Boarding Giant Robots
After gaining explosive popularity with Mazinger Z, Toei Animation and Dynamic Production (centered around Go Nagai and Ken Ishikawa) followed up with Great Mazinger (1974), and their third work, UFO Robot Grendizer (1975), which was later broadcast in Europe —where it was particularly popular in France— under the title of Goldrake (1978), pioneering the Japanese anime boom overseas (1).
Nagai also had a hit with Getter Robo (1974), in which three aircraft combine to form one giant robot, cementing the place of combining robots as another staple of the genre.
The Ideas of Boarding and Combining
It is often stated that not even Gundam (or Evangelion) would have happened without Go Nagai’s boarding-type robots, but how did he come up with the idea of Mazinger Z?
I (Go Nagai) grew up reading Astro Boy and Tetsujin 28-gō, and there was a time when I thought that manga was mainly all about drawing robots. That’s why I wanted to draw robot manga that wasn’t just an imitation of Astro Boy or Tetsujin 28-gō if I could help it. Rather than focusing on stuff like drama, I wanted something that was more free and interesting. While thinking about that, I saw a traffic jam, and the image of a robot controlled by a motorbike sprang to mind. I sketched that inspiration right away. (translated for this article)(2)
Furthermore, Masao Iizuka (of Sunrise, which later revolutionized boarding-type robots with Gundam) discussed how, when he was struggling to create an original robot anime, he went to the toy section of a department store to carry out “market research” on children.
As I gathered data by playing with toys with children, I learned that at the heart of their love of giant robots was a certain wish and its fulfillment. As far as giant robots are concerned, “the hero is a normal person, so he can’t defeat enemy monsters or bad robots. But when he climbs into a robot, he can get big and strong. That’s good.” I felt that this was related to where the children belong in society—society’s smallest unit, the family. They have their fathers and mothers, who are far bigger than them, and their older brothers and sisters too, so they can’t do really as they please. And when they can’t, they think, “If only I could get in a robot like that too…” I think it’s a kind of wish to change oneself. “If I were bigger.” Perhaps the original work that granted these children their wish was Ultraman (’66). But in that case, Ultraman could get bigger because he was an alien in a science fiction setting. In Mazinger Z, which transformed the giant robot anime genre, it was human heroes who climbed into the robots, so I think it was much easier to project that wish onto them. I think Go Nagai is really incredible for grasping that particular wish: “if I had a robot, I could be big too.” Based on the research I did, we decided that in our story, we would develop the method of controlling the robot from what the children at the time called “climbing into the robot” to “the hero becoming one with the robot” (3).
Whether one calls it boarding or becoming one with the robot, one can see here that once again, the giant robot is analogous to a larger body or a father’s body. It is also particularly interesting that Nagai would come up with the idea for Mazinger Z based on an everyday scene of motorized society. From a child’s point of view, the one who rides a motorbike or drives a car is most likely to be the father (= Kamen Rider). In this sense, the giant robots and transforming heroes of the 1970s are synchronized. In fact, just as Tetsujin 28-gō (which provided some inspiration for Mazinger Z) was a human-shaped weapon created by Professor Shikishima, father to a friend of the young boy Kaneda, Mazinger Z was created by the hero’s grandfather, and this format of a giant robot created by a father or father-like character and inherited by his son would be repeated tirelessly later on. In live-action Hollywood movies, there is also a strong “father = robot” symbolism, for example Darth Vader, the Terminator, and Atom from Real Steel (2011), but one could say that Nagai’s ingenious idea of climbing into giant robots made that transformation more intuitive.
The Affinity of Giant Robots and Animation
Furthermore, as shown by Pacific Rim, it is now possible to produce giant robot works more realistically using the CG technology that is now available to us, but the genre is one that was made possible by the fact that it was animated. The elements that children find intuitively realistic, such as boarding robots, shouting out special moves, becoming one with a giant body, turning limbs into weapons (e.g. Mazinger Z’s Rocket Punch), the display of physicality of combining, and the violence of severed/removed parts, are all things that can only be done in animation, and particularly because the characters are robots. In this case, photorealism is actually entirely unnecessary. Cutting off arms is a staple of Japanese samurai movies, and occurs in Star Wars as well, but this is not possible in children’s shows, nor would it provide an exhilarating feeling.
Additionally, and while this is obvious, when comparing animation and live action, the lowering of cultural barriers is also a reason why Japanese anime has been accepted overseas. The highly codified mode of expression and artificial bodies of manga and anime intertwine, and effectively reproduce a childish sense of omnipotence while softening the moral flaws. It is also important that it was marketing demands that established the robot genre. As discussed earlier, the anime version of Astro Boy is the founder of the character business method, with chocolate containing pictures of Astro Boy enjoying large sales, and so despite Go Nagai’s intentions, Toei Animation produced Mazinger Z from the outset with the intention of “thinking entirely of mainly toy-based product development” (4). The toys that used a die-cast technique referred to as chōgōkin (“super alloy”) [fig.1] were especially successful and captured the weight of super robots. In fact, it was the progress of real-life technology for creating toys and the purchasing activities of children that gave birth to and sustained robot anime.
Fig.1. Chōgōkin (“super alloy”) Mazinger-Z Click to take a closer look
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