マジンカイザー

MAZINKAISER

OVA

STATUS
COMPLETE
EPISODES
7
RELEASE
September 20, 2002
LENGTH
30 min

DESCRIPTION

In one of their epic battles, the Mazinger Team suffers a crushing defeat at the hands of Dr. Hell and his minions after Mazinger Z is stolen and its pilot, the legendary Kouji Kabuto, is rendered missing in action. Just when Dr. Hell's second-in-command Baron Ashura uses Mazinger Z against our heroes, Kouji makes a surprise return in Mazinkaiser - an all-new Mazinger with heavier armor and deadlier attacks.

(Source: Anime News Network)

CAST

Kouji Kabuto
Hiroya Ishimaru
Sayaka Yumi
Ai Uchikawa
Baron Ashura
Hidekatsu Shibata
Tetsuya Tsurugi
Hiroshi Yanaka
Boss
Fumihiko Tachiki
Jun Honoo
Heather Kafka
Dr. Hell
Kousei Tomita
Shiro Kabuto
Sayaka Aida
Gennosuke Yumi
Jouji Yanami
Juzo Kabuto
Gorou Naya
Roll
Shiho Kikuchi
Lori
Akiko Hiramatsu
Gamia Q3
Satsuki Yukino
Nuke
Hideyuki Umezu
Mucha
Kouichi Nagano
Dr. Nossori
Hideyuki Umezu
Dr. Morimori
Hidenari Ugaki

Episodes (7)

Episodes are being prepared. Check back soon.

RELATED TO MAZINKAISER

Cover Art for Mazinkaiser vs. Great General of Darkness

OVA ActionMazinkaiser vs. Great General of Darkness

ANIME ActionMazinger Z

OVA ActionMazinkaiser SKL

Cover Art for Mazinkaiser Tai Shin Getter Robo

ONE SHOT ActionMazinkaiser Tai Shin Getter Robo

MANGA ActionMazinkaiser

REVIEWS

Swanmay
50/100
Seven Episodes of Mediocrity, Capped with One Banger
Do you like Mazinger Z? Do you wish it was animated by 2001 standards instead of 1974 standards? Is everything else negotiable to you? Then you will have an acceptable time with Mazenkaiser! Mazenkaiser is the kind of show with a 2-star plot, 1-star writing, and 2.5-star action.

Animation

I should briefly address Kaiser's design. It's a Mazinger, with some Devilman silhouette in there for good measure. It's an okay design, I think Infinity does a better job of capturing "Mazinger Next Gen" without feeling like the show is going back to the crossover-well. It looks somewhat cool. The Scrander is so ridiculous that it shoots the moon into cool again.

The action is very clearly the thing Mazenkaiser is most interested in. It wants to be a visual feast, but it's 2001 and the OVA money is drying up. How does Kaiser look? ...fine. It looks fine. Specifically, it looks kinda whatever for 6 episodes and then does a last-episode blowout that looks fantastic. In all other cases, Mazenkaiser just trades hits with whoever he's fighting until someone dies, usually out of frame. There's not actually too much physical contact between mecha before the last episode, so this was all pretty simple to paint. But that one episode? Really really good. Great posing, great designs, fun effects. It's a shame about the, err, majority of the program.

Oh, and a pet peeve: the Mazingers are just not robots in this show. They move and bleed like humans. Mazinger is a super robot, that's kinda the central appeal. If it's literally just a giant guy, it just feels lazy.

Unfortunately, it's all down from here.

Plot

Mazenkaiser is a frustrating entry in the plot department because has nothing interesting to contribute. It leads off with an interesting-adjacent premise that it promptly abandons, and then rushes to cash that in later. Kaiser often chucks out some new information like it's impactful and a big change, but...the new information is never thought through or does anything interesting. Explanations usually kneecap the show or previous shows' established information for no benefit. It's bad! And not interestingly bad either!

Mazinger Z and Great Mazinger can't fight off Dr. Hell's latest wave of mechanical beasts. Why? Dunno, this batch is just better, despite it being the stock beasts from Z. But hey, Kaiser is revealed: somehow, Dr. Kabuto built a third robot without anyone knowing, entirely from beyond the grave. How did he do this? Dunno. But hey, Kaiser is more dangerous than Z and Great were, because if Kouji loses control it goes on a violent rampage and will kill anything, even the Photon Power Institute! That's a hook, that's the kinda thing that made Getter so good! There's tension between Tetsuya and Kouji!

