Galaxy Cyclone Braiger

The 22nd Century is a harsh place to live.

Though humanity has spread out across the solar system to colonize the inner solar system, and the outer solar system is a new frontier, the expansion comes at a great cost. Society is dominated by criminal conspiracies called Connections, and the Earth Federation government is weak and corrupt. The common people suffer, easy victims for the Connections, and there seems to be no one who will stand up for justice.

Enter the Cosmo Rangers J9. Operating from a secret base in the asteroid belt, beholden only to themselves, this team of 4 agents do battle against the forces of evil across the solar system. There’s Isaac the leader, Kido the sharpshooter, Bowie the expert pilot, and Omachi the intelligence expert. Key to their battles are their transforming car, Brai-Thunder; the ship it transforms into, the Brai-Star; and the Braiger, a giant super-powered robot that is practically invulnerable and more than capable of meting out justice.

Not that there’s much justice to be found here.

One thing that quickly becomes apparent is that while J9 is powerful, they are not omnipotent, and stories as often as not end with them taking revenge for the clients they have failed to protect. The first episode introduces them as the merciless J9, killing a surrendering enemy for whom there can be no forgiveness – and this continues throughout the show.

One standout episode has them coaching their two orphan-mascots through killing the man responsible for murdering their parents. It is, after all, just and right for them to seek revenge.

The brainchild of Yamamoto Yuu, a scriptwriter who had previously worked on Mobile Suit Gundam, and directed by veteran 70's giant robot anime director Takao Yotsuji, Braiger aired just a couple of years after Gundam had begun the transformation of giant robot anime. It feels like a throwback in so many ways. The Braiger is a one-off techno-marvel almost always walking through threats like they're barely there, and its bright primary colors and overall design point to its origins as a toy. The main characters are rarely if ever in any real danger, and the animation often feels slapdash and limited, with numerous animation errors. It feels like a show that might be at home in 1977 more than 1981.

Despite the somewhat old-fashioned nature of the show, there are lots of little twists which help keep it feeling fresh. Braiger might be super-powered, but the Connections have dozens or hundreds of super-powered robots of their own to menace the solar system, and while the Braiger uses technology not available widely, they do encounter one plot where someone is using the same matter-resizing tech built into the Braiger towards their own nefarious end. The heroes lose; people die, often at a bewildering volume; and the show makes excellent use of recurring characters to build continuity, especially in the back half of the show.

Even the target audience skews older than you’d expect: there’s a lot of violence, plenty of blood, and even a sex scene (possibly the first on-screen sex scene in a TV broadcast anime ever!). This helps give the show a little more edge than you might expect given its genre.

Speaking of the back half of the show, it builds up to a crescendo of ludicrous plots and machinations by the Nubia Connection back on earth and reinforces the fallibility of J9. The villain Khamen Khamen is great, and he deftly outmaneuvers the Cosmo Rangers at every turn. There’s a real sense of peril as you reach the finale, and it’s not clear if the Cosmo Rangers will win or not. His theme is a real bop too.

All right, all right, I hear you saying. You’ve got a lot of positives to say about the show. Clearly you enjoyed it. So, what’s the “however” waiting in the wings?

Some of it I’ve talked about already: the animation is really quite bad. Even by 1981 standards this is an ugly show, and if you compare it to some of its contemporaries the series looks pretty awful. The music is great – but there’s only about 6 songs across the entire show, meaning you’re going to hear the same tracks over and over and over again. It’s tough to call plots in a mostly-episodic show “filler” but the quality of episodes certainly varies massively. Omachi is a great character, but she and Mei are basically the only two girls in the entire show who aren’t damsels in distress or killed for pathos or both. Even Omachi doesn’t escape unscathed, though to the show’s credit it really only uses her in a standard damsel-in-distress story once (and that villain is a creep!)

I can’t keep from coming back to those genre limitations. Ultimately Braiger is a super robot show, and super robot shows often just don’t work for me. I generally enjoyed the human level drama, but the minute the robot showed up I checked out (so it’s a good thing you only get about 2 minutes of robot per episode). The spaceship designs are fun but the robot designs are goofy. And then there’s the production quality: this is a very budget show. I made fun of Xabungle for having some pretty potato animation, but boy is this so much worse.

And then there’s the episodic nature: after a while the repetitive explosions and oodles of people dying and shallow-as-a-puddle characterization wore on me. There were plenty of episodes that I ended up checking out of almost completely, impatient for them to end so I could go do something else. That wasn’t a great feeling. And what the heck was with that starship they launch the car from? It showed up almost every episode, but they never actually used it other than as part of the canned car launch sequence!

I enjoyed my time with this show, and I might even like it enough to check out the sequel, Baxinger, but it’s not a great show and it’s one I’d hesitate to recommend to anyone. If you’re a particular kind of sicko, this show is going to rock. For most other people, I’d probably go find something else to watch instead.

Not Recommended (unless this hole was made for you).