Park: Okay so what happened was that our internet went out yesterday. Spectrum– and by the way, we’ll be switching to Google Fiber in less than a week because of this, because it’s been happening more and more– Spectrum gave us unstable and then totally missing internet. Well, we played board games a little, but… for some time, I had been planning to re-watch the anime Dai-Guard, because we own the complete show on DVD. Back when Barb and I were in charge of a website called MangaLife, we reviewed things, and so companies would send us manga and DVDs to review. One such company was ADV, based out of Houston, and one such thing they sent us was the anime Dai-Guard. And Dai-Guard is really good in my opinion, but the funny thing is, it’s from the turn of the century (1999, adapted to English in 2002), so when Barb and I watched it, we were comparatively new to all this. Partly because of this: Dai-Guard holds up REALLY well!
Park: Dai-Guard’s set-up is this: It’s Japan, in the futuristic year of 2030.
12 years ago, kaiju– which in English we call “Heterodynes” for no adequately-explained reason– showed up and just handed Japan its butt. The only way we put a stop to it was we nuked a city (except it wasn’t a nuke, it was some amazing futuristic non-radioactive bomb that otherwise was pretty similar). So, many civilians died.
Now, we’d just about finished creating a giant mecha– because that’s what you fight kaiju with, as everyone knows– but then the Heterodyne kaiju all stopped appearing before the mecha, named Dai-Guard, was quite finished. So Dai-Guard just became the huge mascot of the security company that the military hired to build it for them.
Park: Now, 12 years later, the Heterodynes have started showing up again (something about huge earthquakes at sea ripping up dimensional barriers), and the three office workers whose job it is to pilot Dai-Guard to mall openings and county fairs and stuff have to start saving the world every week because they’re the only people with experience piloting it. (The military legally signed ownership of Dai-Guard back to the security company so people wouldn’t be reminded that the military didn’t get it ready in time and stuff.)
So the tagline is (in English) “Office workers, saving the world!” (In Japanese: “Salarymen can save the world too!”)
Barb: As you know, I hate nostalgia. To me, the past is dead and should stay in the past. I’m not one of those geeks that sees an old comic or anime as something I have to hold onto as part of my geek heritage. Also, I sometimes feel, when I experience something from the past, that the piece of pop culture didn’t age well or wasn’t as good as I thought it was. Yes, I’m looking at you, Buffy.
But an internet outage is a pain in the butt and you did want to watch Dai-Guard, so out of love for you, I watched it.
Holy Moses, this show is good. I’m so glad we found it again.
Park: We weren’t even super familiar with the term “salaryman” before we watched it! (A salaryman is basically a lower-to-middle-class worker– they could work construction or be a paper-pusher, as long as they don’t get any respect from their bosses.)
(I think most often it means what we’d call a “desk jockey.”)
(And there’s a lot of paperwork, because every time Dai-Guard grabs an abandoned car to throw at a giant monster, the owner of that car sees it on TV and sues the company for the damages.)
Another tagline of the show (in English, anyway) is “To Serve and Defend but not to Spend.”
Barb: Yeah, I was just thinking about that. Back then, we hadn’t seen any of the films that Dai-Guard sprang from. We hadn’t seen Gamara (he’s really neat/filled with turtle meat) or Gojira or any of those Destroy All Monsters sorts of films. We’d only seen Neon Genesis Evangalion. That was our only frame of reference.
So….
What we have here is a kind of a mash up…
You have a little of G Force/Star Blazers….you have rubber-suited monster films…
Park: And that’s relevant, because all kaiju attacks (as we call them these days) are just Godzilla, and Godzilla was just about bombing Japan at the end of WWII. So it’s not surprising that sort-of-nuking that city 12 years ago is the start of Dai-Guard…
Barb: We have Neon Genesis Evangelion… And then it’s gene spliced with an office comedy….
So it’s Evangelion meets Godzilla/Gamera meets The Office.
Park: Yes, it absolutely is. The opening (and closing) credits make it clear that the other almost-dozen folks in the same company office are definitely part of the world-saving team.
Barb: Yeah…
Park: They have to be, because they defend Dai-Guard from lawsuits and bad PR!
If we run out of money, we can’t keep repairing Dai-Guard after each monster battle!
And we HAVE to do that! So they’re essential!
Barb: The show reminds me a little of the comic Damage Control, about the fictional company that repairs a city block or two after a superhero saves the day… and wrecks property…
Park: Absolutely. Any fan of Marvel’s Damage Control comic would very likely like Dai-Guard.
Dai-Guard– like Damage Control– asks: “Okay but what would it be like for regular people to live in a world where city-block-wrecking battles happen every week?”
Barb: Side note: Personally, I really like the idea of the comic Damage Control.
Barb: I think a lot of office workers would identify with the heroic guys/gals/people that work for 21st Century Security’s publicity department….
Park: Right! Because suddenly, desk-jockeys and paper-pushers sort of become first responders!
Barb: Yes, it’s the magical realism question I always ask when I write fantasy stories: If this crazy concept I thought up was real, how would the concept affect everday people and everyday lives?
