King of Braves GaoGaiGar

King of the Braves GaoGaiGar most definitely earns its title of King. This show is everything right with a super robot anime. GaoGaiGar has a fun story, colorful cast of humans and robots and it's loud, blood boiling, in-your-face action that makes you want to yell attack names along with the show. So with all that said, lets get to review. FINAL FUSION, APPROVED. Story 9/10 The story is a basic Super Robot anime. It revolves around the members of Gusty Geoid Guard, Or GGG for short, as they deal with attacks from the Zonders, who are an alien machine race. The first 25 episodes are prettystandard monster of week, which mostly serve as a way to slowly introduce new characters and weapons for GGG. Please be aware that this show was meant to sell toys. After that though, the series begins to grow and the real plot begins to unfold, and that is where it really shines. Art 10/10 The Art is very well done for a show done in the late 90's. It has well defined lines and bright vivid colors which create very crisp visuals. Everything in this show has its own identity and nothing blurs together. Sound 10/10 Oh, this is what makes a super robot go from good to fantastic. GaoGaiGar has some of the best sounds and OST in any anime I have watched; and I have heard stuff from aldnoah.zero and Attack On Titan. Every sound from Golion's roar to the G stone charging up is uniquely its own. I especially liked the sound they use for the machine noises when robots are combining. GaoGiaGar also has a great OST. Evey character has his or her theme song to go with them; the most memorable being GaoGaiGar Final Fusion theme. The voice work in GaoGaiGar is top notch with Hiyama Nobuyuki voicing Guy. I just loved hearing him yell out, "HIKARI NI NARA!!" Characters 10/10 With every Super Robot anime the selling point is the robots and GaoGaiGar delivers it in tenfolds. The hero of this story is a cyborg named Guy who is a man's man boiling to the brim with courage and bravery who is also a symbol of hope to everyone else. Guy is also accompanied by fellow brave robots, the twin rescue brothers HyoRyu, who claim collective and his hothead brother EnRyu who is a shoot first ask questions kind of person. There is also the Ninja Police Intelligence Officer Volfogg. On the human side the most predominate would be Mamoru. Hes a kid with the unlikely ability to purify the Zondar cores. There are many more but you get the idea, its a colorful cast of robots and people that you can't help but love. Overall, I really did enjoy GaoGaiGar. It delivers on everything that a Super Robot Show should. Yeah, there are faults. Namely, it takes time to build up to its main plot point. If you can't stand monster of the week formula, it probably won't do much for you, but if you enjoy over-the-top crazy robot fights with yelling and more courage than you can handle, this is the show for you. Gutsy Geoid Guard, Mobilize! 10/10

I went into GaoGaiGar with extremely hign expectations. This series is praised nonstop for being the greatest super robot show ever made. I constantly heard that the series had some of the manliest characters, coolest mecha and one best endings in all of super robot anime. [STORY] When I first began to watch the show I was pretty dissapointed. The early episodes of this series aren't exactly bad, but they sure are mediocore. The biggest problem in GaoGaiGar is the pacing. The first 25 episodes are barely worth watching, they're meant to introduce the cast characters I'm sure, but story wise not much happens. Its really formuliacstuff, kinda like you'd expect out of a 70's super robot show. Each episode follows the same grind of a monster appearing, GaoGaiGar swoops in to save the day and uses a new move. I wouldn't blame anyone for missing out these episodes all together. You won't miss anything, and after episode 25 the story becomes much more fast paced and interesing. Still, the series never quite shakes this monster of the week formula, and if that isn't your thing GaoGaiGar probably isn't for you, unless you have a whole lot of dedication. [ART] I was initially put off by the designs in this series. The character designs are very basic, especially the many annoying kid characters, who all look like they've stumbled into the wrong show. The mecha designs are something you'll either love or hate. Their done by Kunio Okawara, who's well known for doing the designs for most of the Brave series. His designs aren't anything new, very blocky, and have more of a resemblence to Transformers than the works of Go Nagai like most SR shows have. The titular GaoGaiGar has a nice design, but the rest, especially the villains, were a bit basic for my tastes. The animation itself isn't terrible, the best of it ussually saved for those truly epic scenes every now and then, but there is an overeliance of re-used animation. Towards the end of the series I was becoming really bored of seeing the same damn attacks over and over again! I realise that this is common in mecha, but there have been plenty of SR shows which didn't rely on stock footage nearly as heavily as this series. [SOUND] They're isn't much to write home about in this department. The OP itself is brilliant, but other than that it was pretty bland. Still I can't say anything harmed my senses. [CHARACTER] The biggest annoyance in this categorie were the child characters. They were supposed to be cute, but Mamoru and his friends often come off as more annoying than that. By the end of the series these characters do mature a bit, but they still got way too much screentime throughout the series. The rest of the cast was pretty mixed. The protaganists are nothing you wouldn't expect out of a super robot series, and neither are the villains. I only wish they'd spent more time fleshing out some of the more interesting members of GGG, rather than just Guy and Mamoru all the time. Towards the end of the series I found myself appreciating some of the characters more, but over all it was a pretty bland cast. [OVERALL] Obviously, I went into GaoGaiGar with high expectations and was dissapointed. Its not the worst Super Robot show, but its by no means the best. There are moments greatness in this series. The last ten episodes especially are filled with everything I could want out of a series like this, tension, outlandish battles, manly speaches and heroic sacrafice. But that doesn't make up for the huge amounts of filler in this show, and the blandness of some of the characters and mecha. Its a fairly enjoyable series, worthy of its place in the super robot pantheon, just be sure to realise that it might not be worth ALL the praise it gets. The best way to watch this show is in small chunks, on a saturday morning, turning your brain off and just enjoying the many manly screams of "FINAL FUSION!"