I hope that didn't interest you, because Mazenkaiser promptly drops all of that and replaces it with nothing. The middle 3 episodes of Mazenkaiser are boring stock anime episodes that go nowhere and are a slog to watch.

The plot 'resumes' at the very end of episode 5, mainly episode 6. The heroes suffer an actual lowpoint when they are forced to watch the Photon Power Labs get destroyed at gunpoint and Mazenkaiser gets thrown into Mt. Fuji. Boss saves them and Tetsuya and Jun reappear after having been gone for 4 episodes for no good reason (they will contribute nothing to the plot and could have been easily cut). And this awful, awful line is said by by Jun as she exposition dumps where Tetsuya has been:

"The Great Mazinger that was once destroyed by mechanical monsters was a prototype based on the blueprints built by Dr Kabuto. The real Great Mazinger was stored at this location. [...] after leaving the Photon Power Labs to us, Dr Kabuto secretly built Great Mazinger in this lab. That ultimate Mazinger is Mazenkaiser."

It's an incredibly bad line. Somehow it manages to explain nothing about what Tetsuya has been doing, diminish his accomplishments to this point, AND introduce a lot of new questions that will not be addressed or even taken seriously. All of this exposition will not alter the plot in any way, only the Scrander launch will matter.

Mazenkaiser has been slumping for 5 episodes at this point, and hits this nadir, when it suddenly wakes up and does something interesting: Ashura decides to become a Mechanical Beast. This is one thing I can confidently say is better than all other Mazinger adaptations, the Hell King Gordon is the most interesting iteration of Mazinger final boss you're ever gonna get. It is Hell Castle given a body, with Dr Hell's face, and Baron Ashura physically melded into the chassis as a controller. It looks good! It's dynamic! The attacks are imaginative! It is physically Ashura's desire for revenge at all costs manifest!

Every mechanical beast before this has been a recycle of some previous beast, it is unbelievably refreshing to actually have a fun one happen, and even more shocking after landing like a wet fart for 6 episodes that Mazenkaiser will outpunch Shin Mazinger on this one point! It ends on a bland Join-Me-Young-Skywalker scene, which I will allow simply because it lands everything around it so well that you're in a buy-in mood.

So, what do you take from all that? Mainly that you have to sit through 3 hours of snoozefest to get to the 1 hour of prime cuts. It's not worth it but there is some

Character Writing

The character writing is the worst off of the many parts of Kaiser. All characters have all their edges sanded off. Kouji's edge is gone, Sayaka is just a tsundere girlfriend, Boss is entirely slapstick. They are functionally stock anime characters in stock anime situations. It is extremely bland. If you are aware that this show was done by Brain's Base, you will regularly ask yourself how the Baccano-Penguindrum-Durarara people made something so bland. Kouji doesn't ever do anything out of character, he just never does anything very Kouji. Mazinger was always pretty broad character writing, but Nagai has a certain infectious charm that he writes with in his mangas absent here. It has that distinct "otakus writing kids who act like adult otakus" quality that's very offputting. The sole light in the darkness is that Ashura will, eventually, do something very Ashura.

Closing Thoughts

I have nowhere to shove this, so I will simply declare two things:
1. The OP/ED are low energy, which is poison for the style of rock they're going for. This is easily JAM Project's worst work.
2. Mazenkaiser attempts a lot of humor. Nothing lands. The humor is intensely lazy, and failed humor is one of the most grating things you can make.
In the final sum, what do I think of Mazenkaiser? It's a very specific kind of bad. It's the kind of bad where if you watch it in its original presentation, it's boring, but if you watch just the finale in a Youtube clip, you will believe it's probably good. You lose nothing by just skipping the first 6 episodes, really. If I was cutting this into a movie, I would just omit the entire middle of the movie, trim down the first two episodes to the bare minimum, and then run the last episode intact with some flashbacks thrown in for pacing.

Would I recommend it? No. If you're dying for more Mazinger, I would literally just read the plot summary off Wikipedia and then watch the last episode. That's the best experience I can really imagine.
Continue on AniList