It wasn't so long ago that the big robots of anime were the huge metal equivalents of early comic-book superheroes: bright-colored, preposterously powerful beings that represented justice and honor, fought clearly evil monsters and villains, and generally seemed too silly to be good for anything but a lightweight cartoon or toy commercial. Such conventions became steadily less popular when Mobile Suit Gundam and other grim space-opera shows arrived in the late 70's and early 80's, but the simpler themes and colorful tones of old-fashioned “giant robot” anime are still among us, often in retro-styled offerings like Sunrise's recent Z-Mind.
On a normal summer day in the 1970s, the Uetatsu family enjoys a festival in the park. As the father of the clan gripes about a nearby rock band, daughter Ayame suddenly hears a strange, high-pitched noise, and within the moment, she's dragged off by a pair of suit-wearing American men. The entire family takes off in pursuit, yet it's a pale, curly-haired boy who ultimately comes to Ayame's rescue. He departs after a few words with her, and the relieved family regroups at home. All's not in harmony, however, and in the wake of a fight with their ineffectual jackass of a father, Ayame and her sisters Sumire and Renge decide to stay with friends and take jobs as tour guides.
While spending the next day at their new employment, the three sisters witnesses a grotesque alien craft, filled with even more grotesque alien pod-children, materializing in the sky. In the ensuing confusion, Ayame finds herself carried off by the pale boy, who dumps her through the hatch of an oil tanker and into the cockpit of a massive robot. Though she can't recall seeing the machine before, she's quite adept at piloting it, and with the help of two pieces of add-on armor and a mysterious figure of light, she manages to destroy a Guyver-esque creature sent by the alien ship. After she escapes from the robot and returns home, Ayame and her family are visited by a graying American official named Jim Peckinpah. If he's a reference to Straw Dogs director Sam Peckinpah, I have no idea why.
More forthcoming than your usual government suit, Peckinpah reveals to Ayame, Sumire, and Renge that they're the chosen pilots of the Z-Mind, a gigantic robot that comprises three smaller ‘bots. The sisters are more shocked, however, to learn that they and their youngest sibling, Satsuki, are adopted. Their loudmouthed uncle, who they've always considered a father, took the four of them in after both of their parents died during a battle between the Z-Mind and the alien invaders. The girls' true father, Robert Corn, was the robot's pilot, and his uncanny ability to synchronize with the Z-Mind has been passed to his daughters.
In its constituent elements, Z-Mind offers some entertaining breaks with the boy-pilots-combat-bot clichés that usually infest both goofy robot shows and more serious mecha anime. Ayame's a good-natured, superficially relatable heroine, her family's supportive, and Peckinpah and his American cronies are a welcome change from the decidedly Japanese institutions that crop up in countless other robot dramas. The animation quality stays tolerable throughout the six episodes of the series, and the voice acting is decent in both Japanese and English, even if Seizo Kato isn't nearly as appropriate a voice for Peckinpah as his American counterpart.
Yet Z-Mind is never actually funny. The robot-versus-alien battles get quite tedious and predictable by the midpoint of the series, and the fight scenes begin to feel like ho-hum hybridizations of Getter Robo and The Powerpuff Girls. Also annoying is the show's insistence on subjecting the viewer to the same transformation sequence every time the sisters call upon their robots. If Z-Mind wasn't intended as a toy commercial, one can't really tell.
Compounding the repetitive action is a story that permits little character expansion. Ayame is a basic leader and little more, and while Sumire and Renge may be twins, their identically bland behavior suggests that they could share the same brain. Series writer and supervisor Fuyunori Gobi pulls out a few plot twists (and a blatant Terminator rip) towards the show's end, but by that point, it's difficult to summon any real empathy for characters that are either lacking in depth or certain to survive. And while there are numerous jokes aimed at old robo-shows, few are striking and fewer still are truly funny. The production's best shot at eliciting laughs may be its subtitle, “The Battling Days of the Shitamachi Virgins,” which you'll notice only by scrutinizing the Japanese credits.
It's unfortunate that this one's retro-parody potential is swamped at all angles by average writing and thoroughly unexciting direction. Fans of classic big-robot camp may find it an amusing throwback, but Z-Mind is foremost a dull, halfhearted tribute to a genre that has far better to offer.
