Dai-Guard - Red Tape and Proud Hearts (Vol. 4)

Rating:
Summary: A fun diversion. Amusing cast of heroic office workers.
Review: This is a likeable, low-key series that works a funny twist on the "giant robots saving the world from alien monsters" sub-genre. Here, the heroic pilots of Dai-Guard, and their friends and supporters, are everyday white-collar office workers in the bureaucratic 21st Century Defense Corp. Amusingly, the division that operates the giant robot is "Public Relations Division No. 2." They deal with breakdowns, bureaucratic snafus, and office politics while fighting the mysterious abstract phenomena (you can't even call them "monsters" with confidence) known as the Heterodyne.

While the mecha battles are pretty cool, and the Dai-Guard robot has a jaunty "retro" look that makes me want to own a model of it, my favorite part of this series is the routine on-the-job interaction among the characters. To me, Dai-Guard feels more distinctively Japanese than the average sci-fi anime series. If you think about it, giant robots combined with being a "salaryman" -- it doesn't get more Japanese than that!

Also the visuals. Within the conventions of the cheerful, big-eyed CGI animation style used here, the characters look more Japanese than the average mecha show. I like that. Lead male characters Aoyama, Akagi, and Shirota, the "big guys" in procurement, Ishizuka, Ijyuuin and Taguchi, and especially avuncular boss Oosugi, actually look like guys you might encounter in an office building in Tokyo. That's a little less true of the female characters, but still, don't be fooled by Ibuki's spiky red hair -- that was quite popular in Japan in the late 1990s. Ditto the spunky little accountant Tanigawa, with her incongruous dark tan and dyed blonde hair. That was, alas, a real fashion trend. Take it up with the Japanese.

No Dai-Guard review would be complete without mentioning Rika Domeki, the weird teenaged engineering genius who cooks up snazzy new anti-Heterodyne weapons systems for Dai-Guard. Very funny. Her exaggerated baby-doll look (big ponytails, heart-shaped earrings, fringed dresses) is, yet again, an actual weird Japanese fashion trend -- I think they call it a "gothic" look. In a lab coat. Anyone who expects her to make with a usual cutey-pie anime voice will be brought up short by her harsh, nasal bray. At various times we see her shoveling ramen, chewing on an octopus tentacle, and giving herself a facial in front of her omnipresent computer screen. She's a kook.

Overall a nice little series.

Rating:
Summary: A fun diversion. Amusing cast of heroic office workers.
Review: This is a likeable, low-key series that works a funny twist on the "giant robots saving the world from alien monsters" sub-genre. Here, the heroic pilots of Dai-Guard, and their friends and supporters, are everyday white-collar office workers in the bureaucratic 21st Century Defense Corp. Amusingly, the division that operates the giant robot is "Public Relations Division No. 2." They deal with breakdowns, bureaucratic snafus, and office politics while fighting the mysterious abstract phenomena (you can't even call them "monsters" with confidence) known as the Heterodyne.

While the mecha battles are pretty cool, and the Dai-Guard robot has a jaunty "retro" look that makes me want to own a model of it, my favorite part of this series is the routine on-the-job interaction among the characters. To me, Dai-Guard feels more distinctively Japanese than the average sci-fi anime series. If you think about it, giant robots combined with being a "salaryman" -- it doesn't get more Japanese than that!

Also the visuals. Within the conventions of the cheerful, big-eyed CGI animation style used here, the characters look more Japanese than the average mecha show. I like that. Lead male characters Aoyama, Akagi, and Shirota, the "big guys" in procurement, Ishizuka, Ijyuuin and Taguchi, and especially avuncular boss Oosugi, actually look like guys you might encounter in an office building in Tokyo. That's a little less true of the female characters, but still, don't be fooled by Ibuki's spiky red hair -- that was quite popular in Japan in the late 1990s. Ditto the spunky little accountant Tanigawa, with her incongruous dark tan and dyed blonde hair. That was, alas, a real fashion trend. Take it up with the Japanese.

No Dai-Guard review would be complete without mentioning Rika Domeki, the weird teenaged engineering genius who cooks up snazzy new anti-Heterodyne weapons systems for Dai-Guard. Very funny. Her exaggerated baby-doll look (big ponytails, heart-shaped earrings, fringed dresses) is, yet again, an actual weird Japanese fashion trend -- I think they call it a "gothic" look. In a lab coat. Anyone who expects her to make with a usual cutey-pie anime voice will be brought up short by her harsh, nasal bray. At various times we see her shoveling ramen, chewing on an octopus tentacle, and giving herself a facial in front of her omnipresent computer screen. She's a kook.

Overall a nice little series.