Giant Robo (tokusatsu)

Giant Robo

Giant Robo Logo
Also known as Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot
Genre Tokusatsu, Science fiction, Kaiju, Superhero, Action, Adventure, Super Robot, Secret Agent
Created by Mitsuteru Yokoyama
Based on Giant Robo by Mitsuteru Yokoyama
Country of origin Japan Japan
Original language(s) Japanese
No. of episodes 26 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s) Mitsuteru Yokoyama
Location(s) Tokyo, Japan
Running time 24 minutes
Production company(s) Toei Company
Broadcast
Original channel TV Asahi The Works (TV network)
Original run October 11, 1967 – April 1, 1968

Giant Robo, or (ジャイアントロボ Jaianto Robo), is a manga and tokusatsu series created by Mitsuteru Yokoyama. It is similar to his famous Tetsujin 28-go, which was called Gigantor in the US, though Giant Robo has more fantastic elements.

The original tokusatsu TV series, produced by Toei Company Ltd., aired on NET (later renamed TV Asahi) from October 11, 1967 to April 1, 1968, with a total of 26 episodes. The English-dubbed version of the series, which Reuben Guberman developed for American television, was produced by American International Television, with Salvatore Billitteri as line producer and Manuel San Fernando as primary director, under the title Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot.

Plot

Situation

Earth is under invasion from an interstellar terrorist group called "Big Fire" (called "The Gargoyle Gang" in the English-dubbed version), an organization led by the alien Emperor Guillotine. Emperor Guillotine spends almost the entire series in a multicolored space ship hidden at the bottom of one of the Earth's oceans (episode 1 specifies the Pacific) whence he issues his orders to the Gargoyle Gang.

"The Gargoyle Gang"

In the US version, "The Gargoyle Gang" is an ambitious but somewhat incompetent group whose members have a high mortality rate due to either Unicorn actions or Guillotine's own fits of anger. Their wardrobe is a mixture of pieces and styles from Soviet Union military uniforms, Wehrmacht uniforms, Central American guerrilla attire, and Italian designer sunglasses. At least one Gargoyle member, named Piranha in some sources, is always seen with a beatnik beard. Most of the Gargoyle Gangsters wear berets adorned with a skull on the front. All Gargoyle Gangsters have an explosive device implanted within their bodies that can be detonated in the event they are captured, though this seems to be used only rarely.

The monsters

In every episode of the series, Gargoyle sends a monster to attack its enemies. The monster can be organic or mechanical, the latter type commanded by remote control. Draculon appeared originally as a Gargoyle commander before revealing his giant form, something which other villains could not do. Most of the monsters had their names changed from the original Japanese program to something more Western-sounding. Monsters that appeared more than once would exhibit an altered color scheme in each appearance, making it difficult for the producers to reuse existing footage in later appearances.

Emperor Guillotine

Guillotine is a blue-skinned alien who has tentacles extending from the bottom of his large head, not unlike Cthulhu. He wears a long robe, and carries a staff with a white orb at its furthest end. He is capable of growing to an enormous height, though this is only seen once in the series, in the last installment, where he fights and loses to the Flying Robot.

Field Subordinates

Guillotine leaves day-to-day matters in the hands of various commanders, such as:

  1. Spider, a human who is eventually killed by a spray of acid;
  2. Doctor Over (Doctor Botanus), a silver-skinned alien capable of teleportation;
  3. Red Cobra (Fangar/Dangor the Executioner), a bizarre alien with a pegleg and crutch, a greatly enlarged forehead, protruding upper teeth, and a costume that looks like a traditional striped prison outfit in front and a red velvet jumpsuit in back;
  4. Black Dia (Harlequin), who has a fascination with the suits of playing cards; and
  5. Mr. Gold (The Golden Knight), a gold-colored armored knight.

