Many of us judge Jap animation as excessive-tech, sophisticated entertainment for adults; animation that breaks the boundaries of sharp entertainment and stuns audiences with originality and innovation.
These folks are clearly fully irascible.
As evidence to the contrary, I fresh the handiest in all probability argument; a rebuttal that is smashing in its impression and attracts one to an inexorable conclusion that brutally shatters paradigms, at the same time because it opens up unusual worlds of possibility.
The argument? MAGNOS THE ROBOT aka MAGNETIC ROBO GAKEEN, a mid-Seventies Toei monumental robot prove that mixes the total traditional components of Jap anime: hackneyed position, clichéd characters, outlandish and impractical mechanical fabricate, and abnormal, incomprehensible villains and monsters. Mixed with deadpan American dubbing, the high product can handiest be described as kitsch. Launched on DVD in the US by “Liberty World Publishing”, MAGNOS is a easy, tape-system faults-and-all switch of an earlier VHS commence that after graced the kiddie share of The usa’s video condominium stores and thrift shops.
No monumental vision went into making MAGNOS. Driven by market forces, the creators merely threw collectively whatever components they may maybe well rip off from diversified, extra a success anime reveals. Enormous monumental robots, not in all probability ultra-scientific secret bases, grotesque despicable creatures – they’ve all been performed earlier than, and performed better. Nonetheless, the producers of MAGNOS took the abnormal visuals and infantile storylines of your customary robot drama and cranked the full lot as a lot as eleven – and as with all kitsch, their efforts had the reverse attain. As an different of exhibiting fantastical and awesome, MAGNOS THE ROBOT merely looks to be like outlandish, impractical, and faintly ridiculous.
Earth is in monumental anguish; horrific creatures from the depths of the earth, in actuality mature astronauts from outer enviornment, bask in declared battle on the bottom world. Though national monuments are being blasted into pieces, the United Nations refuses to rob stamp to Sir Miles Nevers, the handiest one with any form of thought who’s attacking us. It sounds as if the UN believes that often things honest explode for no motive. Is Sir Nevers a scientist, a naval officer, a industrialist? MAGNOS never tells us. Nevers has a mammoth nuclear powered flying battleship, a wrestle unit of helicopters and antiaircraft cannon, and a fancy combining-robot combating system. Nonetheless, all this equipment is fully unnecessary, on legend of what Nevers DOESN’T bask in is a furry, disgruntled, denim-clad, kung-fu-combating 70s vogue antihero to pilot his robot and establish the enviornment.
Enter Janus, who’s a disgruntled karate champion with disagreeable hair and a fabric cabinet straight out of the Levis department of your native Sears. Any one who’s ever seen any 70s monumental robot prove can tick off the next position components: Janus is requested to pilot the robot. Janus refuses on legend of he’s the 70s vogue antihero and so that they never volunteer for nothin’. The horrific monsters assault! Janus, disquieted on the combating ineptitude of Nevers’ gang, is compelled to prove these amateurs exactly how he did it in the karate ring. He alters correct into a tacky jumpsuit and is tossed into the robot cockpit, the place his combating spirit and cocky, never-narrate-die attitude be successful the place skill and practising fail.
But wait! What concerning the girl? There’s ALWAYS a girl in these reveals, and it’s ALWAYS the professor’s daughter, and her and the hero NEVER salvage along, for no much less than three episodes. Effectively, MAGNOS is rarely any exception. If truth be told, Nevers’ daughter Ester is completely main to the position. You to find, Nevers constructed his Magnos robot in two components, and one phase is piloted by his daughter, and one other phase have to be piloted by a interesting karate champion man. I do know some of us stagger to coarse lengths to hook their young folks up, but this is ridiculous. If truth be told the male-female part fits in with the total “magnetic” theme of the prove – with a particular and a destructive, MAGNOS evokes each and every your Electrical Engineering 101 syllabus AND your Tantric Intercourse manuals.
