Mazinger-Z is one the fathers of the super robots.
There were two super robot shows earlier to Mazinger-Z: Tetsujin 28-go and Astro Ganger. However, Tetsujin 28-go, even though it was well loved, didn’t popularize the genre. And Astro Ganger never became popular.
On the other hand, Mazinger-Z not only popularized the genre but also redefined it, introducing innovations and establishing the foundations all super robots series have followed since. Now it seems normal watching a show featuring combining mechas, or a robot fights using weapons, or a pilot must get inside the robot in order to control it… but Mazinger-Z was the first one did it.
The story itself is simple and straight to the point: a Japanese archaeological team discovers ruins of a lost pre-Grecian civilization (called Mycene Empire) on an island named Bardos. One of their findings was the Mycene used an army of sixty-foot-tall steel titans. A German member of the expedition –Dr. Hell- finds prototypes of those robots underground could be remote-controlled, and realizing their immense military power, he goes mad (although it can be argued he was ALREADY mad) and kills all the other scientists of his team.
Only Professor Juzo Kabuto manages to escape and go back to Japan. Straight after he tries warning the world of the imminent danger as he uses his private wealth and his findings (the Super Alloy Z, a metal forged from a new element named Japanium can only be mined from Mount Fuji; and the photoatomic energy).
Time passes and Dr. Hell is ready to set his plans in motion. Though he decides he needs getting killed beforehand the only man knows his plans. So he calls his right-hand “man”, Baron Ashura (a strange half-man, half-woman being), and commands him to murder to the Professor Kabuto.
Baron Ashura travels to Japan, swiftly finds out the Professor Kabuto’s house’s location (after assassinating Professor’s granddaughter), plants a bomb and blows up the entire place. Believing he has effectively eliminated the threat, he leaves, satisfied and confident.
Unbeknownst to him, Professor Kabuto manages informing his survivor grandchildren (Koji and Shiro) about the Dr. Hell, and reveals him he has built one weapon capable to obliterate Dr. Hell’s robots: Mazinger-Z. He shortly explains his use, warns to Koji he can become a god saves the humankind or a demon annihilates it when he pilots the massive robot, and beseeches him saving the humankind. At last, Juzo Kabuto passes away.
Crying and torn between pain, grief and fury, Koji hops into Mazinger’s cockpit and tries starting the robot, ignoring his kid brother’s warnings. After several –painful- tries he manages putting the massive machine in motion… and then he realizes he doesn’t know how controlling it. Out of control, Mazinger-Z starts trashing whatever was left of the Professor Kabuto’s lab, and nearly kills Shiro, when it is stopped by a red-and-orange, woman-like robot: Aphrodite-A.
Sayaka Yumi (Aphrodite’s pilot), barely manages stopping the Mazinger‘s rampage, and leads Koji to the Photoatomic Research Institute directed by Juzo's former right hand man, Dr. Gennosuke Yumi (Sayaka’s father and Aphrodite’s builder). Koji has barely explained the situation to them when they heard alarming news: two giant robots are rampaging through the nearest city, and nothing can stop them.
After murdering Professor Kabuto, Baron Ashura is starting the Japan’s conquest in the name of Dr. Hell.
Hastily, Koji and Sayaka get into their respective giant robots and head to fight evil Dr. Hell’s robots.
From that point, they will relentlessly fight the forces of the Evil, represented by Dr. Hell and his sinister Henchmen, chapter after chapter. Mazinger and Aphrodite often are trashed in tough battles, and they needed being repaired and modified frequently in order to keep up with Hell’s increasingly dangerous robots.
Koji steadily evolves and grows up, transforming from a mindless, reckless teen boy to a responsible, courageous and dutiful young adult. Dr. Yumi practically adopts him (since he is an orphan), and he and Shiro move into the Institute.
He also begins a heated and complicated relationship with Sayaka. Both of they are close, and like at each other, but Sayaka is unimpressed with Koji’s tendency to rush into situations and speak without thinking. And both of them are extremely hot-headed, so they get in fights constantly (Sayaka is maybe the first tsundere lead character).
At the end of the first series, Koji and Sayaka manage destroy Hell’s last robots, blowing up his HQ and killing him. However it is a pyrrhic victory: pretty soon they discover the Mycene civilization hadn’t been obliterated. They had hidden from their enemies underground and they had spent several millennia thriving in subterranean caverns and tunnels, grafting their bodies in mechanical monsters (called Battle Beasts) in order to survive as they longed for the sunlight, waiting for the moment to reclaiming the surface from the humans.
And that moment has come.