Daisaku Kusama and Jūrō Minami find the Giant Robo

The group captures scientists to create an army of giant monsters to rampage the Earth. But fate stumbles on a little boy named Daisaku Kusama (Johnny Sokko), and a young man named Jūrō Minami (Jerry Mano), secretly Member U3 of the top-secret peacekeeping organization, Unicorn. Daisaku and Jūrō are shipwrecked on an island after the ocean liner they were on was attacked by a giant sea monster called Dracolon, and are captured by members of Big Fire. When trying to escape, they end up in an elevator that leads down to a huge construction complex where a giant robot is being built. Pharaoh-like in appearance in that the design of his head resembles the headdresses worn by the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt, this nearly indestructible humanoid robot is being built by captive scientist Dr. Lucius Guardian, who decides to give the two escapees its control device, a miniature transmitter built into a wristwatch; Daisaku/Johnny refers to this device as "the control" in the US version, whereas the others call it "the watch." The robot can only be controlled by the first voice recorded in his electronic brain; however, he first needs to be charged up by atomic energy. Dr. Guardian helps Daisaku and Jūrō escape, only to be shot to death himself. But before he is shot and killed, Dr. Guardian triggers an atomic bomb that destroys the base. The resulting explosion activates the giant robot, which moves to Daisaku's every command. As the controller of the robot (heretofore known as "Giant Robot," or just simply "Robot" in the US), Daisaku is invited by Jūrō and his chief Azuma to join Unicorn as its 7th member, U7. As U7, Daisaku fights the evil forces of Big Fire with the help of U3/Jūrō and Giant Robot.

Giant Robo/Flying Robot's arsenal

The Giant Robo/Flying Robot has numerous weapons systems which Daisaku/Johnny can command him to use. The robot is 30 meters tall, weighs 500 tons, and has a maximum flight speed of Mach 19. The weapons in the Giant Robot's arsenal include these:

In addition, the Flying Robot has the capability of the "Atomic Punch (1st episode)," "power punches," also later called "megaton punches" or "mega-punches" by Daisaku/Johnny himself; these consist of the Flying Robot throwing nearly all his mega-strength into a punch to whatever enemy he is facing off against in an episode.

Precaution if Johnny is taken captive

As a security precaution in case Johnny is forced to give unwanted orders, the boy can give a seeming line of gibberish into the control before doing so, "Redro yebo ton od," claiming it is a communication test. However, the Flying Robot is programmed to play the message backwards and interpret it as, "Do not obey order!" With that message, the Flying Robot is programmed to take it as a signal that his controller is captured and regardless of any subsequent order, the Flying Robot will launch and trace the signal to rescue his controller. This was demonstrated in Episode 25, where Johnny had ordered the security precaution to the Flying Robot to prevent Count Drakulon from forcing him to destroy the UNICORN Japan base.

Alternate versions

The entire series was first broadcast in the United States in 1969 by American International Television, and became popular in syndication over the next several decades, particularly from 1971–74 when it reached its peak in distribution. The series was still in active syndication through the early 1980s. It was telecast in India in the mid-late 1980s and early 1990s where it achieved a cult following that continues to this day. It was also aired in the early 1970s in Australia, Malaysia and Brazil as well, and the United Arab Emirates in the late 1980s. In the Brazilian Portuguese dub, titled "Robo Gigante" had an interesting mix of names taken from the English dub (mostly for kaiju names) yet certain characters, notably the main protagonist, Daisaku Kusama had their original Japanese names preserved in the dub.

In 1970, several episodes were edited together by American International Television to create the 95-minute "movie" Voyage into Space. As the series has a true "final" episode, it made creating a "movie" possible.

A 10-minute "edited highlights" version of Voyage into Space was created for the "Super 8" home movies market in the early 1970s by Ken Films. It was available in both sound and silent versions, either in color or B&W, with artwork of the Giant Robot and the monster Lagorian on the cover albeit inaccurately depicted.

DVD status

While recently released on DVD by Toei Video in Japan (the entire series was previously issued on laserdisc in the 1990s), the complete series was not released on Region 1 DVD for years; only eight episodes (some out of broadcast order) had been released on videocassette by Orion Home Video in the United States; these subsequently went out of print.

On March 26, 2013, Shout! Factory released Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot- The Complete Series: Collectors Edition on DVD in Region 1 for the very first time.[1] The 4-disc set featured all 26 episodes of the series.

English version copyright status

Following Orion Pictures' bankruptcy, MGM acquired their holdings of the majority of the American International Pictures library (which had previously been owned by Filmways),with MGM Television overseeing distribution.

Episodes are available as legal downloads from such sources as the iTunes Store and Amazon.com's Unbox. The series is also available for viewing on Hulu. (Unauthorized versions also appear on Veoh and YouTube.)

