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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Logan's Run... but with GIANT ROBOTS! (and no Jenny Agutter), February 1, 2009
Quiz time: what's the coolest thing you can think of? A giant robot, of course. Now, what's cooler than a giant robot? A giant robot with dreds! Now, what can possibly be cooler than a giant robot with dreds? A giant robot with dreds and a FREAKIN' CHAINSAW GUN!
And this is what you will get when you watch "Overman King Gainer," Yoshiyuki Tomino's latest giant robot TV show. Oh, and an insanely catchy theme song. And ending song. God, those songs. When watching any television show on DVD, I usually skip over the opening and endings to save time, but not King Gainer. This is the only time in my life so far that I have watched every single opening and ending sequence for every episode of a TV show. And these tunes will get stuck in your head for days! Along with dancing robots and weasels.
Anyway, the story - it's kind of like Logan's Run, where everyone in THE FUTURE lives in domed cities (but without the whole "you have to die at age 30" thing). Well, a group of people in one domed city in Siberia attempts an Exodus ("Movement of Jah People!") to escape and does so with the help of Gain Bijou, an "Exodus Specialist" and Gainer Sanga, a videogame nerd. Guess which one takes control of the titular giant robot. The Siberian Railway, who has a controlling interest in Domepoli attempts to stop the Exodus... episode after episode.
This is my main problem with "Overman King Gainer." I got the idea while watching this that Tomino wanted to go back to/make an affectionate tribute to the super-robot shows of the 70s (some of which he himself made until he single-handedly invented the real-robot genre). However, he uses all of the bad tropes and cliches along with the good ones. The standard setup for an episode is: Robot-of-the-Week challenges Gainer with a new super-power and is eventually defeated - rinse and repeat. My other main problem is that the show sort of abruptly ends, without a satisfying resolution to the whole Exodus to Yapan (only one guess as to where this is) storyline.
So why do I give this four stars? Simple. The characters. Yoshiyuki Tomino has always been good about creating good, memorable characters (although I don't know about this time around, since he only created and directed this show and didn't actually write it, handing off writer duties to Ichiro Okouchi). The characters in "King Gainer" are well rounded and three-dimensional. There are very few completely evil characters. Even the villains are somewhat sympathetic, and some characters that you start out hating become much more likable later on. And the comedy that comes from these creations is absolute gold! On another positive note Gainer, the main protagonist is relatively not-that-whiny as far as Tomino teenagers go. On the scale of Tomino Teenage Whinyness Gainer rates about 4 (With 0 being nonexistent and 10 being Camille Bidan from Z Gundam). Another great thing (from the male perspective) is that Tomino also populates this show with a lot of very cute female characters, but unlike Jenny Agutter in Logan's Run *SPOILER ALERT* none of them take their clothes off (and for absolutely no reason at all). Damn! Oh well. At least we get Adette Kistler and Her Stripperific Outfit. Fanservice Ho!
Onto the DVDs themselves (This is a set of 6)! There are some good extra features on here, including a TV special on the making of the show, some TV commercials and textless openings and endings (so you can get those songs stuck in your head all over again). Packaging: this is a great way to own a television show in that all six discs fit in one normal sized case. This really, really saves on shelf space. My only concern is that some of the discs have a habit of coming loose sometimes.
Still, this is recommended to anyone who likes giant robots.
Summing up:
Pluses: Great characters, great theme songs, a giant robot with DREDS AND A CHAINSAW GUN.
Minuses: Meanders sometimes, super-robot of the week syndrome, the ending.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting Series With Many Ups and Downs, March 30, 2009
On paper, Overman King Gainer looks a lot like a legitimate alternative to the massive Gundam franchise. Beginning with the fact that it's a Sunrise/ Bandai collaboration then followed by the fact that the show was directed by longtime animator Yoshiyuki Tomino, who just so happens to be the creator of the Gundam series. Looking beyond the technicalities, the mecha based series takes place in a future setting where humanity, due to earth being uninhabitable, live in domed cities called Domepolises (not to be confused with colonies of course).
