• Title: Yatterman New Series
• Studio: Tatsunoko Productions
• Genre: Kids

Ratings (out of 5):

• Story: ♥♥

• Animation: ♥♥♥
• Characters: ♥♥½
• OP/ED Themes: ♥♥♥♥
• Overall: ♥♥½ (Sorry, I don’t date geezers.)

Thoughts:
Okay, I don’t know how many of you are really into the classics and whatnot, but here’s this remake of the ‘77 mecha Yatterman, and they’re also making a couple of live-action movies based on it– directed by Takashi Miike (of MPD Psycho and Sukiyaki Western Django fame). So I figured I’d better check out the show.

The plot is something like this: Gan-chan and his girlfriend Ai-chan reconstruct an old robot called Yatterwan, a dog mech. They stumble upon the evil schemes of the Doronbo trio (a hot woman with a surprisingly old voice named Doronjo, plus her two moronic lackeys) and combine with the Yatterwan to become Yatterman and the Yatterwan (no name for Ai-chan’s superhero self so far) to defeat the trio, which they do with ease and life goes on.

Now, unless you’re really hardcore into that old-school feel, I can’t say I’d recommend this one. It’s so retro, it’s…well, old. Except for the animation, which is pretty decent-quality, and the art, which has a solid retro-meets-superflat style, it’s completely mindless and infantile, even for a kids’ cartoon. It’s excessively formulaic, albeit with a formula that would be nostalgic if you grew up watching this show. I’m not sure I’d like it even if I was a little kid (and if I did, it would probably be for purely aesthetic reasons; the characters are too dumb to even be funny).

Though I do have to say that the ED sequence is actually hilarious. It’s sort of one of those classic emo people-walking-in-rain-looking-at-stuff bits, which is so at odds with the rest of the show that it’s a complete hoot. And the ED sequence also ends with a shot of the villainess Doronjo’s clothing lying on a couch, which is so reminiscent of Lucky Star’s uniform-on-a-desk that I couldn’t help but chortle.

So unless you’re a nostalgia-freak, I wouldn’t bother with more than a single episode of the show– and even that only if you’re curious about what the show’s about and/or the updated style.

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