(The movie “Mazinger Z vs the Great General of the Darkness”, and the last chapter of Mazinger-Z narrate the same event but changing the facts. I consider the movie canon, and it overlaps the anime canon –and in fact the manga accounts the facts such like happened in the movie-, so that is what I’ll describe)
Unexpectedly they strike down, razing the main cities of the planet to rubble. Koji fights several of them in Tokyo and he realizes a terrible truth: he can’t win. This time it isn’t a mad doctor but an entire civilization. They are too many and too powerful. He barely he survives the combat, but he knows the next battle will be the last one.
Still, when the Mycene resurface, Koji rides Mazinger again, feeling absolutely determined to win or die. Unfortunately, Mycene’s monsters are extremely strong. Mazinger Z is mercilessly crushed and torn apart, and Koji is badly hurt.
Though, before the Mycene can kill him, shows up a new robot, similar to Mazinger but still different. The newcomer easily destroys the apparently invincible Mycene monsters and leaves.
Shortly after, Dr. Yumi finds out a surprising truth: Kenzo Kabuto, Koji and Shiro’s father, who had supposedly dead alongside his wife in traffic accident, is alive. His father rebuilt his body, transforming him into a cyborg. Still, he found out the Mycene were getting ready to attack the humankind, so he hid as he built a more powerful robot (Great Mazinger) and trained its pilot: Tetsuya Tsurugi.
The ending of Mazinger-Z was a transition to the next series in the trilogy: Great Mazinger.
Koji and Sayaka left for the United States to study UFO technology, and the Institute had been destroyed, so all of it was replaced by new characters and situations: now, Tetsuya Tsurugi (Great Mazinger pilot) and Jun Hono (Venus Alpha pilot) defended the evil Mycene Battle Beasts, led by Kenzo Kabuto.
However, Great Mazinger isn’t void of merits, and the characters are a bit more fleshed out: Tetsuya is an orphan whom Kenzo adopted –right like Jun-, and he is jealous of Koji for being Kenzou’s true son, Jun is a victim of discrimination for being the daughter of a black man and a Japanese woman (and it was pretty unusual back in the seventies the main character’s love interest was a half-black woman), Shiro’s relationship with his once-though dead father is strained and complicated…
At the end of the series, Koji returns with a Mazinger Z upgraded, and he joins to the battle again. Unfortunately, Koji and Tetsuya spend nearly so much time fighting among themselves like fighting the enemy.
However, all of them together triumph over the Mycene Empire, and they feel like if peace has come at last.
How naive.
After Great Mazinger begins the last series in the trilogy: UFO Robot Grendizer.
At the first chapter, Koji returns to Japan after another stay in America. He has been investigating further about UFO technology overseas, and he has even built a mock-up saucer-like “UFO”. Since he has heard UFO’s sightings has increased in Japan, so he returns to investigate.
He flies to a research laboratory called Space Science Lab, run by the Doctor Umon to gathering information, but he lands in a nearby ranch where works Doctor’s son: Daisuke. He meets Daisuke, the ranch’s owner (who is obsessed with aliens and frequently makes a fool of himself with his attempts for sighting one) and his daughter, Hikaru Makiba (who has a soft spot for Daisuke. Yes, I know. NOBODY saw that twist coming).
They talk, and Hikaru befriends him quickly, but Daisuke seems quiet and surly; unfriendly, even. Daisuke warns Koji he shouldn’t try to contact with those aliens because they are NOT a peaceful folk, but Koji refuses listening to him: he has gone through two wars and he doesn’t want enduring a third one.
Later, UFOS are spotted soaring over the region. Koji goes to get in his space saucer when Daisuke stops him and warns him against going. Koji ignores him and takes off. He approaches the UFOs and attempts contacting with them, but they ignore his tries for talking and his repeated statements of he isn’t an enemy, and shoot him down.
Daisuke watches the aerial battle from afar, utters an “I warned him” growl and dashes towards a secret chamber located below the research laboratory, where a massive ship (which in reality can be split in two parts: a flying, saucer-like ship and a robot) rests. He starts the ship and takes off.
His ship/robot annihilates the UFOs and rescues Koji. However, Koji has realized who is piloting the weird, unknown robot, and the next day he interrogates Daisuke privately. Cornered, Daisuke explains his story.
His real name is Duke Fleed, and he was the young prince of royal family of Fleed, a planet was turned into a radioactive wasteland by the invading force of planet Vega.
The Vega homeworld had become unstable due to the exploiting of Vegatron, a powerful radioactive ore, and they were seeking to expand his militaristic empire and find a substitute planet to settle upon. Thus, the ruthless King Vega unleashed his armies -composed of flying saucers and giant robotic monsters-, sending them against the neighbor worlds.
The Vegan army scorched planet Fleed, a formerly peaceful, idyllic and green world. Duke was the only known survivor of the royal family, and he managed stealing the Grendizer, the robotic embodiment of the Fleedian God of war, back from the Vegan invaders who planned using it to spearhead their invasion fleet. Unfortunately it was too late to make anything, and Duke fled.