Yeah, I just realized that Post-911 and Post-Climate Change, this show hits a little differently….
Amazing, since this show is pre-911.
Park: Right. And yet APPARENTLY it was distributed over here in 2002? Way to figuratively fly under the radar, ADV…
Barb: Now, the animation style is old-school compared to modern anime. However, the style isn’t like older anime like G Force. It’s much better animated than that.
Park: Right. Faces and bodies are stylized in a way that’s (now) very old-school, but the way people and things and monsters move is smooth and unproblematic in general.
Barb: What works in this show: The office workers feel like office workers. The back and forth between the private sector and the military feels real. The fights are very clever, as well as suspenseful.
The jokes are genuinely funny.
Park: Yes. There’s a lot of good character tension because there’s one guy high-up in the company that’s ex-military and one important military guy who’s placed with the company as our military strategy liaison who are each very important– because they’re sympathetic to our heroes, and they’re vital for helping us do our jobs of saving people.
Barb: The 3 lead characters are extremely likeable. The gung-ho lead pilot guy is heroic but naive. The gal pilot has a backstory and (therefore) something to prove. The third pilot guy doesn’t want to risk his neck by being a hero, but he’s got enough of a good heart that he realizes that he can’t let down his team.
And there are so many side characters. One gets the feeling that we’ll be seeing a lot more of all of them. An anime can’t be an anime if side characters have no backstory/spotlight episodes.
Park: Yes, it takes three people to pilot Dai-Guard. The main guy, up in Dai-Guard’s head, is a goof– but he’s a pure-hearted goof, which is what we need for this. He and the gal who’s his secondary pilot REFUSE to sacrifice any civilians for the greater good.
Partly because that’s how we ended up bombing that city 12 years ago– pilot gal lost her father in that attack.
“If we try to save that man, the monster will have time to hit the nuclear power plant!” NOPE, the Dai-Guard crew is gonna try to protect BOTH objectives.
Barb: AND, we’re going to learn more about the character you call Sneezy and I call Glasses Girl. I love that the one who has the most STEM/tech/science experience is a female.
Oh, and I love that these people are NA (New Adults) as opposed to teenagers.
Barb: Yeah, good point. These people serve but they also protect.
Park: Which is another way it hits different– this was before Fukushima. Japan has now learned the danger of natural forces destroying coastal nuclear power plants…
But this anime tried to warn them beforehand…
Barb: I think that we should mention that the opening them to Dai Guard is a power pop gem!
Ba, ba ba ba, ba ba ba, ba ba barararara…
Park: Yes. Not only is there a young woman on our heroic pilot crew, but our genius scientist who keeps upgrading Dai-Guard’s weapons is also a young… well, nerd. She’s such a science nerd. Classic.
OMG the opening and closing music of Dai-Guard, as we say in this century, both totally slap.
We listen to them every time.
Barb: The opening theme sounds like it could have been sung by a group like 3rd Eye Blind or somebody…
Or… keeping it culturally correct… The Japanese group The Pillows (cf. the FLCL anime series) could have written it…
Barb: Remember when you made me a CD of upbeat anime songs to get my energy going in the mornings? I believe that the Dai-Guard theme was on that.
Park: YES!
I should make you a playlist like that now.
As one does in this century.
Look, not all anime holds up like this. I know it’s hard to believe. We recently re-watched Witch Hunter Robin– the most 2002 television show in all of anime history– and it held up JUST ENOUGH. But Dai-Guard is STRONGER now that we know all the tropes it’s drawing upon.
Park: Honey, we should do a different post in a couple of weeks about Witch Hunter Robin.
Barb: Exactly! I liked Witch Hunter Robin a lot, but it was so OF THE ERA.
Park: Dai-Guard is more timeless! In 6 years it’ll be a show about 2030 you can WATCH IN THE ACTUAL 2030.
But I bet we don’t have giant mecha then.
And that’s okay, because I don’t trust anyone but the Dai-Guard crew with them anyway.
Sometimes when they refer to the deadly monster attack of 12 years ago I’ll turn to Barb and say “you know, 2018.”
Barb: LOL, you do.
Barb: Dai-Guard holds up better because it’s less stylized and aimed at a less hipster audience. Nothing against Robin. It’s a smart, fascinating anime series for those who like, say, Death Note’s animation style. But Dai Guard is a lot better… and not just because it has a giant mech.
Park: OMG Robin’s show is trying to be SO HIP. Robin was so cutting-edge it bled all over my new floors. (Except we watched it before we got the new floors BUT STILL.)
Barb: That’s why I try never to label an actual year in any SF story I write, so when that year comes, the audience doesn’t laugh at my failed predictions….
Yes, Robin’s style is Boogiepop DeathNote. But we’re drifting away from Dai-Guard, so how about we end this geeking-out session right here?
Park: HA HA BOOGIEPOP DEATHNOTE
Barb: Thanks for digging this anime up for me. It’s a ton of fun to watch with you.
Park: YAAAAY!!! (Kermit wave of arms)