Thoughts on the new GR: Giant Robo OAVs
Jan. 31st, 2008 09:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotech_masterI'm a big fan of the Giant Robo: The Day the Earth Stood Still (aka Giant Robo: The Animation) OAV series. I consider it a masterpiece, and one of the last great 100% cel-animated works ever created.
Today, I watched the first two episodes of the new OAV, GR: Giant Robo. And, well, I'm a bit disappointed.
I knew going into it that the new series wasn't going to be a continuation of GR: The Day the Earth Stood Still. It saddened me, but on the other hand if this was a 40th anniversary celebration, perhaps they were going to go closer to the original tokusatsu series, right?
Wrong. Not only is the new GR nothing like the prior animated version, it isn't all that much like the original live-action series either.
In the original Giant Robo, Daisaku Kusama ("Johnny Sokko" in the American) is a random kid on a sea cruise who happens to wash up on an island where a conflicted scientist is building a giant robot for Big Fire ("the Gargoyle Gang"). The scientist gives Johnny the control device, and he joins Unicorn, the secret group that his new pal from the cruise ship, Jūrō Minami ("Jerry Mano"), works for.
In The Day the Earth Stood Still it's much the same, with the minor changes that that the scientist happens to be Daisaku's father and the secret group is the Experts of Justice.
In GR: Giant Robo, the robots are apparently artifacts of a Mysterious Ancient Possibly Alien Civilization (TM) and are attacking all over the modern world in the near future, and Daisaku is a scuba diving guide on one of the chain islands off Japan who stumbles into an ancient ruin and fuses, body and soul, with the "Metal God Edoph." And he apparently ends up working for a morally ambiguous organization that seems to be seeking out the buried metal machines. Complete with the standard "mysterious, cold exterior may or may not hide an internal vulnerability" anime-femme archetype.
The first episode is your basic "Normal kid inadvertantly becomes operator of giant robot" episode, and episode two is your basic "Kid learns about the greater war and manages to make his robot move its pinky toe before it's cliffhanger time again, and maybe there will be a big giant robot battle next time" episode. It's all so formulaic, and it's a formula that's been seen time and again in every "J. Random Schmuck gets sucked into a super-magical or -technological war" anime since at least Macross, and probably before.
And to add insult to injury, it's at least 75% cel-shaded CGI by volume. Now, I'm just fine with CGI when it replaces things that are difficult to represent in traditional animation, such as showing intricate transforming mecha, or allowing the kind of pan or tracking shot where an active background has to move or rotate at the same time as the foreground moves. But there's so much CGI in GR: Giant Robo that it's as if the animators just got lazy. There's no really good reason why you should use CGI for a truck driving along a road except just because you can.
The hell of it is, if I were watching it in a vacuum, I'd probably think it was at least no worse than any other formulanime I've ever seen, and leave it at that. But Giant Robo: The Day the Earth Stood Still is a pinnacle of what it's possible to do with pure cel animation, one of the last great 100% cel-animated anime OAVs ever made. And its storyline was at least original, with humor, likable characters, and a lot of inspiration drawn from the Chinese wuxia genre. By comparison, this modern-day stone-cold-serious CGI-riddled formulafest looks considerably worse than it is.
Today, I watched the first two episodes of the new OAV, GR: Giant Robo. And, well, I'm a bit disappointed.
I knew going into it that the new series wasn't going to be a continuation of GR: The Day the Earth Stood Still. It saddened me, but on the other hand if this was a 40th anniversary celebration, perhaps they were going to go closer to the original tokusatsu series, right?
Wrong. Not only is the new GR nothing like the prior animated version, it isn't all that much like the original live-action series either.
In the original Giant Robo, Daisaku Kusama ("Johnny Sokko" in the American) is a random kid on a sea cruise who happens to wash up on an island where a conflicted scientist is building a giant robot for Big Fire ("the Gargoyle Gang"). The scientist gives Johnny the control device, and he joins Unicorn, the secret group that his new pal from the cruise ship, Jūrō Minami ("Jerry Mano"), works for.
In The Day the Earth Stood Still it's much the same, with the minor changes that that the scientist happens to be Daisaku's father and the secret group is the Experts of Justice.
In GR: Giant Robo, the robots are apparently artifacts of a Mysterious Ancient Possibly Alien Civilization (TM) and are attacking all over the modern world in the near future, and Daisaku is a scuba diving guide on one of the chain islands off Japan who stumbles into an ancient ruin and fuses, body and soul, with the "Metal God Edoph." And he apparently ends up working for a morally ambiguous organization that seems to be seeking out the buried metal machines. Complete with the standard "mysterious, cold exterior may or may not hide an internal vulnerability" anime-femme archetype.
The first episode is your basic "Normal kid inadvertantly becomes operator of giant robot" episode, and episode two is your basic "Kid learns about the greater war and manages to make his robot move its pinky toe before it's cliffhanger time again, and maybe there will be a big giant robot battle next time" episode. It's all so formulaic, and it's a formula that's been seen time and again in every "J. Random Schmuck gets sucked into a super-magical or -technological war" anime since at least Macross, and probably before.
And to add insult to injury, it's at least 75% cel-shaded CGI by volume. Now, I'm just fine with CGI when it replaces things that are difficult to represent in traditional animation, such as showing intricate transforming mecha, or allowing the kind of pan or tracking shot where an active background has to move or rotate at the same time as the foreground moves. But there's so much CGI in GR: Giant Robo that it's as if the animators just got lazy. There's no really good reason why you should use CGI for a truck driving along a road except just because you can.
The hell of it is, if I were watching it in a vacuum, I'd probably think it was at least no worse than any other formulanime I've ever seen, and leave it at that. But Giant Robo: The Day the Earth Stood Still is a pinnacle of what it's possible to do with pure cel animation, one of the last great 100% cel-animated anime OAVs ever made. And its storyline was at least original, with humor, likable characters, and a lot of inspiration drawn from the Chinese wuxia genre. By comparison, this modern-day stone-cold-serious CGI-riddled formulafest looks considerably worse than it is.
hi Robotech
Date: 2008-02-02 03:53 pm (UTC)At first I had simply noticed that he was very open to "the spiritual" element of human life and thought that this was a good thing. Now, having seen most all of the films I begin to wonder what is behind it all.
Have you noticed?
Any thoughts?
I did a google search Miyazaki Freemason and, believe it or not, your old blog came up....