Sunday 6 April 2014

First Impressions: Daimidaler the Sound Robot

Daimidaler

Welcome to the first of my brand new set of "first impressions" posts for the brand new Spring 2014 anime season (plus the new Garo series that's about to start). After I spent last season mostly watching continuations from 2013, this is the first time this year I'm diving into a bunch of brand new titles. And comedy/mecha/ecchi series Daimidaler the Sound Robot couldn't have been a stranger place to start. Initially I was going to overlook this manga adaptation (where it has its full title - Kenzen Robo Daimidaler) from TNK, but then I saw this very short (and straight to the point) synopsis on Wikipedia and thought otherwise:

"Koichi Madanbashi is a high schooler who possesses Hi-ERo particles, which are used as an energy source for the robot Daimidaler. He obtains these particles by groping females, and uses them to power up the robot in order to fight penguin-shaped robots from the evil Penguin Empire."

Hi-ERO particles? Giant robots? Groping females? Penguin-shaped robots from the evil Penguin Empire? How on earth could I miss out on something so utterly ridiculous? And while ridiculous is exactly the right word to describe it, Daimidaler is exactly the kind of show you'd expect it to be from that description. With the opening shot of the entire series being a steamy shower sequence (which looked to be heavily censored for now, unless it really WAS that steamy), you kind of get the picture what kind of show your in for.

Talking about the characters isn't going to take a whole lot of time, because so far they're about as complex as a two-piece puzzle. Madanbashi is what Mazinger Z's Koji Kabuto would be if he were a massive pervert, Kyoko (who's apparently an intelligence officer for "Beauty Salon Prince"...alright then) is exposition with tits, and the Penguin Empire are a bunch of weirdos in penguin suits that have huge boners for whatever reason. We really have some award-winning anime on out hands here.

Since the show's plot is already scraping the bottom of the barrel, it seems only fitting that the robot designs fit the bill. Daimidaler is a weird skeleton-y thing with mismatching arms and a fabulous head of hair, and the Penguin robots are penguin robots of varying quality - this week's was pretty boxy, but it did have a crotch cannon so I guess things evened out there. Fight scenes were fairly uninspired, so since this episode lacked any "hardcore" ecchi moments (more along the lines of Maken-Ki! or something) it was hard to tell what exactly it was going for. Mediocre on all accounts maybe?

By all accounts I don't know why I should bother with this series. It wasn't remotely impressive in any area, but that batshit insane plot just keeps drawing me in. I mean, Penguin Empire? How could I not want to know where that goes? Maybe its just like when you can't take your eyes away from a car crash, or maybe its that watching Blazblue on a weekly basis has raised my tolerance for awful shows...

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