In this episode of The Karate Bugmen's "Mystery Bugmen Theatre" segment, I join the main crew and a couple of the guys from The Oriental Cartoon Show in live-riffing the first episode of the underrated Japanese action show, Pro-Wrestling Star Azteckaiser! The story revolves around a mysterious masked hero who fights to save professional wrestling and all of its competitors from the Black Mist federation, led by the evil Satan Demon! Azteckaiser is a live-action special effects show with animated fight sequences, and was co-created by two of Japan's biggest comic book legends, Go Nagai (Devilman, Mazinger Z) and Ken Ishikawa (Getter Robo).
"Deep beneath the earth, seven robots lay dormant: a human, a mammal, a bird, a fish, an insect, a reptile, a ghost... and the Great General of Darkness."
After having watched Pacific Rim in the theater three times and with the home video release coming up, I'm definitely in the mood for some old-school giant robots. Let me tell you, it doesn't get much more old-school than the very first piloted robot, Mazinger Z! Although Great General of Darkness was the titular robot's second theatrical feature (the first being Mazinger Z vs. Devilman), it is unquestionably the most influential.
Like every theatrical film based on a Toei Animation TV show, it expects that the audience is already familiar with the characters and setting. Just in case you're going into this one blind, I'll give you a brief synopsis: Koji Kabuto is a teenager who lives with his little brother, Shiro, and his grandpa, Dr. Juzo Kabuto, a brilliant inventor.
One day, Koji discovers a secret laboratory underneath his house, where he finds a massive robot and his grandpa, crushed under some rubble. Juzo explains that he's been spending years down in this lab building this robot, "Mazinger Z", constructed out of the most indestructible metal known to man: Super Alloy Z! With his last dying breath, Juzo tells Koji that Mazinger Z is his to do whatever he wants with, and that with such power, he could become either a god or a devil. Koji and Shiro, now orphaned, live with Professor Yumi, a colleague of Juzo's, and his daughter and Koji's girlfriend, Sayaka, at the Photon Research Institute. Japan soon finds itself under constant attack by Mechanical Beasts, which were unearthed from ancient Mycenae ruins in Greece by the evil Dr. Hell, and only Koji and his friends can put a stop to this threat with the power of Mazinger Z!
As Koji and Sayaka's friend, Boss, is taking cover from a vicious storm with his two lackeys, he sees a shaman who tells him that a powerful evil, The Great General of Darkness, is coming to take over the world and that the only thing that can stand in his way is Mazinger Z. When all the major cities in the world come under attack by an army of giant robot monsters, Koji, Sayaka, and Boss all once again sally forth inside their mighty robots to save the world once again! However, this time, Koji learns very quickly that this is a fight he may not win...
To keep from disappointing anyone, I'm just gonna come right out and say that not only do we not see Mazinger Z actually fight the Great General, we never even see them occupying the same space together. It became something of a tradition during the '70s when Toei was making crossover movies based on Go Nagai's work that we (almost) never see the titular fights commence.
You may have noticed that I haven't actually discussed the overall quality of the movie, itself. When you consider that it's just an extended episode of the TV series, there's really no need. Stock footage, static animation, new weapons out of nowhere, and Ichiro Mizuki music are the order of the day, and your tolerance/appreciation of all that will determine whether or not this one's for you.
If you want to take a look back at a really important milestone in giant robot history, then watch Mazinger Z vs. The Great General of Darkness. Without our mighty Castle of Iron there would be no Voltron, Gundam, Evangelion, or Pacific Rim, and I can guarantee that you'll find elements of each one of these famous mecha stories right here, where they made their grand, Rocket Punching debut!
Mazinger Z vs. The Great General of Darkness is based on the comic book series, Mazinger Z, written and illustrated by Go Nagai.
It would be another couple of years before I encountered
Devilman again, at the dealers' room of a smaller anime convention that was
just a short drive from my house. Halloween was fast approaching, and I was
really caught up in the ghoulish spirit, so I was looking around for any
scary anime or manga. I was beginning to lose hope until I found six individual DVDs, all colored blood-red with pictures of grotesque demons on the side covers, bound together by a single rubber band. The first, and only visible, cover showed me that it was a TV series called, "Go Nagai's The Devil Lady". After reading that, it didn't take me long to realize the visual similarities between the feral-looking demon on the cover and the original image of Devilman that I remembered from when I was little. At that point, there was no way I could resist buying it.
I watched all twenty-six episodes of The Devil Lady over the course of a few weeks, and I came to the conclusion that while the writing wasn't exactly great, it had everything that I expected from my original image of Devilman: lots of violence, tons of gore, terrifying creatures of the night, and a demonic hero that fights for humanity. Unfortunately, the plot was so forgettable that it didn't really leave any lasting impact on me, or my overall impression of Devilman. At this point, it seemed as though nothing would.
