Teknoman (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bS765funp0)
Teknoman was the Saban Entertainment (of Power Rangers fame) reworking of Tekkaman Blade that was shown on Sunday morning TV in Los Angeles. One of my school-bus friends recommended the show to me after he brought a couple of the snap-together models to school. It was very memorable. The Earth was under attack by aliens, who had already destroyed all our major cities; the hero was forced to fight against his own brainwashed family, and he was always afraid that his fantastic alien powers would take him over -- causing him to destroy the very people he was trying to protect (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoppW3fD6sU). I bought a few of the toys myself, and would re-enact some of the fights from the series with them.
The Guyver (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAvM7XYwbgU)
I saw it in my early teens. It was the first VHS cassette I rented from the section in my video rental store labeled, “Cult Animation”. I had watched American localized Japanese animation like Speed Racer, Teknoman, and Robotech; I used to go to the model shop, Pony Toy Go Round, in Little Tokyo, to look at the monster and robot toys; and Dragonball manga were regularly passed around on my school bus… but Bio-Booster Armor Guyver was something else -- a video cover seen out of the corner of my eye, which made me think: “That looks cool!” Its story of a young man fighting against an evil, corporately-controlled, world, its Godzilla-esc monsters, and its
Grand-Guignol level, gory violence spoke to me. I identified with this show‘s protagonist. I recommended it to my friends. And Viz’s Guyver comic books, which were available at the same time, made it easy to share this story with my classmates on the long, boring, Magnet School bus commute. My friends and I found it’s highly detailed monster designs and dark lurid atmosphere cooler, slicker, and more edgy than many other contemporaneous comics and cartoons.
Orguss (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECfGtSgPRhw)
The first time I saw Orguss it brought me back to my toddler days, because -- I had the toy of the main Orguss mech. When I was a tiny, little kid, my family used to frequent a local IHOP. One day, the head cook, together with our regular waiter, gave me this well made (partly metal), detailed robot toy. I always felt it must be some kind of Transformer, and that I should have been able to change it into a plane, but I could never figure out how. Fast forward to the ‘90s, I rented the U.S Renditions released tapes of Super Dimension Century Orguss, and all I could think was, “I have that toy!
That’s what it was!”
