I’m unsure as to how to best write
this introduction. So let’s try the basics. Getter Robo is a very
influential manga and anime series, one of the original mecha shows.
Combining super robots? Yeah, it did that, and wrote the playbook.
Getter Robo: Armageddon is a late 90’s anime miniseries, one quite
well-regarded for how it captured the tone and spirit of its source
material in animated form, which hadn’t really been done before. The
Black Getter also appears. As such, Armageddon invites a kind of
breathless summarisation as much as commentary. Because, not to put
too fine a point on it, its a special kind of insane.
The
first response you are likely to have upon watching Armageddon is
likely to be something like "What the hell is going on!?“.
That's normal, and I'd imagine the target audience had a similar
response back in the day. The anime is doing a "not as you know
them" meets "DC Elseworlds" thing here, assuming the
basic functions of its world are known, only to break them in mere
seconds. Here the Getter Team fought a war on the Moon against the
metamorphic alien Invaders, won, only for tragedy to strike.
Professor Saotome, Getter Ray pioneer and apparent raging nutjob, was
murdered by Getter-1 pilot Ryoma Nagare, breaking the team. However,
sometime later the Professor is back, alive, and waving around a
doomsday weapon, which scares the crap out of everyone. The response
of the Japanese government is to go to Ryoma, whom always protested
his innocence, uncuff him, and basically say, "Double Jeopardy
is in effect, here's a giant robot and some guns, why don't you have
a nice chat with the Professor?". Meanwhile, the Invaders are
back, and they specialise in kaiju-level threats with a side order of
parasitical body horror. What follows is, in an objective sense,
awesome. Seeing the assorted Getter Robos let loose,
especially Ryoma's roaring rampage of revenge, are undoubtedly genre highlights. The
show goes from a standing start to Defcon 2 almost immediately, the
pace only slowed by flashbacks which offer piecemeal explanation of
how we got here, and what's actually at stake. However, by the time
the narrative has uncoiled itself and we get an idea of what is
actually going on, its Defcon 1, the bomb is dropped, and none of it
really matters any more.
Hmmm.
I would not have done things this way.
After
3 episodes, the original director left the project, something that
seems to happen with these 90's OVAs a lot, and I've seen conflicting
explanations as to how it went down. The current consensus seems to
be that he was taking too long, and got replaced, but he took his
notes with him. As a result, the new director had to write a new
story with no real idea of what the endgame was meant to be. Whatever
happened, there's a time skip of thirteen years, which moves the
focus onto new characters, with the remaining Getter Team members in
a leadership role. There's also a new and much more upbeat opening
sequence, and it's almost a different show. At this point, Armageddon
does not so much slow down as de-escalate. I mean, there's been a
nuclear apocalypse, there's an upper limit on how much worse things
can get without disengaging the audience, so things need to settle a
bit before ramping up the tension again. This makes the
post-apocalyptic majority of the series, oddly lighter than the
pre-apocalyptic first act. This is not to suggest the fundamentally
hot-blooded characters and mecha sequences have in any way been toned
down, though. If anything, with the world broken and an army of
fleshy monsters infesting it, this merely allows for the series to
mine new veins of melodrama and blood splatter while things explode.
Things get rather weird towards the middle too. Let’s just say that
the Saotome family clan has issues,
and I’d
like to know the creative process behind a certain plot twist
involving the supporting
character Genki Saotome. You’ll
know that one
when you see it.
I
suppose the reason I enjoy Armageddon is because it ultimately
reminds me of Gurren Lagann, although the smart way to say that would
be the other way around. Getter Robo was there first, even if I
encountered it later. The debt Gurren Lagann owes to Getter Robo is
undeniable, both being peers in the whole "giant robots doing
crazy shit" space, but with one clearly influencing the other.
With Armageddon’s later episodes, the influence is very obvious
too, both in visual elements and plot points. The difference is that
Armageddon is a strait-to-video release of 13 episodes, rather than a
TV production of 27, which grants it more freedom in some ways, I.e.
gore, but it's working as part of a pre-existing franchise. That it
is drawing on previous instalments only to subvert them, is both a
strength and a weakness. Gurren Lagann is much more complete a story,
by comparison. Narratively, Armageddon is a bit disjointed and messy,
fond of mythology gags and presuming familiarity with its characters
rather than properly establishing them within this work. This doesn’t
necessarily count against the anime given how relentless & OTT it
is, the series coming into its own in the second half, but it is a
problem. I would also make the observation that while the first 3
episodes are valid, Armageddon is at its most enjoyable after the
time skip, when the story structure is more conventional, but your
mileage may vary on that one. Regardless, its an experience, to say
the least.
Also,
there’s something I find darkly fascinating about this series, and
its place in the wider franchise. Its not immediately obvious, but
Armageddon is of the Cosmic Horror genre, once you look. Of course,
the word Armageddon implies a somewhat biblical aspect, although
that’s more an artefact of localisation. The original Japanese is
more like “The Last Day of World”, although Armageddon is
supposed to be a battlefield as well as the end times, which
certainly isn’t a bad fit, but not a perfect one. No, the series is
more Lovecraft by way of John Carpenter’s The Thing, which I’m
99% sure is deliberately homaged in one episode. The Invaders are
massively alien and terrible, to the point where its not immediately
clear what level of individuality and self-awareness applies to them, or as shapeshifters,
if they even have an original form. There's several characters whom are essentially Invaders in human form, and have been for a while, but its unclear if this is a case of subversion, symbiosis, or them just being very good mimics. The Invaders consume people from the
inside out, corrupting them like a virus, and eventually doing the
same to machines. So, just like The Thing then, its not just Gurren Lagann that borrows from a classic. They
aren’t the only thing that’s terrifying though. The Getter Robos
themselves very much are, and especially Shin Dragon, the Professor’s
seemingly alive doomsday weapon. The mecha piloted by the
protagonists, are powerful but above all brutal combatants, enabled
by the wonder technology of Getter Rays. And something that's being
alluded to throughout before being explicitly said towards the end,
is that it's the Getter Rays that are the problem. It is not merely a
power source and nuclear allegory, its evolution itself, and humanity
needs to back away slowly. The Invaders are drawn to Getter Rays,
feeding off them, spreading them, which is bad enough on its own, but
the series hints towards the true scale of things. This is an aspect
of Getter Robo I find to be very compelling; the sheer cosmic horror
of the setting bubbling just below the surface. Full discussion of
that is however outside the remit of this article, but in this case
it feeds into a generational theme, the older characters moving out
of the way of the younger generation; another Gurren Lagann parallel.
Professor Saotome planned and planned, laying paths for his children
and pilots to follow, only for it end badly for everyone. The
original Getter Team, his proteges, instead protect the next
generation, and choose to step aside as it isn't their world any
more. That’s not a bad moral to have. And because it's Getter Robo,
they do this by entering a kind of warrior heaven, a mysterious and
distant battlefield filled with other Getter Robos and foes. And because its Getter Robo: Armageddon, what the fandom likes to
a call a space vagina is involved. You read that correctly.
No, I'm not putting a picture of it here, you can look that up on your own time.
Conclusion
Getter
Robo: Armageddon is as mad as a spoon. This madness comes from both
faithfulness to its source material, its seemingly troubled
production, and the fact that its relying a lot on its own cultural
context to smooth the bumps. It is however very entertaining, and
assuming you don’t go deaf from characters repeatedly shouting
“GETTER!”, its worth tracking down.
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