Another couple of years pass, and I'm in my second year of college. One of my big obsessions at the time was the Getter Robo series, which was written by Ken Ishikawa, one of Go Nagai's assistants at his company, Dynamic Productions. Originally, I was reading English-translated scans of the comics off of a website, but one day, I just decided to download them so I could access them more easily on my computer. I went to the translators' website, where they had a list of other Dynamic Pro series' they had finished working on posted on the side. My eyes instantly widened when I saw that one of the comics they had finished translating was the original Devilman. Suddenly entranced, I downloaded all five books and started reading them.
I was immediately hooked upon finishing the first volume, which managed to do a very good job building its world, introducing its main characters, and delivering a surprisingly suspenseful origin story for our hero. These were all things that I wish The Devil Lady had been able to do when I was watching it. The second volume introduced its first named villains, who managed to provide the protagonist with an actual challenge, and with it, a very solid story. I really liked how everything was shaping up.
The final three volumes, though, were the ones that cemented the story's status as a masterpiece, to me. I don't want to give anything away, but the story arc contained in these last volumes not only really tugs at the heartstrings (one friend told me she couldn't stop crying while reading the last volume), but also provides some very interesting commentary on human nature, showing how on some level, we're all inherently prone to fear and violence.
If you haven't yet read this amazing work of pop art, make some time to do it. At only five volumes, I guarantee that you won't regret a single second of it. Just to give you an idea, the impact that it had when it debuted in Japan was very similar to the impact Watchmen had on the English-speaking comic world. It was violent, emotional, and rife with social commentary, which is why it has continued to garner seemingly endless amounts of reprints, remakes, and sequels over the last forty years. It's a hell of a good time!
As of this writing, Devilman has been one of my all-time favorite comic book stories for years. The long-lasting impact from its powerful writing and unfaltering heroes has left it with few peers worthy to even share the same book store shelf space it's occupied since the Seventies. For me, it's a gold standard for which I judge other graphic novels against. Judging from what I just typed, though, you may not have guessed that I didn't always feel this way...
My descent into madness began one cold, dark Saturday evening when I was just a little boy. My brother and I were spending the night at our grandparents' house, and my grandma had taken us to her local Blockbuster to pick out a movie to rent. While my brother walked around with my grandma, I rushed right over to the Cartoon section. Scanning the shelves, I saw the usual Disney movies and Nickelodeon TV show episodes on tape, and nothing else that seemed out of the ordinary. However, as soon as my eyes reached the second shelf from the bottom, they stopped, frozen, fixated on one image that stood out from all the rest:
I was paralyzed, struck with a sense of fear that I had never quite known before. Being so young, the most demonic thing I had ever seen in a cartoon at the time was in Sleeping Beauty, watching Maleficent turning into a gigantic black dragon. This, however, was on a completely different level. Just this one picture was able to fill me with not just the greatest terror I had experienced up until then, but also a great curiosity. As much as it frightened me, in those moments, I felt like I wouldn't be able to rest until I knew what secrets lie beyond this horrific image. Was this "Devilman" the hero? How could a devil be a hero? Was this a story about a villain? My mind was filled with so many questions.
Suddenly, I felt a hand pull on my shoulder, sending a jolt of electricity through my entire body that snapped me out of my trance. My grandma then asked me if I had picked out a movie. Since I hadn't yet, I quickly looked back at the shelf, saw one of the Land Before Time sequels, and took it to the guy at the register without thinking. That was the last time I would think of or hear about Devilman for almost a decade.
I had always liked giant robots in some way, since I loved watching local channel reruns of the original Transformers and Voltron growing up, but I became hooked for life during my middle school years when I started watching G Gundam on Cartoon Network's Toonami block. Since then, a lot of my time has been spent seeking out new titles, collecting robot figures and models, and cheering on the good guys as they triumphed over some of the greatest evils our universe will hopefully never know.
At some point when I was in high school, my search led me to a comic book writer named Go Nagai. Reading up on him, I discovered that he was the man responsible for coming up with the concept of giant robots being piloted by humans, which he accomplished through his most famous work, Mazinger Z. Intrigued, I wanted to find out what else he had created, so I went to Wikipedia to look up a list of his other series', hoping to find anything else I may have heard of. While there were a couple of titles that I recognized at the time, only one really popped out at me: Devilman.
Like a flash of lightning, it all came back to me. The intense fear and curiosity that I had felt when I was little had returned. Like then, I knew I wouldn't be at ease until I finally discovered the mysteries behind this link to my past. The first thing I thought to do was search on that new website my friends had shown me: YouTube, a video-streaming site which seemed to have anything I might have wanted to see. I knew that if I was going to be able to find clips of Devilman anywhere, it would be there. This was the first thing that came up:
I just sat there for a few minutes, not knowing what to think. The thought that an old kids' show was what terrified me so much back then left me in total shock. Then, without thinking, I lowered my head and started chuckling to myself. I felt both a little relieved and disappointed. I was really looking forward to something hardcore and violent, but it seemed like that just wasn't the case. Oh well, one of the greatest enigmas of my life had been solved, and nothing had changed as a result.
