Machine Robo: Revenge of Cronos- AIM FOR LOVE! VICTORY!

Now here's a post I've been putting off for a long while! All the way back at New York Anime Fest, I bought some wonderful DVDs. They were everything I ever wanted in a Japan-cartoon and I even got my buddy Joe to buy them at I-Con later, the same way he got me to put Genma Wars on my to-buy list.

First, you have to understand that robot anime is nearly always a ploy to sell toy robots. Machine Robo was a toy line-- and came here as Go-Bots with a really shitty cartoon-- before it was animated, though. Even the Rock Lords appear! Making an anime out of Machine Robo was more a ploy to boost sales of toy robots. But this is more or less the same thing. Machine Robo: Revenge of Cronos is a flagrantly commercial product: I've never seen an anime where it's made so clear that Bandai's marketing men sat around a table and asked each other "what the kids are into".

My kid likes post-apocalyptic wastelands! Mine likes wolves! Mine likes Sergio Leone westerns! Mine likes incestuous younger sisters! Mine likes vikings! Mine likes samurai! Mine likes kung-fu! Mine likes LOVE! VICTORY!

And the animation studio put all these things together, whether it made any sense to do so or not. The result was Machine Robo: Revenge of Cronos, a bizarre, stupid and frequently magnificent cartoon for children of eclectic tastes.

So there's this unexplained wasteland planet where only robots live. And on this planet, you dig, there's this one cool-guy robot who's our protagonist. Rom Stol is probably the sole reason anybody remembers this show, as he is actually pretty awesome. Rom is a kung-fu robot-man who always makes dramatic entrances, complete with poses on top of cliffs, dramatic western-style trumpet solos, and speeches about the nature of courage. His catchphrase is "You don't deserve to know my name!" My kind of show.

Rom is kind of a matroshka doll: when he gets into trouble, he summons the big ol' Blade Dragon robot and hops inside. The Blade Dragon very rarely wins a fight, mostly appearing solely to get punched in the face (he even gets his ass kicked in the opening!) and necessitate that Rom use his final form. Now the Blade Dragon gets into an even bigger robot, VIKUNGFU.

The viking that knew KUNG-FU. Like a Power Rangers robot's sword, when Vikungfu comes out, the fight is instantly over. He's a cool enough design that he's been in Super Robot Wars a couple of times, and even had a $200 action figure made of him.

Plus he's got friends! Blue Jet is a red jet and also a samurai. Rod Drill is a comically named drill robot. He's kind of the Michaelangelo of the group, most likely to, say, jump into a swamp and obligate everybody to spend an entire episode looking for something that'll de-rust him.

As a bonus, get a vaguely incestuous little sister character and her slave-robot Triple Jim! Proving that moe's always been here, Reina, who mysteriously has hair under her robo-helmet, seems to be there for the "onii-cha~~n!" crowd. She was popular enough to spawn a sequel OVA series starring Reina and the gang as humans. Only Blue Jet comes out of it looking cool. See 4:13 on this Youtube video for an idea of what you're in for there (hint: Rom and Leina get naked and hold hands). Anyway, buy Vikungfu now and you get a Reina for free!

One day a typical evil force typically killed Rom's typical martial-arts master dad, so Rom pointed a family heirloom sword off into the distance and said "HEY LET'S GO THAT WAY." And so they did: ridiculous special moves and monster-of-the-week antics follow. It's dumb and it's repetitive, but it's also damn strange: witness Rom's Sky, Space, and Heart Fist, with techniques like the Instant Death Punch (Rom jumps on your face and punches you over and over again) and the Flying Snake Head Snap! Fortunately for us, the boring evil force's henchmen are a combining robot team that calls itself the DEVIL SATAN SIX, and the mere mention of their name is worth an entire TV show's worth of chuckles.

CPM licensed Revenge of Cronos by accident (hear about that story here), and-- as I have to assume sales were abysmal-- never finished the series past the first fifteen episodes. This is both a shame and a relief: most episodes of this show are indistinguishable from each other and fifteen episodes is about as much as a person really needs of the show. On the other hand, you'll never know how it ends. Spoilers: the final shot of the TV series is Rom and Leina going into space, turning into naked humans, and cuddling. They just have a bond, okay? It's a beautiful brother-sister bond and you'll never understand it!

Anyway, now that I've ruined everything for you, go out and buy Revenge of Cronos, watch it with all your buddies and laugh yourselves to death. This isn't good anime, but it's not bad anime either: it's awesome anime. Being as it's a CPM license, the show is dirt cheap online and dirt cheaper at conventions. Do it for dead stock everywhere!

BONUS GAME: Can you find the late, great Kaneto Shiozawa? HE'S IN THIS SHOW SOMEWHERE

Comments

[wildarmsheero]

So wait, incest /and/ robots?? It's like all of my favourite things in one show!

[Kristen Barghout]

I never really got into the whole Mech scene until recently, when my friend came over and brought the whole series of Gundam Wing.

I also really like Escaflowne, but it seems recently, anime has moved away from giant robots...cant really remember the last time a mech anime was made

[Kuroi1986]

There's new mech series every year, last year we had Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and this year a new Macross series, Macross Frontier. Gundam has it's own new series too Gundam 00. and that's just to name some it's a matter of lookig for them

[JayWicky]

"most episodes of this show are indistinguishable from each other and fifteen episodes is about as much as a person really needs of the show."

This is... essentially true, but down the line, Rom and his gang finally settle in a city sieged by the bad guys and it gets more of a classic Transformers/Go-Bots vibe, in the sense that the cast of regular robots is considerably larger. And the funniest bit is that Cy-Kill, who was the big bad in Challenge of the Go-Bots if you remember that, is here a good guy, the leader of the team of robots who assemble to form a rough equivalent to Courageous ("Land Commando 5" in Japan).