Soaring faster than light speed, he entered the solar system and crashed on Earth, Japan, where he was found and befriended by Doctor Umon. The kind doctor helped him to hide Grendizer and took him in like his son. Duke began working at the nearby ranch, taking the name Daisuke Umon.
It had been two years since he arrived to Earth, and he had been living peacefully since then, trying forgetting what happened. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t. And now the Vegans were invading his –new- home AGAIN. He didn’t want fighting, he hated fighting, and he liked being Daisuke Umon, working in the ranch alongside Hikaru and living peacefully. But he had to fight. He had run away once and the remorse still tore him apart. He couldn’t run away again. He had to fight, even if he hated it, because he knew what would happen if he didn’t it, and he doesn’t want seeing another planet turned into a radioactive wasteland.
After listening to his story, Koji vows helping him to fight back the Vegans and allies with him.
Through the series, Daisuke and Koji fight the Vegans armies (even though Koji is demoted to sidekick in this series). At the beginning he fights the Vegans with his UFO, but later the Space Science Lab designs a new flying device Grendizer can attach itself to, and he starts using it.
Hikaru Makiba also develops along the series. Eventually she discovers Duke’s secret, and getting fed up with being hurt whenever the enemy attacks, she trains to become a pilot (despite Duke’s objections). She becomes a true fighter, and pilots a device allow Grendizer fight underwater.
Later on, it is revealed there were two more survivors from planet Fleed: Duke’s younger sister Maria Grace Fleed and a man who had rescued her and fled to Earth, raising her under the guise of her grandfather. Caught in crossfire between Grendizer and a Vegan beast, he reveals to Maria that she is the last survivor of the royal family of Fleed (since he believed Duke was killed) before dying from his wounds. Maria swears revenge on Grendizer and its pilot. She tries to ambush Duke, Kouji and Hikaru at the Space Science Lab, but the fight is short lived. Both –she and Duke- learn the truth and have a tearful reunion.
Maria becomes the last team member –piloting a vehicle allows Grendizer burrow in the soil and fight underground-, and the four of them battle together the Vegan forces.
(Maria is also an interesting case of disagreement between original creator and anime adapters: Go Nagai’s –the original creator- plan was bringing Sayaka back and having her piloting the third Spacer, but Shingo Araki –the character designer- intended introducing one character of hers –Maria-. Araki’s opinion ultimately prevailed, and Maria filled the role was intended for Sayaka, including being Koji’s love interest. A long-running joke in the Super Robot Wars video games franchise is when Sayaka and Maria coincide in one game, having them fighting over Koji, who is absolutely oblivious to their rivalry).
It is difficult explain the importance of the trilogy back in the seventies. The popularity of the super robot genre sky-rocketed thanks to them, and dozens of series were created copying their schemes and tropes (Grendizer was maybe the first super robot show used the space invaders trope like a main theme, and later it was used and reused). Even though several super robot anime shows tried breaking the mould, no one truly could… until an anime called Mobile Suit Gundam was aired.
A bunch of mangas and anime shows have been produced, telling and retelling the Mazinger storyline, or simply featuring the same characters but in an alternate universe: God Mazinger, New Mazinger, Mazin Saga, Z-Mazinger, Mazinkaiser, Shin Mazinger, Mazinger Angels… the list goes on, even to this day.
The three shows have been aired in many countries, even though they usually they were renamed (Mazinger Z became Tranzor in USA, and became Goldorak in France and other countries), awfully dubbed and heavily censored (if you have read my other reviews/summaries of seventies shows, you’ll be noticing a pattern here).
You can watch the original anime shows here:
Mazinger-Z;
Great Mazinger; url=”http://www.ovguide.com/tv_season/ufo-robot-grendizer-season-1-79760”]Grendizer[/url]
The webpage where I found the Grendizer episodes looked a tad unreliable (why the names of the last chapters are in French language? I hope those chapters aren’t French-dubbed!)... But it has taken work finding a site where the whole, English-dubbed series is uploaded.
If someone has better links, I would love replace them.
Go Nagai wrote and drew the three series, but he regarded Mazinger like a mindless fun he used for blowing steam as he wrote what he considered a better and more serious manga (Devilman). To his shock, the manga became wildly popular –and way more popular than Devilman-, and the anime deepened further in the story, fleshing out better the characters and the situations (it is a rare case where the anime adaptation surpassed the original material). Because the anime’s popularity kept rising up, Nagai’s editors asked him writing a second Mazinger-Z manga. That version was written by Go Nagai and drew by Gosaku Ota, and it is more faithful to the anime, so I personally think it is pretty better.
Still, this is the original Go Nagai manga:
Mazinger-Z;
GrendizerUnfortunately I haven't found the Great Mazinger manga yet.
