The Guyver: Bio-Booster Armor

This version blows away the earlier Guyver anime and the lame American versions. The most accurate to the original manga. High school kid Sho Fukamachi comes across the Guyver unit. It allows him to merge with an alien symbiont that turns him into a living weapon. Chronos, an evil organization comprised of humans altered into "Zoanoid" bio-monsters, wants the Guyver unit back with them. This show has cool characters fighting genetically engineered monsters, with nifty tricks like Bio-Lasers, etc. (Not stupid Urotsukidoji-esque demons!) The bad guys are a pre-X-Files global conspiracy that our heroes, mere high school students, must struggle against. The thing I love about this show that I never see mentioned is the ongoing theme of "don't trust anyone over 30" that seems to be present. With a few exceptions, the series' adults are all evil!

Based on the mildly popular cult manga series of the same name, this Guyver OVA is the 2nd attempt to bring Guyver into animated form following the bloody but brain-dead "Guyver: Out of Control".

The basic plot seems to be quite a faithful adaptation of the first 2 books of the guyver manga series. Sho and his friend Tetsurou come across an alien artifact in the forest which bonds to Sho and grants him powers of the bio-booster armour known as the Guyver. Along with his girlfriend Mizuki, the trio soon gets swept up in a larger than life thickening plot involving the evil Chronos coporation and their genetically enhanced soldiers known as Zoanoids.

Not bad, but not entirely good either as the plot premise seems more on the juvenile side compared to other anime.

There are some interesting character development and a good fleshing out of Sho's reluctance over the responsibilities of his power. However once past the first 2 episodes, the series descends into predictable territory and starts to follow a "monster of the episode" formula commonly seen in the kid friendly tokusatsu shows like Masked Rider. The characters also fall strictly into your typical anime stereotype roles like the damsel-in-distress girlfriend, reluctant angst-ridden teen hero, hero's helpful best friend, deep voiced devious villain etc.

The violence would be what makes this otherwise mildly scripted show so appealing with the older teenage crowd and it is careful not to go overboard like the previous OVA. Sadly, the animation is quite mediocre for a 1989 OVA production. On the technical side, the animation is stiff, the art is inconsistent and the character designs are nothing special. To top things off, we are greeted with one of the cheesiest synthesizer score that sounds like a reject from the 60s Ultraman series. The theme songs are firmly stuck in the 1980s with campy lyrics and a slightly juvenile melody that does not fit with the violent and sometimes darker nature of the Guyver mythos. Thank goodness you can just turn off the subtitles and just giggle at the silly childish sounding melody. The English theme song starts with a nice alternative-rock styled electric guitar riff but soon goes down the drain hole a painfully slow tempo coupled with a horrendously messy feel.

On the plus side the monsters and the guyver designs look great and the fight scenes are a real treat as more time and effort seems to have gone into animating them. The art style has a dark moody feel to it with heavy blacks and thick shadows that lend itself well to the feel of the show.

Sadly, compared to other anime of its time, Guyver falls short on many levels. Fans of the manga would definitely want to pick this one up just to see their beloved characters and stories in animated form.

We finally discover what the guyver is in the last installments to the series.

The story line in this installment is far superior to that of the first, but the quality of animation is largely inferior. There is another down side and that is the way that the final episode ends.

I enjoyed this as you finally learnt the truth, and the arrival of a new mysterious adversary was superb!!!!

This adaptation of Guyver could have been a retro action classic. Its not a masterpiece by any means, and it isn't humorously bad. But as a dark, animated Tokusatsu show, its very fun. It has a plot, cool designs for our hero and the monsters, brutal action scenes, good pacing, even a good soundtrack! Usually I'm not a fan of "simple" stuff, but I'm biased towards retro sci-fi anime, so Guyver was close to scratching my itch.

But as I got deeper into this 12-episode OVA, it dawned on me that there was no time for Guyver to finish. And finish it did not. Guyver is based on a manga...that's ongoing to this day. While it changed parts of the story, it still followed the manga closely. It didn't create its own plot and ending, and didn't even have enough time to finish the second arc. Its like Guyver, a direct-to-video anime, somehow got canceled.

Booooooo!

So, does Guyver merit watching at all? Maybe. Again, the series is pretty awesome while it lasts. There's nothing to take away, though, and retro action is a niche few can enjoy. If you like the idea, you can watch it if you got nothing else to do. Just be prepared - what you're watching isn't art, and you're not getting an epic final battle. A shame, but c'est la vie.

The Guyver sets out the story of Aliens that landed on Earth millions of years ago, creating and developing life on Earth. The Chronos corp. set up an acheological dig, and recovered the aliens lost technolodgy to create bio-morthic monsters called "zoanoids." They also acquired 3 individual power units known as "Guyver" that transform the user into a powerful combatant mech. In modern day Tokyo, a test subect escapes from Chronos, Japan, and takes the 3 units with him in ransom to salvage his stolen humanity. During the pursuit of the test zoanoid, a bomb is triguired by him, and blows the units out of sight, at random locations. A young boy called Sho Fukamachi uncovers one, and bonds with it to become "Guyver I." Sho soon finds himself up against Chronos' bio-morthic mutants, and learns that they wont stop pursuing Sho and his loved ones until the units are back in their possession. The Guyver portrays an epic story filled with sorrow, anger, vegeance, and teh struggle to live as a normal "human being." The Guyver is indeed one of the memorable animes ever produced, although people have different tastes, and might disagree with me. The Mech design and armour is beautiful in it's own way, and each episode has crisp, gothic animation. The first six episodes is worth checking out if your into anime, mech, or even Japanese robot shows, but the remaining six is another matter...

Watch DATAs 1-6...NOW!!!