Yoshiyuki Tomino is without a doubt most famous for the creation of Mobile Suit Gundam, the show that eschewed the often campy and commodified super robot genre in favour of a more mature, realistic look at what would happen when robots the size of buildings are used as tools of war. But two years prior to this, Tomino directed a little anime called Muteki Choujin Zambot 3 in which he takes his first swing at deconstructing the super robot. And despite the show's flaws, I have to say he did a really good job of it.
The series starts out like a lot of mecha shows did in the 70s: aliens attack, preteen boy falls into the cockpit of a giant robot, and miraculously saves the day (in Zambot, this is done through sleep training--the three pilots supposedly endured months of training in their sleep to turn them into ace pilots). Cue monster-of-the-week battles where the good guys always win and eventually become the heroes of the earth. For the first couple of episodes it seems as though this is what Zambot is. It sets itself up as a generic, kid-friendly show where the heroic Jin family takes down the evil Gaizok to save the world. But just as soon as Zambot turns down this path, it immediately throws it off-course, because while Kappei and his cousins Uchuta and Keiko do always save the day, it's never done without collateral damage. Often times, it's cities and towns and the lives in them. Many times, it's interpersonal relationships between the pilots and their friends. Whatever the case, the series never lets the Jin family--and by extension, the viewer--forget that battles involving giant robots and aliens are dangerous, destructive, and most importantly, horrifying.
There are many scenes throughout this show that emphasize civilians fleeing as a battle begins (a few minutes into the third episode, a woman screams to be let onto a bus that has just filled up and is about to leave the city--only for she and everyone on the bus to be frozen to death and disintegrated a second later). There are also a lot of scenes that emphasize the sheer scale of the battle, but not in an "oh-wow-robots-are-so-cool!" kind of way, but an "oh-shit-this-thing-could-crush-us-at-any-moment" kind of way. My favourite example of this is in episode 5, where the Zambot cuts off the wing of an enemy and it falls onto a ship below:
The angle of the shot tells you everything you need to know about Zambot's priorities. It's interested, at the end of the day, in the humans affected by these robots. Even when Zambot is fighting, it often feels like a backdrop to the human drama of the episode. While it does play into a lot of the conventions of the super robot genre (hot-blooded protagonist, named attacks, monster-of-the-week storytelling), it's also challenging this formula by giving us a lot of this from the perspective of the civilians on the ground. This is why after the wing falls on the boat, the show spends the next two minutes following Kouzuki as he is separated from his sister by the explosion of the ship and he and his mother are broken up by the resulting tsunami. And in a more direct reference to the formula, there is a moment in episode 19 where Butcher the Killer wants to send out a second monster to attack the Zambot and his assistant essentially tells him that they've already sent one out today. "I don't care," says Butcher. "Today is a bargain sale!" Meaning, forget the toys that this show is supposed to be selling--let's win.
Now, I'm not going to pretend like Zambot is perfect. There are a lot of issues, especially looking back on it 46 years later. The pacing is slow in certain parts, which makes it hard to binge. The animation for the most part is outdated and nothing special. The soundtrack is repetitive and in my opinion doesn't do the best job of highlighting the show's emotional moments (although the opening and ending are FIRE).
What will kind of make or break the series depending on how you look at them are the characters. Pretty much everyone outside of Kappei is a stock character from the 70s, and you could likely copy and paste them into any other mecha and they would fit just as well. But Kappei is an interesting one. He starts out as this incredibly annoying, arrogant, whiny little kid who is thrown headfirst into this battle to save the world, but treats it all as a game. He doesn't understand why civilians hate him and his family, and he doesn't understand why his friend Kouzuki has betrayed him after Kouzuki is separated from his family as a direct result of the Zambot's actions. But over the course of the series, after seeing the destruction the battles cause first-hand and losing his own friends and family, Kappei comes to realize his responsibility as a pilot of the Zambot and sees himself as more of a soldier who needs to protect the earth. I really liked Kappei's arc, and his being the main character, that really boosted the show for me, but I can understand how he would be too big of a turn-off for some. Kouzuki has the inverse character arc, where he begins blaming Kappei and the Jin family for everything before realizing that they are not responsible for the Gaizok attack and coming to understand that they're the only ones who can defeat the enemy. I like Kouzuki's character development, although there are some parts I wish were fleshed out a bit more.
The Gaizok are another interesting bunch and another example of this show beginning to blur the lines between super robot and real robot. Butcher the Killer and his minions are in every way the campy villains of a kid's anime. But for me, this plays into the show's favour. The contrast between these goofy villains throwing rock concerts and taking bubble baths on a giant alien mothership and the absolute destruction and despair that they are unleashing below is honestly really terrifying. Butcher the Killer isn't really that scary on his own, but when you see what he's capable of doing the humour of his scenes evokes more of a nervous laughter than anything with the thought that he could very well destroy the world. Once again, this is Tomino taking the standard super robot formula of the 70s and turning on its head.
Actually, I think that's the wrong way to phrase it. This show doesn't really turn the genre on its head, like Gundam did two years later. Rather, it just plays everything straight, without the overriding inclination for everything to work out.
Perhaps the most important part of the series is the end (where, by the way, the animation gets surprisingly amazing), which is where "Kill 'Em All" Tomino first got his nickname. While we're not even close to Ideon levels of despair, the last few episodes of Zambot feature the deaths of most of the main cast save for the mothers, children, and civilians. And even though these deaths are sort of gratuitous (Uchuta and Keiko ramming into the Bandok comes to mind--come on, Tomino, LEAVE ME A SHRED OF HAPPINESS), I think they do two really important things: first, they double down on the series' darker themes. If this is really the war we're led to believe it is, it makes sense that people die. That it all happens in the last two episodes might be a little convenient, but I still don't think the sense of despair was misplaced, and if anything it heightened the finale for me. But the second thing it does is leave Kappei as the only person able to answer the series' central question: are humans inherently selfish creatures that don't appreciate others, or are we inherently good and able to thank one another for being there for us?
At the end of the series, Kappei is the only participant of the final battle left alive. Keiko, Uchuta, Ichitaro, and their fathers and grandparents all gave their lives so that Kappei could defeat the Gaizok, save the earth, and live. And after the Gaizok is defeated (the true Gaizok, the supercomputer that was commanding Butcher), it asks Kappei why he fought if no one on earth is going to thank him for saving them. Kappei eventually falls back to earth and is surrounded by a crowd of people who rush out to him, calling out to him as a hero. But I personally don't think this is much of an answer to the Gaizok's question. Are the people cheering for Kappei out of appreciation and a new understanding (which was hinted at throughout the series by a few civilians who intended to change public opinion)? Or are they just cheering for him because they're finally safe?
I don't know the answer, and I don't know if Kappei does either. The earth is safe, but at what cost? The people are only seen cheering for him--do they care about the fallen Jin family? I think the last shot of him looking up into space, remembering and realizing what's happened, is really fitting. There is no definite answer, only a memory that he--and the viewer--has to carry.
