Dec 16, 2009 1
Best Anime of the 00s: Shin Mazinger Shougeki! Z Hen (2009)
…on television! Mustn’t forget that.
The original poster for The Rocky Horror Picture Show featured the tagline “He’s the hero – that’s right, the hero!“. In much the same way that you could apply that tagline to Imagawa’s Giant Robo OAV series, it applies here to at least two of Shin Mazinger‘s characters (if you switch the gender on the slogan for one of them). Imagawa has cited RHPS a major influence on him, and the work of Go Nagai is a much better fit for that influence than Yokoyama’s work was.
The show can be seen to have two Frank N. Furter surrogates, maybe more. There are a lot scientists messing with things they shouldn’t in the show, after all. Most obviously, you assume the spliced together man-woman, Baron Ashura will be the main place the Frank comparison can be made, and I think to a certain extent it is. Particularly in the latter portion of the series where we delve into Ashura’s background. But Ashura can also be seen as having elements of Rocky Horror about him/her too. For me, it’s Tsubasa Nishikori who is true the Frank stand-in, and her addition to the Mazinger myth marks the biggest influence of RHPS on the project.
Tsubasa is the most significant divergance from previous Mazinger adaptations. Drawn from the Golden City arc of Violence Jack, she at first appears to be the “lady boss” of a small gang of yakuza operating out of a bath house. Here is where I think we get the key element in the comparison to Frank. Instead of operating out of the Photonic Research Laboratory as they would in previous versions, Koji and Shiro, operate out of the Kurogane bath house, living alongside the cyborg gangsters and their initially sinister mistress. In much the same way that the Annual Transylvanian Convention embraces Brad & Janet, the other of the world of the yakuza embraces the Kabutos. There’s other little things in her relationships to other characters like her henchmen and Dr Hell’s generals, but it is the allure of the other that I think she’s primarily there for.
For a show aimed at the forty- & fifty-somethings that watched Mazinger as kids, Imagawa rightly makes the decision to shift focus from Koji, Sayaka and Boss to the adults in the story. Rather than just retelling the story and relying on nostalgia, he actually does something new with it and creates a plot that hinges on parent-child relationships in way that is far more complex than giant robot shows normally manage. Which is saying something as giant robot shows do love that parent-child thing a lot.
And Tsubasa is at the heart of that too. I don’t think I’ve overselling it by saying she’s probably the most fascinating and complex character in anime this year. In part it’s because you just don’t see characters like this very often, but the art, writing and Miyuki Ichijo’s performance all combine to make it work on another level above sheer novelty.
I should make it clear, that while you’ve got clever character work going on, there also this sense of escalation of action and threat that progresses through the show to the extreme levels it reaches in the final episode. And a tremendous glee in the insanity of the Mazinger universe, mainly through the excitable narrator, though there also are 4th wall breaking asides and references to other Go Nagai properties contributing to it.
In short, if you loved Imagawa’s Giant Robo, you’ll love his Mazinger too.
