Mazinger Z is a certified classic and one of the most influential anime of all time. It single-handedly began the mecha genre as we know it today by introducing the concept of a human-piloted giant robot, it's been referenced in countless other anime, manga, and games, and while it was airing in Japan had some of the highest audience ratings ever seen for an anime. It is, without a doubt, in the anime hall of fame.

So why does no one talk about it?

The story of Mazinger Z is as simple as you can get. A bad dude named Dr. Hell and his crony Baron Ashura have created an army of mechanical beasts to take over the world. Enter Kabuto Koji, a hot-headed, motorcycle-riding teenager who is given the power to control his grandfather's ultimate creation: the giant robot Mazinger Z. With some guts, some quick thinking, and the help of his friends at the Photon Light Institute, Koji manages to save the day and defend Tokyo from Dr. Hell and the mechanical beasts.

And this is pretty much the entire series, because after the first few introductory episodes the story becomes a campy, monster-of-the-week series that sees the exact same formula play out every episode: Dr. Hell/Baron Ashura/Count Brocken hatches a new scheme to defeat or steal Mazinger Z or destroy the Photon Light Institue, trouble ensues and they almost succeed, and then Koji comes in, often at the last minute, and saves the day in Mazinger Z. It's simple, it's effective, and it's pretty boring--so boring, in fact, that if you look up whether to watch the series or not on google, most people will tell you to only watch a few episodes or skip it all together.

Part of the problem is that it's old. 70s animation simply doesn't hold up today the way 80s or 90s animation does. It feels really cartoony, and doesn't really have anything that the modern anime fan associates with the medium. The movement isn't very fluid, the character's mouths don't always move, and in the early episodes, a lot of the fighting is just Mazinger Z standing still. The music isn't much better in this regard, and even though there are some highlights, it gets tiring listening to the Jet Scrander theme every time Koji uses it.

Where the series really shows its age is with its characters. A lot of them feel like stock characters--and while part of that is due to the popularity of Mazinger Z and the show really codifying the tropes of the hot-blooded mecha protagonist and the pseudo-action heroine into popular anime culture, the show doesn't really help itself by eschewing pretty much all character development in favour of action. There are some exceptions to this, like when Shiro comes to accept the death of his parents in one of the final episodes, or how we see Baron Ashura getting more insecure about their position as Dr. Hell's right hand as their failures mount up over time. But for the most part, these all happen within self-contained episodes, and it's pretty clear the show is far more interested in the giant robots and the toys they can sell than the characters inside of them.

And honestly, I think that's fine.

Despite the series feeling like a bit of a slog at times, Mazinger Z never tries to be anything that it isn't. It finds its formula early on and sticks to it, for better or worse, and rides it out for 92 episodes. But as the series goes on, the animation gets a bit more fluid, the soundtrack gets slightly more interesting, and the writers figured out how to tell better stories within their established formula. Take Episode 52, for example, which sees Koji on the brink of death and Sayaka and the rest of his friends distraught over possibly losing him. Sayaka sort of takes charge by piloting Mazinger Z and Boss steels himself to die for Koji and calls him his best friend. Another episode that absolutely nails this formula is Episode 67, my favourite episode of the series, where Koji meets a girl named Erika who turns out to be a cyborg and a spy from Baron Ashura. Sure, things end up the same way at the end, and Koji is the same person in Episode 68, but the highlights of this series aren't when the formula is challenged, but the little emotional moments within these episodes that make them stand out.

The final 7 episodes serve as a sort of capstone to the series, and even though it still follows its episodic formula, you can feel the tension heightening in preparation of the final battle, which comes and passes with the death of Dr. Hell and Count Brocken in episode 91. Episode 92 serves as a transition to the next series, Great Mazinger. Mazinger Z is destroyed and Koji and Sayaka are shipped off to America to study, which is to ultimately make way for a new protagonist, Tetsuya Tsurugi, to take the spotlight and defend the world from and even greater threat, the Emperor of Darkness. And so the series ends with the promise of more cool robot fights on the horizon, and of course more robots to turn into action figures, Mazinger Z all but forgotten in the final scene of its own show.

So, to go back to the earlier question: why does no one talk about Mazinger Z? Is it the fact that no one wants to watch 92 episodes of episodic, campy slop? Is it the fact that it's been surpassed by a ton of series that it inspired? Or is it the fact that the things that the show does are so ubiquitous that we forget where they came from?

I think it's all of the above. And I also think it's because mecha as a genre just isn't important anymore. But Mazinger Z inspired countless other mecha anime in the 70s, which in turn inspired things like Gundam and Macross, which inspired things like Gunbuster and Evangelion, and so on and so forth. Needless to say, without Mazinger Z, the anime industry wouldn't even be close to the same as it is today.

But does that make it a good show? It makes it an important show, for sure, and it's definitely iconic. But if I wasn't a mecha fan, it's likely I would have just left this on the shelf, and unless you're really into mecha or the history of anime, I think it's safe for you to do the same. All in all, it's 92 episodes of campy and formulaic giant robot action that really doesn't stand the test of time.

But it was important enough for its time that it doesn't really matter. Just like Great Mazinger takes over in the last episode, so too did other mecha series take over where Mazinger Z left off, turning the genre into a bonafide gold mine of storytelling and character writing, and giving birth to some of my favourite shows, none of which would have existed without this 1972 toy commercial.

So, thanks Mazinger Z. You were pretty cool.