-1 Credit(s)

I talked about this show before in my horror anime post and said how Guyver is not a horror anime.  Either way though I do like the show quite a bit.  I haven’t watched the 2005 version yet (working on it); really I have only looked at the manga a long time ago (which I will talk about later) and watched the OVA, and one of the live actions.  Either way this might turn into an interesting posts with my views on it, who knows let us just get into it.

I have an interesting story with how I first got to know Guyver.  It was about the first manga I ever looked it, it was many years ago when I was quite young and just happen to find it in a bookstore.  This was really interesting since it is a very violent manga or at least the volume I was looking at.  Though being the fan of sci-fi it was, I thought it was really cool and such with the Guyver suit and such.  Either way I never did get it or anything so it kinda just stayed in the back of my mind.

Now if we fast forward to my high school and my friend happen to have the OVA series and he let me borrow it.  Then I watched it and saw a guy get hit by a truck and was hooked ever since.  Even the show was very rushed and stuff considering it was only 12 episodes and they had to make it make sense I still think its a very good OVA.  Sure it doesn’t follow the manga exactly, but so what.  Not to go off topic too much, what I think is that if done well an adaptation can do its own thing if kept in check and is not just way out there or something.  If the original and the adaptation are the same, why watch/read both if there is nothing new to the table?

Anyway for those who don’t know what Guyver is, it is a long running shounen action show.  It follows the story of Sho Fukamachi, who though luck (who knows if its good or bad…no it is bad luck now that I think about it) finds a Guyver unit.  A Guyver unit in a nutshell is a parasite that fuses with a host and then gives them armor to be badass and stuff.  Which causes problems with the Cronos Corp. which is the huge Corp. that funds all these crazy ass projects, oh and wants to take over the world; that is kind of important to.  The big one is making Zoanoids which are ugly strong creatures that destroy everything and such.  So are Sho guy does epic battles with the Zoanoids because the Cronos Corp. wants the Guyver unit, or more or less him dead after a time too.  That is about it, and in normal shounen fashion this and that happens and happens and happens and all of that stuff.

Ah let me back up a bit though with the whole Zoanoid thing, for this is explained!  The whole deal with it is that humans are the base for these Zoanoids, and that humans were created by what is called ‘The Creators’ who came to either many years ago and did a ton of experiments.  What came out of those were humans, and due to artifacts left behind, the Cronos Corp. were able to recreate Zoanoids.  I think it is a neat plot point, at least there is something to explain how this even happened and it gives a sense of mystery to the show, wondering who they were, why, etc.  It also brings up a question about the Guyver because in ‘The Creators’ language Guyver means like imperfect, incomplete, or something of the sort.

For me what made the show interesting and awesome is that its sci-fi instead of fantasy or whatever.  It doesn’t have a ton of upgrade arcs form what I know of and it doesn’t really go through all the normal shounen action fillers.  Then again I don’t know it fully I haven’t looked into a lot of the manga or novels.  I just found the story interesting with the Corp. and such.  There just doesn’t seem to be many shows that do this kind of thing, I mean I cannot really remember the last time I have seen a show like this.  What I mean by that is a dark show with more of a mature feel.  The show is very bleak; things do turn out bad a lot of the time.  It just feels this kind of show does not show up in this modern day of anime, where things are constantly a downer.  I guess that would be the reason why it could be filed under horror because it is so dark and there is just little to no hope, it is a stretch though.  It is what makes the show so great though is that it does these things well.

Anyway Sho never gets a break from Cronos, they are a world superpower about and they have the resources to continue to go after him no matter where he is.  They target anything dear to him and he has to do his best to protect them. Then it doesn’t go over the top with everybody having a Guyver unit there are only really 3 (apparently 100+ chapters in there is a 4th).  Then really each of the units are not that different from each other expect unit 3 which has some extra blades and such.

There isn’t really a lot to say about Guyver, I mean it is a shounen action show, there isn’t much to it.  Its really the setting, characters, and stuff like that changes from action show to action show.  I just think Guyver does most of its stuff in an interesting way.  It does a lot a monster of the week stuff, which I don’t really mind for the most part, it works better for than than the really huge plot arcs with one big enemy.  In the OVA even the important characters did not have huge long fights which is a nice change.  It also does defeat well, Sho does not get crazy strong, the monsters beat him around.  There is not a magical super hidden weapon to save him when things get bad, in the beginning there kind of is.  Maybe more or less it doesn’t happen often and it is not done in a training arc.  I guess the point is here, it does not do much new, but it is how it does it that along with its great story that makes Guyver awesome.  

Then I suppose, I really do have a soft spot for it, because I think it shaped how a grew as a fan since I saw the manga back before I even knew what manga was.  It was one of my first exposures the anime/manga right with Macross/Robotech and some other shows.  I think it planted the seed which came back when I saw the OVA and stuff like that.  Maybe even started to shape my love of mecha/sci-fi shows, I might be pushing it there though.  Either way I think it is something just about everyone should see, because of its story and mood of the show really.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 11:31 pm and is filed under Anime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.