You to find young folks when a man robot pilot and a girl robot pilot relish each and every diversified very worthy…
The Seventies were diagnosed as the last decade of the ridiculously elaborate pilot-coming into-his-monumental-robot scene, and MAGNOS upholds the tradition magnificently. First our heroes don dreary-looking jumpsuits. They salvage into rocket-propelled elevators and fabricate particular arm actions, which magnetically change their jumpsuits into even stupider-looking jumpsuits. Once internal dinky flying vehicles, they’re shot out of the nuclear battleship, along with the components of their robots. The flying vehicles dock with the robots, and Janus and Ester wind up combating despicable internal some of the most inept looking equipment ever designed for a Jap chilly sharp movie. Seriously, these two robots – “Magnon” and “Magnetta”- resemble gingerbread males extra than they attain wrestle equipment. Naturally they’re unnecessary against the monsters of Xerxes Tire-Iron Dada, so that they have to mix into Magnos. This requires the next sequence: Janus and Ester leap out of their robots in mid-air and whirl around each and every diversified head to head, while the pieces of Magnos are shot out of the nuclear battleship. All this whirling a technique or the other turns each and every Janus and Ester into some form of rectangular yellow box, and since the pieces of Magnos device collectively in the sky, this rectangular yellow box becomes Magnos’ belt buckle. Magnos itself is one other shocking robot fabricate – judge Budge Nagai’s STEEL JEEG and then exaggerate the much less believable, extra outlandish functions. Magnos has pumped-up steel muscle tissues, a head that doesn’t flip, blades that pop out of the fingers, and dinky wrists and ankles (this becomes a position level later, judge it or now not).
Meanwhile, clearly, the enemies of mankind were chilling out and observing this complete transformation rob position. Xerxes Tire-Iron Dada is worthy away in one other galaxy, so he’s compelled to count on his minions to triumph over Earth. Led by Mind, a grotesquely grotesque green fellow with a monumental brain that resembles an afro, they consist of a robot man, a girl made out of fish components, and a few roughly lion person. They’re all chunky of mountainous plans for defeating Magnos and conquering the Earth. These forms of plans involve mammoth monsters made of combining Earth animals – ensuing in LSD-impressed combos like Batroacher and Octo-Crabus X-3. Optimistic, it’s monster fabricate by strategy of Conan O’Brien’s “If They Mated”.
The dubbing is shocking. The mix is awful, ensuing in incidental song drowning out almost every main line of dialog. The actors be taught their lines competently enough, however the script can’t judge if it wants to be silly and self-referential or lethal significant. Undoubtedly, when the disagreeable man is named Xerxes Tire-Iron Dada and most of Mind’s lines consist of “What treachery is THIS?” it’s laborious to relief an major tone. After all SOMEBODY was having fun with MAGNOS.
It’s laborious to allege how seriously this was taken in Japan, anyway. Despite the full lot, this IS a prove the place a monumental bat-cockroach attacks an oil refinery, the place our karate hero Janus is shown karate-cutting a BULL in a flashback. The prove is simply wild enough, honest kitschsy enough to manufacture me mediate that each person was in on the joke. After all I HOPE no one was taking this seriously. The animation isn’t as lame as the storyline; perfectly competent Toei TV prove animation, worthy as you’d to find in any TV anime of the day. A number of the significant combating scenes are in actuality moderately smartly performed. “Effectively performed” – never thought I’d use that phrase in reference to MAGNOS.
Curiously, the Spanish discover on the DVD has a better audio mix than the English discover. MAGNOS was a monumental hit in Italy below its long-established GAKEEN title, and it would were good to to find the Italian opening credit ranking, presumably some Italian dialog. But this may maybe maybe be a glorious buy basement DVD commence, and anyway, particular functions would assassinate the low-rent atmosphere MAGNOS works so laborious to relief.
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Optimistic, I acknowledged DVD – MAGNOS THE ROBOT makes a handsome addition to anybody’s DVD series, as a counterpoint to all those costly box objects chunky of anime designed for the hip, artsy, with-it, celebrated aficionado of the sharp art. MAGNOS takes us as we utter back to the time when the term “Jap chilly sharp movie” meant cheap, lurid, violent young folks’s entertainment. If you’re all for the image of Jap animation as a feeble art salvage for radiant adults, steer positive of MAGNOS, on legend of this may maybe maybe fabricate you cry. Nonetheless, whenever you’re in the mood for outlandish junk-meals cartoons about clumsy-looking monumental robots combating the monsters of Xerxes Tire-Iron Dada, then MAGNOS is the one to witness.