"Bigger than big, taller than tall, ready to fight for right - against wrong!" I think the 80s Gigantor was a good series, but one that was terribly episodic, with every single last episode being basic all the exact same thing: some diabolical mad genius, tyrant, or criminal with the goal of nothing less than ruling the whole world appears, in control of some gigantic destructive murder-robot that initially causes a lot of devastation that clearly kills a lot of people, although in the English dub they never address it although it's pretty obvious that this is one anime with a very high death count! Anyway a bad guy appears, and it's always down to Jimmy Sparks the ten year old boy who for some strange reason is the best qualified person in the world to control the awesome power of the mighty Gigantor, to save the day in what I always thought was a genuinely thrilling clash of the robo-titans that always eventually saw Gigantor emerge as the victor! Continuity writing and story weren't exactly the strong points of this show, but it was excellent when it came to the action of the Gigantor fight scenes, that was when the animation was at its best and most fluid, you really got a sense of scale and power to Gigantor and his many foes. The rest of the episodes apart from those parts were just kinda bland to be perfectly honest.. They did have a couple of recurring villains throughout the series, including the possibly offensively-designed Dr Murkybottom, and they also had the awesome Blue Jaguar, a robot like Gigantor that to am extent could think and fight for itself, it was so cool when he and Gigantor would team up to fight an especially powerful opponent together. The main big bad to emerge as the final villain to overcome was the freaking huge evil cosmic-powered emperor of "Darkest Space!" Modark, who had thousands of powerful starships and robots under his command, and who could summon the power of a black hole to destroy an entire planet! He is finally dealt with in the arc of some of the best episodes that lead up to the finale. Some of the story ideas could get a little bizarre sometimes, they had Gigantor beating up a giant octopus, zombies, Dracula, even the Devil himself! Something that bugged me about the show that they only touched upon in one or two episodes, was how Jimmy constantly talked about and to Gigantor as if he was a living being and a hero when in reality he was nothing more than the world's mightiest tool and is lifeless without the big remote that Jimmy used to control him and has zero free will of his own, they should have gradually made Gigantor more autonomous like the Blue Jaguar. It kind of makes you wonder why so few enemy robots didn't take advantage of such a glaring weakness and make straight for Jimmy and his control box! So while there are much better anime series to enjoy out there, The New Adventures of Gigantor is still a lot of good old fashioned cheesy fun to watch today, just try to enjoy it for the action not the story, because it definitely does excel in that department. I did like it better when I was a kid but it's still good, it's definitely one of the more underrated 80s animated series ever, it's a bit of an old rust bucket, but it's one that still packs a colossal punch! X