Violence concerns

The series was astonishingly violent by American standards of children's programming in the 1960s; in its home country of Japan, though, it was no more violent than any other tokusatsu airing at the time. Gunfights are staples of every episode of the series, and the show's two child leads—Johnny Sokko and Mari Hanson; the latter, called Mari Hanamura in the Japanese version, is a 9-year-old girl, introduced in the seventh episode, who speaks 39 languages and is a crack shot with a firearm—were frequently seen shooting along with the rest of the Unicorn agents. In one episode, Johnny and Mari are captured and tied to trees by Gargoyle, and are within seconds of being executed by firing squad, when Unicorn agents rescue them. Oddly enough, though practically every Japanese anime exported to the United States during that period was edited due to violent content, Johnny Sokko And His Flying Robot seemed to have escaped close scrutiny in that regard, and what editing was done on the show seemed to have been more for the purposes of squeezing in another commercial or two rather than in the interest of curbing the show's violence. (At least one US TV station, WXON in Detroit, ran disclaimers before each show saying, "Remember, kids, Johnny Sokko is make-believe and the actors are just pretending.")

In addition to dubbing American voice actors for the US release, many of the show's sound effects were also remixed or re-recorded entirely. And though the show's jazz-influenced score by the prolific Takeo Yamashita was used, it was frequently tracked in different places from the Japanese version of the series. The credits for production and direction in the U.S. version seem to be randomly chosen European names of various origins.

Episode titles

The following episode titles have been transcribed directly from the on-screen title cards of the US version, which were rendered in capitals including punctuation. These are presented in their original US and Japanese broadcast order, verified by the previews for next episode at the end of each show.

  1. Dracolon, The Great Sea Monster
  2. Nucleon, The Magic Globe
  3. The Gargoyle Vine – A Space Plant
  4. Monster Ligon-Tyrox, A Strange Monster
  5. The Gigantic Claw
  6. Dragon, The Ninja Monster
  7. Our Enemy – Scalion
  8. The Challenge of the Two-Headed Monster
  9. Tentaclon – An Electric Monster
  10. The Transformed Humans
  11. The Terrifying Sand Creature
  12. Amberon The Synthetic Monster
  13. Opticon Must Be Destroyed
  14. The Monstrous Flying Jawbone
  15. Igganog – The Ice-Berg Monster
  16. Torozon – An Enemy Robot
  17. Destroy the Dam
  18. X-7, A Mysterious Enemy Agent
  19. "Metron" – The Mysterious Space-Man
  20. Beware – The Radion Globe
  21. The Terrifying Space Mummy
  22. Clash of the Giant Robots
  23. "Dr, Eingali – Master of Evil"
  24. "Hydrazona" – A Terrifying Bacteria
  25. "Drakulon" – Creature of Doom
  26. The Last of Emperor Guillotine

Related series

GR: Giant Robo

Main article: GR: Giant Robo

GR: Giant Robo (GR ジャイアントロボ GR: Jaianto Robo) is an animated TV series written by Chiaki Konaka (Serial Experiments Lain, The Big O) and directed by Masahiko Murata (Jinki:EXTEND, Mazinkaiser). At the dawn of the 21st century, the Earth is overrun by giant robots. Daisaku Kusama encounters one of these monsters, the titular Robo, in a ruin in Okinawa. Beckoned by forces he cannot understand, Daisaku is made to bond, body and spirit, with the ancient weapon and defend his homeland from the incoming evil.

In popular culture

American guitarist Buckethead is a fan of Giant Robo and references to the series are found in several albums in his discography. His debut album Bucketheadland, for example, features songs Giant Robot Theme, Enter Guillatine, and Giant Robot Vs. Guillatine, as well as audio clips from the English-dubbed version.

Frank H. Wu was a devoted Johnny Sokko fan growing up, and he recounts several episodes of the show in his book Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White.[2]

Giant Robo appears in several episodes of the anime Urusei Yatsura as a background cameo

Giant Robo appears (but not mentioned by name) in the novel Ready Player One among other Tokusatsu characters

In the 1998 tokusatsu Ultraman Gaia, the Kaiju Gan-Q strongly resembles the Giant Robo kaiju Ganmons/Opticorn as both are bipedal eyeball like creatures and have a similar color and physical appearance to each other.

In the 1987 arcade game, Ginga Ninkyouden, Giant Robo is one of the antagonists, here labeled as "G-Robo".

References

  1. ↑ Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot – Shout! Factory's Package Art for 'The Complete Series' DVD
  2. ↑ Wu, Frank H. Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White. New York: Basic Books, 2002. Print.

External links