In 1974, Japanese TV introduced one of the earliest transforming-robot cartoon adventures: Getter Robo, the story of brilliant Japanese scientist Dr. Saotome and his prize creations, a trio of vehicles that combined to form various clunky-looking but super-powered robots. Young pilot-recruits Ryo, Hayato and Musashi used the vehicles, which harnessed 'Getter Rays,' to win the war against a mysterious alien menace. A second series, Getter Robo G, followed the next year; after Musashi died saving Dr. Saotome's daughter Michiru, a cranky but hyper-strong baseball player named Benkei was recruited to fly the third Getter vehicle against a new invasion. (An edited, dubbed version of that series appeared as Starvengers in Jim Terry's Force Five anthology.)
In the series' latest incarnation, 1998's Getter Robo: Armageddon, Musashi is inexplicably alive again, but Benkei's also around--which pretty much establishes the logical standard for the entire project. Hayato's missing, and Dr. Saotome is now dead, apparently murdered by Ryo (now 'Ryoma'), who's spent an unknown amount of time in jail, where they apparently let him dress like a Todd McFarlane version of a desert nomad. Michiru is also dead, after a disastrous Getter vehicle crash attributed to at least three different causes. And Musashi and Benkei--a pair of moon-faced, jut-jawed heavies worthy of an Osamu Tezuka manga--are working for the military, and have been charged by someone with transporting one of Saotome's research projects somewhere in order to protect it from someone else.
That vague threat becomes a lot more concrete when they're suddenly attacked by an Invader, one of the fluid, shape-changing, many-eyed aliens whose 10-year siege on the moon originally made the Getter robots necessary. Before Musashi and Benkei have a chance to adjust to the Invaders' return, they're 'saved' by a Getter robot that kills the Invader, steals the secret project, briefly opens up to reveal a gray-haired, maniacal-looking Dr. Saotome, and then flies off. Before long, the newly cleared Ryoma is out of jail and leaping into battle, with the express purpose of killing Saotome--apparently to revenge himself for having been framed as Saotome's killer. Again, all this helps establish the logical standard for the entire project.
High-gloss, fast-paced fun
These seven episodes of Getter Robo: Armageddon introduce and deal with (or, more often, shrug off) enough threats, mysteries and intrigue for a full 26-episode series. At times, it seems like the DVD player is set on quadruple-speed play; there are so many players, and they appear and disappear so suddenly, die so readily and return from the dead so often, that it's possible to blink and miss an entire plotline. Some story threads never make sense at all, while others simply get lost in the battles, as the ever-changing Getter Robo pilot team pushes aside sensible questions like 'who' and 'why,' and hops into its ships to try out a new transformation against a new monster threat.
The real purpose of Getter Robo: Armageddon has nothing to do with the characters or their past histories or new entanglements--it's all about the retro animation, which follows closely on the heels of recent retro-fest hits like Giant Robo and Big O. The Invaders are pretty generic, as science-fiction maguffins go, but their protean physiques offer endless creative variations on the 'creepy gushing wall of goo, eyeballs and spikes' theme. Similarly, the new Getter Robo's new variations and endless supply of effective weapons (no one-size-fits-all, inevitable-battle-ending Wave Motion Gun or Blazing Sword here) make for non-stop, unpredictable excitement in combat. Kenji Hayama's character designs are a remarkably familiar but jazzy blurring of Tezuka techniques with Go Nagai's original manga designs, complete with heavy crosshatching and that beloved '70s trademark, the spiky, one-eye-hiding Bad Anime Hair. And the slick new versions of Nagai's tubby bolt-buckets are reasonably awe-inspiring. Content aside, the visuals are beautiful, memorable and hypnotically compelling.
Getter Robo: Armageddon takes a few stabs at invoking apocalyptic terror--the end of the world is lovingly referenced ad infinitum, and given some surprising mid-story events, it seems like a likely finale. But the series doesn't fix on any one set of events long enough to establish a mood. It's too jumpy, hyper and easily distracted by shiny objects to be really scary. Instead, it's just a heaping helping of high-gloss, fast-paced, old-school-flavored fun.