Like Gundam, the show is rife with political struggles, slight economic reference, kids able to manage the audacious task of piloting a complicated robot, and some pretty slick action sequences. That said, my own interest was planted instantly as true alternatives to the rich Gundam universe are few and far between. Unfortunately, this title may have been a bit too ambitious for its own good.
This fact is revealed right in the first episode of the first disc. Our main character is arrested, broken out of jail, discovers a giant robot, learns to pilot it all the while political struggles, royalty kidnappings, environmental cataclysms, and the lines of good versus evil are all being drawn. The fact that all of this is condensed into twenty-four minutes really speaks volumes about the strange pacing that the series is known for. Some episodes contain more information than entire fifty-episode series do while others drag on with virtually no plot advancements whatsoever. The viewer occasionally gets the feeling that the story was all there when the production crew began the project but individual episodes were made up as they went along.
The plot itself has some interesting ideas, however. It turns out that while much of the population believes the earth is a polluted wasteland, there are actually areas of the world that have been cleaned and as such are deemed safe to inhabit. So why bother living in the restrictive (and fairly depressing) Domes at all you ask? The answer is political pressure applied by royalty and massive trade empires. Since these groups would be powerless without people to control, the act of deflecting from one's Dome (called Exodus here) is quite illegal.
Enforcing these laws is the organization called the Siberian Railroad company, which is separate from the official police (the Saint Reagan division of the) London International Management Authority. Confused yet? Don't be. The bottom line is that if you're suspected of being a part of the Exodus movement, the Siberian Railroad company (in the form of a spandex-clad hottie) will come into your classroom at school and toss you in the slammer quicker than you can say "all I am is an innocent video-game-loving geek".
Fortunately there is an eqaulizer to the corrupt powers that be in the form of perhaps the oddest mecha-design the world has ever known, an Overman. Taking a page from shows like Rahxephon, the Overman design is perhaps more biological than it is mechanical (making the term mecha quite innapropriate). However, if the winged Xephon pushed your definition of strange, prepare to scratch your forhead raw staring at the Overman.
With a color pallet straight out of a box of Crayola crayons, a video-screen face and dreadlock tube-clad head, prepare to wonder if the design was artistically brilliant or certifiably bizarre. Factor in that entering the cockpit is eerily reminiscent of watching a birth in reverse and even the most anime-savvy will begin to wonder what inspired Tomino when he was penning up the designs.
Animation is solid here throughout but especially so during the battle scenes. Fans of classic anime will delight in the fact that not a move is performed without first announcing it. The battles, thanks in no small part to that color pallet mentioned above, look sharp and quite unique. Unfortunately with the introduction of superpowers called Overskills, many of the potentially amazing fights end up looking more like cliché super hero comic-book scenes.
Character development certainly takes the backseat to the action throughout the show though and while this is a common tradeoff in anime, it is sad considering the potential here. With a gritty feel reminisent of some of the earlier Gundam series (such as Zeta), the ability to create some real personality and depth in the cast existed. Perhaps because this is a 26-epsiode series (rather than 50), time restraints were a factor.
Extras included in the six-disc box set (Anime Legends Collection) include an extensive collection of concept art and promo spots, as well as a half-hour behind the scenes documentary that includes interviews with the legendary Tomino and other staff members involved in the production.
Sadly Overman King Gainer will likely be remembered for its opening sequence that depicts a bunch of Overman doing the monkey-dance to a Yoshiki Fukuyama theme song with lyrics delivered by Tomino himself. Yes its funny and yes its memorable but unfortunately the rest of the show itself isn't quite as special.
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DVD ~ Katsuyuki Konishi
DVD ~ Nao Nagasawa
DVD ~ Tatsuya Ishihara
DVD ~ Artist Not Provided
DVD ~ Tomoki Kyoda
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