Well, I had hoped that Mazinkaiser SKL would be a great and hot blooded start of 2011. Unfortunately, it leaved a lot to be desired. For the record: it has absolutely nothing to do with Mazinger: none of the characters return and the only thing that it has in common with the Mazinger franchise is that there is the titular robot called Mazinkaiser and there is a fighter plane called Pailder (which doesn’t even get to function as a cockpit in this version).
Now, I am a fan of a well done mecha series, even the cheesy ones. Mazinkaiser SKL however strikes me as a show where a bunch of people looked at Mazinkaiser (or any other cheesy giant robot series), and went “we can do this too!” I mean, this entire first episode screamed incompetence. The creators really seem to believe that they can entertain, just by showing a bunch of random fight scenes with random heavy metal in the background and a lot of characters yelling and sprouting one liners. To me, it feels like they spent no thought whatsoever in what makes these series work.
My biggest indication for this is the complete lack of build-up. Seriously, who are these people? Why should I care for them? There are tons of holes in the story, and the things that it does bother to explain have no context whatsoever inside the setting. This series really looks like it has no idea what it is trying to do and instead is just rushing through all of the boring build-up scenes, just to get to the action scenes as fast as possible. Action itself that just makes no sense whatsoever.
The biggest problem here is that the characters are a complete joke. I never really watched anything of Mazinger at the time when I checked out the New Mazinger, but there the creators really tried and succeeded in making a colourful cast of diverse and interesting characters. The two lead characters here just try to be as evil as possible and only sprout crappy one liners about how evil they are. The female lead is the voice of reason between these two, but again: n personality. The bad guy is just a randomly yelling punk who rapes women.
It’s true that Mazinkaiser SKL was out of the Anime Fes trilogy the show I was looking forward to the least: Koi Sento and the new .Hack OVA seemed much more interesting. But this was a huge disappointment. I mean, the creators couldn’t even get the cheap entertainment part right.
OVA Episode Rating: 6/10
It has stuff to do with Mazinger. Don’t you recognize the designs of kiba’s mech army? they’re the garada and doublas redesigned.
also Aira Mu is from God Mazinger and Violence Jack (nearly every nagai character appears it in anyway), an anime and manga series from 1983 which had nothing to do with past Mazinger series either in continuity or universes.
Also the pilder is the cockpit. It has always been like that for all Mazinger series. I think you were expecting Shin Mazinger, but Mazinkaiser SKL is only something for people who were disappointed with Shin Mazinger’s lack of action.
I watched the original Mazinkaizer (back in the 1970’s known as Mazinger Z) during my younger days, and have always regarded it with a strong nostalgia, something related to my childhood.
I feel that the new Mazinger series is no disappointment, as I watch it through the eyes of my inner child. You may also catch the first episode and all others following at AnimeFlavor.com
You fail so much!
I understood your dislike for SKL as the story is by far the biggest concern considering it’s only 3 episodes long (had Dynamic Pro been given more funding, the story could have fleshed out). In the show’s defense, SKL is tailored specifically to fans of the franchise rather than to compete with other mecha series such as Star Driver. It was intentional that the focus is entirely on pure action as opposed to story and character development – regardless of whether or not you are familiar with the cast. This is prevalent in the many works of Go Nagai and Ken Ishikawa as its mostly about the action.
Personally, I enjoyed the action. SKL and its pilots are shown to be perhaps the most violent robot in anime history and is not afraid of taking on anyone. I can dare say it can challenge the Ideon or the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann in a duel and SKL STILL wins because it can and will. That’s exactly the mindset of MazinKaiser SKL.
it’s exactly because of shows like shin maz that dynamic pro was forced to go make stuff like SKL.
shin maz didn’t sell, no matter how much you liked the series. if that thing sold properly, we would already receive a sequel by now and not SKL.
I think that the OVA is only 3 eps is precisely the reason exposition has been pared down. This is a completely new Mazinkaiser and short of the usual visual callouts to other Nagai shows, 3 eps is too short for any kind of complicated setup without compromising the pace and quality of the action setpieces. The fans don’t buy buy Nagaiverse OVAs for a clever plot, unless they’re extensions of an existing show with most of the hardlifting done already.
I didn’t like Mazinger when I was a kid. Iron Man and Grendizar were my favorite, the latter had a great soundtrack and the Arabic dub was damn good.
I agree with your review. I am a BIG mecha fan, and I love manly robot action as much as the next person. And indeed, the action in SKL was really awesome – and I mean really-seriously-pissing-my-pants awesome – but… action was all there was to it. Not that I was expecting much of a story, mind you. But I was expecting, at the very least, a reason to give two craps about any of the characters.
Getter Robo, for example, has never had much of a plot to speak of. But even so, all throughout the Armageddon and New OVAs (I won’t touch on the older series here since we’re talking modern OVAs), I cared about the characters. But SKL? I couldn’t really care less what happened to Kaido and Magami. They gave me no reason to root for them. They are pretty kickass, but even that seems a little forced sometimes, what with the fact that all they have going for them are one-liners and their “how interesting, they’re opposites” character dynamic. The Getter pilots, on the other hand, manage to be genuinely kickass all the time and to care about their buddies while doing – and that’s what makes people love them.
I would also like to say something to everyone who insists you can’t fit good characterization into 3 episode OVA: yes you can. Re: Cutie Honey, as another example (which is not only a 3 episode OVA, but also another Go Nagai franchise), also had a paper-thin plot, but the characters grow on you enough that you don’t care. Heck, a 3 episode OVA series runs for about as long as a standard film, and it’s certainly possible to fit good characterization into one of those.
tl;dr, SKL looked and sounded awesome, but didn’t do much for me. Also, as a side note… the theme song was bland. Not all that super-robotic. The end song would have made a better theme.
@CC
Except that one episode of RE:Cutie Honey is 45 minutes and one episode of Mazinkaiser SKL is half of that.
And stop using terms such as super robot and real robot. They don’t mean anything these days.