Grendizer U is the first TV anime based on the Mazinger franchise in 15 years, the first anime adaptation of the UFO Robo Grendizer series in nearly 50 years, and a collaboration between staff members that worked on mecha classics like Gundam SEED, Code Geass and Evangelion… and it’s not good. I really wanted to like this show, and there’s a lot of ideas here that could lead to an interesting story, but the series just ultimately was a massive let down.

I’ll address the elephant in the room about this show upfront: the pacing sucks. Grendizer U feels like it’s trying to have a whole 50 episodes worth of plot despite only having 13 episodes to work with, so everything feels incredibly rushed, from the fights almost all ending in 2 attacks, to the characters suddenly going from not standing each other to developing strong bonds in the span of 1 episode, to the loads of exposition to advance the multiple plotlines being juggled every episode, and this just makes everything about it feel lacking in impact. I mean, I know the state of the modern anime industry sucks so asking for 2 cours was probably too much, but then they could just write the plot to actually fit the 1 cour they have, it’s not like good mecha anime that are only 1 cour don’t exist, Shin Jeeg told a coherent plot in the same time and had cool stuff like the double Jeeg battle. The show has multiple plots that are brought up, never elaborated on, and then dropped that coupled with the ending make it feel like the staff desperately want to get a second season, but given how that went for the last Mazinger anime, I won’t hold my breath for one.

Speaking of cool battles, that’s the other key issue with his show: it’s just boring. I wasn’t expecting a masterpiece of story given how messy the plots of SEED and Geass are, but I was looking forward to a fun super robot in the spirit of previous Mazinger anime like Shin and Mazinkaiser, but this show is incredibly dull. Aside from the OP and ED none of the music here is memorable, I wouldn’t care for any of these characters if I wasn’t familiar with their past versions as their relationships (with the exception Koji with Duke, for the better, and Teronna with Duke, for the worse) have no time to develop, and with the battles being so short, I hardly found myself interested in seeing how they were going to play out, which is a shame because I think the CGI mecha in the show are on the better side and the moments where they change to 2D actually feel they could be cool with the proper context. I mean, the animation of the show in general isn’t stellar, in fact I’d even call it subpar, and some of the character designs were redesigned better than others (I still don’t get why Sayaka has purple hair?), but I wasn’t expecting it to seeing as Gaina is basically Gainax’s corpse somehow still moving even after Anno took away their sustain.

This isn’t a slap in the face of the original like Devilman Crybaby was, but as far as Go Nagai remakes go, Grendizer U is sadly one of the weaker entries and I wouldn’t recommend it as an entry point for people not familiar with the Mazinger franchise. Go and do yourself a favor and watch Shin Mazinger Shougeki! Z-hen if you want to see a modern remake of this classic mecha franchise done right.

Thank you for reading