I bet you can't name too many other entries in the Brave franchise, of which GGG is a part. (Others include Might Gaine, J-Decker and Fighbird, if you're interested.) But even so, the King of Braves has achieved almost cult status - getting riffed on in Gun X Sword, featured in multiple Super Robot Wars games and so on. And with good reason. It's a brilliantly fun show that's more than the sum of its parts. Sure the first 20 or so episodes are so-so formulaic super robot fare which could easily be any other show from the 70s onwards, but that's part of the charm inmy opinion. The characters are slight but fun - you've got a spread of kids from the comedy rich girl and rich boy to the cute damsel in distress and the fat one. You've got the heroic super robot team with an all action hero, a mad scientist, a hot girl, and the President. You've got your support robots of varying degrees of usefulness. And you've got the main characters, Guy and Mamoru. They're good fun, get some good plot development by the second half of the show and ultimately get their happy ending. The enemies are well-designed and inventive, with ordinary household objects and industrial equipment transformed into hideous, insane cybernetic monstrosities via a method that could make a good horror movie or Dr Who plot. How many shows have their heroes fighting the LHC one week, a space shuttle in another and a steam train in another, ending up in an epic battle against a cyborg ballerina and a Cthulhu-esque mountain of living metal? It sure beats some of the more uninspired designs featured in Go Nagai or Nagahama shows (while Voltes V and Daimos are good for their own reasons, it's not monster design.) However, it's after the midpoint of the show that it really kicks off and the ante is upped. A standard mid-season upgrade reveal is handled well and in an exciting way, and the action gets ever-crazier right up to the climactic battle in space. Stick with GGG if you're flagging after the umpteenth one-use gimmick weapon (seriously, the Pliers were awful, even I'll admit that) or kid-focussed episode. Remember it was originally shown weekly - try watching it that way rather than marathoning it. Get some high-sugar soft drinks, regress to childhood and sing along with the OP - it might make it more enjoyable, I don't know. Once it finds its stride it's an exciting action adventure show with some brilliantly excessive mechs. Also look out for the, of all things, cameo from Scirocco's ship. It is in there.

GaoGaiGar is absolutely awesome! It is one the best animes ever. It has one of the best intros ever. It's got a unique style and designs. And it's really fun and well written. It does things other animes don't. It is always surprising. It makes you feel happy watching it. And you always care about the characters. They are all straightforward, enthusiastic, characters. They all do what they are meant to. And if it's a happy thing, they look happy to do it.Cyborg Guy/Guy Shishio is very enthusiastic, brave and heroic. He is a handsome, likable, lead. Willing to fight to the death to protect people. The female and male characters are all treated equally. And are all equally good and proffessional. They always get straight to the fight, or the action. They all act very sensibely and professionally. The robot GaoGaiGar is awesome. Awesome weapons. And the robots in the show are all awesome. Volfogg is especially awesome and badass. But just because it bright and enthusiastic, does'nt mean it does'nt get dark. When it goes dark and sad, it goes for it. It has some truely surprising things in it. This anime will put you off space. I hate space. And what happens to Guy Shishioh to make him Cyborg Guy is enough to put me off space even more. The fights are all very logical and like a real fight would go. With lots of smashing, hitting, tearing, destroying, and improvisation. Brutal fights. It never springs stuff out of the blue. Things are gradually and well written, gradually introduced, and the result is surprising, despite them working up to it. It has some unusal things. Like descriptions for the meanings of names and words. Character descriptions at the start and ad breaks. One episode is in english and engrish for some of it. And a character who is not japanese, sounds like a none japanese person or person who does'nt live there. She speaks japanese in a fluent, but not native, way. The monsters are almost all much bigger and stronger than the leads. So every fight is a true fight to the death. With things against them, other than the big monster, sometimes. As it goes on, they get bigger and bigger and bigger, till they end up facing massive, powerful, enemies. You should definately watch this anime! It is absolutely awesome! :D