Getter Robo Arc

I'm a big fan of the mecha genre, I've seen most of Getter, save for the original, I've read through the Ishikawa's manga to help prepare me for this series knowing it would be good. Early on I'd jokingly call it my anime of the season, but it's definitely not. Getter Arc is in a weird spot, because it's the first actual adaptation of Ishikawa's work on Getter Robo, previous series took concepts from it, but never the full thing. So in this sense, we're seeing Ishikawa's vision come to life for the first and last time here.

What follows is an absolutely crazy run of mecha action. Is it as crazy as past entries? Not at all. Arc does something that no other Getter animation has done, it raises the question of "What exactly is Getter?" Is it good? evil?" and there is no real answer to this question. Getter is Getter, it is sentient, hell it's even capable of evolution, but is it truly evil? I don't think that can be said for certain. What can be said for certain is that there is more going on than we see. The Dinosaur Empire are still around and are still definitely a threat even if they're "playing nice" with humanity. Possibly the best part of this adaptation however, is the banger of an opening from JAM Project, who have returned to bring us another great opening song. But that's not all, we get 3! ending songs that are updated versions of past Getter songs. "Dragon 2021", "Storm 2021" and "[Heats 2021](youtube.com/watch?v=hb4hbIhTXhg)"(presented with their original opening animations), these are some of my favorite JAM Project songs, so I am beyond happy that this series at least does the bare minimum and gets JAM Project back to do new music. These are some of the brightest bright spots for the series and it's not hard to see why.

Getter Arc is a flawed series, it's one of the worst animated in the Getter franchise, due to having to use bad 3D models for the mecha, combined with adding filler content to the series, thanks to a lack of source material, Arc's adaptation just falls flat. Arc was only 3 volumes long before Ishikawa died, which leaves us with actually very little content. We finally learn what "Getter Emperor" is, but we don't see that get resolved in any way, because the manga ends so abruptly. Unfortunately this is it for Arc, it ends on a cliffhanger essentially, we will never know what else was meant to happen, because Ken Ishikawa is no longer with us, and that is a massive tragedy. Arc however does use a few bits of Ishikawa's notes, such as the design for Dragon in the final scene. The thing that puzzles me the most about this adaptation is how the art actually looks worse than Ishikawa's art, his designs had detail behind them, while these 3DCG designs look like garbage. Ultimately this is the problem with mecha today, because there is no one left in anime who knows how to design a mecha, without the use of 3DCG, save for Sunrise, who still teach their animators how to design 2D mecha.

The series itself though begins to fall apart when you begin realizing that they're actually cutting out content to make room for new original content that has no bearing on anything. Did Go need to be in this series? Absolutely not, there was no point in including this random subplot about Black Shin Getter, only for it to have ZERO bearing on the rest of the series. I guess they plan on resolving this in SRW DD, because why not? I will admit that going into this I figured "there's no way they end this on a cliffhanger like they did the manga" and to its credit, they don't, they give us an original episode to wrap it up, but IT STILL ENDS WITHOUT ANY PLOT POINTS RESOLVED! They give us an original ending that still fails to commit to anything. How does the fight between Bug and Arc get resolved? How does any of this relate to Emperor? We don't know and never will.

This is a project that on one hand feels like a passion project, but on the other hand feels like an advertisement for SRW DD, where they'll ultimately resolve plot points like the Black Shin Getter. I ultimately can't recommend Arc, because it's just not good, it's a failed adaptation made on a budget of $5, a ham sandwich and whatever paperclips they had lying around. This is not at all the fault of the staff, this is the higher ups who greenlit an Arc adaptation knowing it wouldn't make money, knowing that it has no ending. Watch Arc if you've read the manga, otherwise skip it, because Getter is dead and should stay buried. There hasn't been a good Getter manga since Ishikawa died and it's clear nobody knows what made Getter so good in the first place.

Arc is just a disappointment and that makes me sad. Read the entire saga of Getter Robo, it's worth your time.