should still hold true here.

The subtitles are yellow with a black border: crisp, clear, and legible on either the fuzzy TV set or the higher-definition monitor. I didn't notice any obvious spelling or grammatical errors, though I wasn't looking very hard.

Packaging:

Not much to write home about, good or bad; just a standard DVD clamshell case. Inside are a single-leaf insert that has a track listing on the front and other Media Blasters titles on the back, a coupon good for $5 off the Giant Robo score at RightStuf.com, and a Media Blasters mail-in survey card. I will say that the cover and insert design is nice and understated; it makes the series look more like a serious artistic work than Manga Video's cartoonesque VHS covers did.

I don't have the special eyeball collector case, so I can't say anything about that. Looks impressive, but I don't know if it's worth the extra money.

Menu:

The menu is clean and easy to navigate; it consists of a window showing clips from the anime in black and white with vertical lines and digital lint added to make it look like an antique film reel, and a section underneath where options can be selected. It doesn't get in the way of navigating, and it's stylish, and that's good enough for me.

Extras:

There are three extras on this disc. The first one is not much to write home about—a slideshow gallery of cels, stills, sketches, and paintings from Giant Robo, set to some music from the soundtrack. It's decent enough, I suppose, but I've never been terribly impressed by art galleries.

The other two extras, however, more than make up for the lack. These are the two bonus audio tracks I mentioned above. The first is a Japanese-with-English-subtitles commentary track for Episode 1—rare for any anime—which features Kappei Yamaguchi and Sumi Shimamoto (the Japanese seiyuu, or voice talent, for Daisaku and Ginrei). Apparently this track was recorded especially for this DVD, since at one point Yamaguchi mentions it's been twelve years since 1992. (Or perhaps for a simultaneously-released new Japanese Giant Robo DVD; I don't know if there is one, but that would also explain the audio suddenly becoming available in 5.1.)

It's mostly fluff, of course, as actor voice commentaries tend to be; since the actors were only involved in one aspect of the show, there's only so much they can really say about making it, and in the end a lot of the commentary is about how cool the anime is and how much they loved working on it. Still, it's endearing fluff, as the voice actors converse nostalgically about bygone days, their colleagues, and what working on Giant Robo was like. The commentary is more of a conversation between them—an "oh do you remember when..." session—than an explanation of things for the audience. It would have been nice to have commentary from some of the staff involved with producing and animating Giant Robo—but given the rareness of anime DVD commentaries of any kind, I'm not about to look this gift horse in the mouth.

For the second extra track, Media Blasters goes on to do something I've never seen any anime company do when putting out a new dub of a previously-dubbed anime—not Manga with Castle of Cagliostro, not even Disney with the Miyazaki films. I am seriously impressed at what Media Blasters did with this disc: although they had done their own brand new dub, they actually included the complete original Manga Video dub of both episodes as an additional (Dolby 2.0) extra audio track! That's right, Giant Robo has not one but two different English dubs on it—so fans who like to compare not just dub to original but dub to dub will have a field day. For myself, I've always enjoyed the original Manga dub, cheesy accents and all; it was a decent enough translation, and as I mentioned earlier, I still think that some of their voices fit the characters better than the ones in the new Media Blasters dub.

There are no Easter Eggs on this disc that I know of.

Content:

What can I say about Giant Robo without spoiling it? It's one of the all-time classics of the mecha genre, based on a 1960s tokusatsu (live-action) Japanese TV show of the same name (dubbed for American consumption as Johnny Sokko and his Giant Robot) plus other manga and works by that show's creator, Yokoyama Mitsuteru. It draws together characters and mecha from these shows into a sweeping epic story that covers a week of human history that will never be forgotten.

The setting is the 2030s, but a retro-futuristic vision of the 2030s as they might have been envisioned in the 1930s. It has been ten years since the invention of an amazing new clean energy source, the Shizuma Drive. The Shizuma Drive is so incredibly powerful and efficient that it has rapidly supplanted fossil fuels, nuclear power, and every other source of electricity in the world. The world has entered a new golden age—save for the machinations of terrorist organization Big Fire. To keep the world safe from their attacks, a worldwide police organization called the Experts of Justice has been formed—sort of a super-powered version of Interpol—and fighting at their side is Daisaku Kusama, "a young boy who commands the mightiest robot of our world: Giant Robo!"

And they're all going to be getting a workout over the next seven days; it seems that a mad scientist thought dead for ten years has reappeared, bringing with him the fruits of a twisted genius that caused a disaster so horrible that all mention of it has been stricken from the history books. And, naturally, he's got the backing of Big Fire.

Without a doubt, Giant Robo stands out as one of the greatest anime OAVs ever made. As I understand it (though I could be mistaken), it was produced as a labor of love—a tribute to Yokoyama Mitsuteru—using whatever time the studio and staff could spare from other projects. (If true, this would explain why it took so incredibly long to complete.) That love, and the concommittant attention to detail, shows in every beautifully-animated frame of the series, every sound effect or note of music.

The story was not neglected, either. Giant Robo has a remarkable multilayered narrative with much more depth than it might appear at first glance. The viewers start out knowing almost nothing about the future history of this world, much like young Daisaku Kusama. As Daisaku learns more about the truth behind the Tragedy of Bashtarlle and the nature of the Shizuma Drive, so, too, do we. The story gets deeper and more detailed, more secrets are uncovered, more hidden layers of truth are revealed, and incidents we had previously taken for granted are suddenly cast into an entirely new light. It's like the Babylon 5 of anime.

Conclusion:

If you've never seen Giant Robo, shame on you! er, sorry, let me start over. If you've never seen Giant Robo, you won't find a better way to be introduced to it than this disc. If you have seen Giant Robo, this is a great way to get reacquainted with the series—whether you want to see it in the original Japanese, take in how the new English dub sounds, or relive the nostalgia of the old VHS-and-laserdisc days with the Manga Video dub. Media Blasters has done a yeoman's job, and I'll be sorry when I have to give this disc back to my visiting friend who accidentally left it down here on his last visit.

But on the bright side, the retail price is $25, and the disc can be found in many online retailers for under $20—which is much less budget-breaking than Manga Video's $30-40 price point. All things considered, it's probably a good thing that we had to wait so long for Giant Robo to hit DVD; Media Blasters did a much better job than Manga Video ever could or would have.

I will definitely be waiting with bated breath for future DVDs in this series—especially if they include the Ginrei self-parody OAVs (which have never before been commercially released in the west).

And as for those old Manga releases? "Crush them now, Giant Robo!"

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12