Go Nagai and Legal Battles
Go Nagai is an incredible creator with an amazing sense of creativity. He is also an infinitesimally horny person that has created some very raunchy works. At the same time, Go Nagai was also a very creative mind. Along with that, he has created some really edgy works that make so many turns no one expects to occur for better or for worse. Those three things usually connect together. Go Nagai is horny, is very creative, is very edgy, and most of us love him for it. Those works being Devilman, Cutie Honey, the Mazinger franchise, he was one of the creatives behind Getter Robo who helped Ken Ishikawa get started on his groundbreaking work, and I could probably keep going.
What about the works that people don't know about from Go Nagai? Say for instance, the show I am going to eventually write about in this post, Dino Mech Gaiking? Part of that is from a legal battle with Toei and Go Nagai. Toei released this super robot show and completely erased Go Nagai's name from it despite it possibly couldn't be more obvious Go Nagai was behind it from plots to mechanical design. This entire affair still led to Toei having control over the Mazinger name brand for a long time and Go Nagai also working with some other studios, Studio Knack for instance, for ten plus years leading to a lot of his things being put into obscurity. Well, the things that aren't manga at least.
The Story of Dino Mech Gaiking
Gaiking is yet another super robot story about aliens invading Earth and the Earth can only fight back with a robot that is put together with duct tape and spit. Except, there are so many interesting details in the show which makes it interesting. In this show, the invading aliens are called Zelans and their evil groups are called the Dark Horror Army. Also, the Emperor Darius was an AI meant to help the Zelan civilization to escape the black hole that is slowly sucking in their planet and that AI's solution is indoctrinating the Zelans into an army and invading Earth for their own colonization. Most of the Zelans are innocent slaves that are mind controlled to only do what they are told.
Now we start with the introduction of the main character Sanshiro Tsuwabaki. He is a professional baseball player that has his unbreakable magical miracle pitch. Well, he did before the Zelan empire came after him leading to him breaking his pitching arm during a baseball game. The Daiku Maryu crew tried to recruit him to join them and pilot the Dino Mech Gaiking beforehand, but he became their only option after his baseball career was over. Sanshiro also had to accept some psychic power he kept refusing. He joins a crew of a lot of younger professionals in different sports and other heavier activities on the ship the Daiku Maryu to fight against the Zelan empire.
Dino Mech Gaiking is a super robot show produced into two episode arcs or episodic stories with the Daiku Maryu crew exploring and fighting Zelan dark monsters and alien armies all across the world. This is the first time in mecha history that a crew gets on a spaceship and directly responds to Zelan's attacks and schemes all over the world. Beforehand, the mecha series had bases that were very stationary, so Dino Mecha Gaiking is so heavily groundbreaking. It doesn't feel like a major thing now, but mecha wouldn't be where it is today without this small thing on top of it being such a good show.
Sanshiro on Baseball and Learning to Pilot a Robot
It genuinely annoys me how many people consider Evangelion as the only show people think about where a protagonist is thrown into a mecha they've never done before against a threat they've never done before. It started in the 70's in shows like this because Sanshiro was only at the Daiku Maryu base and thrown into the cockpit of the Gaiking without any training. It's worse in this situation because he didn't just have to pilot it until the beast exploded, he had to figure out how to combine his Gaiking unit before even fighting. It's amazing in all of this honestly.
A lot of the tension for him early in the show comes from him having to accept that his baseball career is over and he is forced into training to understand the G forces. After the beginning, Sanshiro stands back a lot to let other characters carry each episode with him as a great background character. I say that because Sanshiro is a wonderful character that is our guide into this strange world because everyone else has been there for a long time. It only makes the episodes where his baseball trauma returns in other episodes stronger. Especially the episode where he joins his team for a short time just to give his miracle technique to someone else because he finally lets go of his dream of ever becoming a pitcher. Man it hurts so badly.
Characters Whose Lives Are Changed By the Zelan Invasion
I already mentioned the Daiku Maryu crew, but they are all people who used to have much more important lives or professional lives before joining this crew. Fan Li (Kick Boxing Pro) and Yamagakake (Sumo Wrestling) are professionals in their sports who had to let go of becoming famous to pilot a small robot on the Daiku Maryu instead to save the world. Pete Richardson is a former US Navy officer who had to give up his personal life to make sure his younger brother is never found out by the Zelan empire. The whole crew is like this and gets an episode or more about them and each one of them is amazing.
What makes the entire Zelan plot worse is the fact that there are episodes dedicated to normal, not indoctrinated Zelans having to deal with the horrific situation that Darius is forcing them into. One episode had Sanshiro connect with a Zelan who was indoctrinated at first until Sanshiro had to fight him later and the guy died as he learned who he was. Or some colonies of innocent Zelans on earth who were completely shocked they were at worth with the Earth instead of trying to make peace. There are so many smaller stories from our crew and the Zeland alongside the horrific Darius and his generals that it shows how mature the entire show is.
Some Detriments to Dino Mech Gaiking
If there are some small downfalls to this mecha show. The first one is the year it came out which means the entire format in its episodic nature. The momentum from the beginning slowly leaves it as the show becomes so many more episodic to the point where the schemes of the Zelan commanders are so lowkey after literally invading and taking over the Daiku Maryu, imprisoning most of its crew, and even taking the mecha multiple times. It transitions to a lot of personal stories which I like, but I still have to admit the show slows down when it does its heavier stuff in the beginning of the series and then goes into some much sillier directions.
The mecha fights themselves only become a clear end of the episode thing instead of becoming the point of the show like they were in the beginning. Which I honestly like because mecha shows are always about the characters and mecha with their super powers and abilities are an extension of the characterizations which occur throughout the show. I love this cast and I love how the robots are used as a result of this. I just wish that the episodes could have been moved around to provide some more tension. The show wasn't that well thought out on that level there while everything else was.
Dino Mech Gaiking is a well polished mecha show
For a show produced in the 1970's, Dino Mech Gaiking is gorgeous. I really mean that because animation, art, and so many other things are very good for the era they came out in. There is a lot of stock footage of Gaiking, Daiku Maryu, and other units being launched and super robots attacks being used, but all those scenes are used in a way to make each fight dynamic and explosive in great ways. The locations are great and varied which are used to their highest potential to make each episode so interesting and even outside of mecha fights are really dynamic and so exciting here too. Once again, the whole show is so well polished for the era it comes out.
Gaiking is an exceptional show with a lot of characters suffering the consequences of being forced into conflict they never wanted which interrupted their entire lives. It is not flawless, but it is a fantastic show and you can see why it got a modern remake ten years ago. People can play so much with the story in just so many ways or more than was provided in this show. The character writing is great, the mecha action is very good, and the stakes in the whole story are so sad which makes you feel bad for the Zelans. Yes, even the indoctrinated foot soldiers that attack. I can't help but recommend this Go Nagai work.
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