Brave Robots-Braver Than You, Anyway

As should be fairly clear from previous posts, I love super robots and I love Transformers. These are not the same thing, as you should know from previous posts.

Since both of these sort of came from Japan, it figures that Japan would figure out that it'd be fun to mix the two up and see what happened. So Japan took sapient transforming alien robots and mixed them up with fist-firing, sword-swinging super robots and got Brave Robots.

Later Brave series eschewed alien origins in favor of AI robots, but the concept remained fundamentally the same from the first, Exkaiser, to the last, GaoGaiGar, regardless-big freaking robots that transformed and also happened to talk.

GaoGaiGar is far and away the most popular of the series, and it's no wonder:



Seriously, how do you top that theme song? GaoGaiGar is credited as being the series that gave a giant middle finger to the whole culture of grim, dark anime that had climaxed with Evangelion, and also as being a primary impetus in reviving the super robot phenomenon to its current elevated status in Japanese culture (which, really, is where it belongs). Any series that tries to punch Evangelion in the face and gives a boost to super robots is by its very definition awesome. (I'm not saying that because I hate Evangelion. I don't. I just don't like it. However, it should be noted by anyone who thinks that Evas from Evangelion were scary customers that GaoGaiGar fought the moons of Jupiter hand to hand. All of them. Pretty much at once, although he had some help.)

One of these days, when I have money, I'll probably buy the DVDs of the recent GaoGaiGar dub. I've seen a lot of clips (and, I'll be honest, some episodes) of GGG on YouTube, and I know what the series looks like. Purists, trust me when I say that this dub seems to be pretty much as much like the Japanese version as possible without actually having all the VAs speak in Japanese.



I am amazed that they found a guy who sounds so much like the Japanese VA. For a minute, I thought it was the Japanese version (some of the dialogue is hard to follow). (Here's more or less the same clip from the Japanese.) Also, my sister would be amused at the VAs, as many of them are from her favorite anime dub of all time. And, for anyone who has seen something that goes over nine THOUSAND!, this should look familiar. Also, anyone put off by the narration style should consider that technically speaking, this show was supposed to be aimed at little kids.

At some later date, I'll relate a brief sort of history of Brave Robots as best as someone who has never really seen any Brave Robots series can.

As a parting shot, the spellchecker thinks GaoGaiGar should be "groggier."