June reviews: Mazinkaizer SKL

-clever Hell pun

I think its important to preface this review by saying that I'm not a particularly big Mazinger fan, while i appreciate the impact it has had not only on anime and manga, but on pop culture as a whole, it has never appealed to my particular sensibilities, the same can be said about Go Nagai's entire body of work to be honest, while i appreciate the impact they had on the industry, i don't particularly care for any of them, and have found their later adaptations (such as 2018's Devilman Crybaby by Masaaki Yuasa and 2004's live action Cutie Honey adaptation by Hideaki Anno) far more fascinating

 

The reason i say this is that SKL, like many OVAs based on older properties, is EXTREMELY self referential, not only to Mazinger, but to all of Nagai's works, and as such, someone more familiar with them might get more mileage out of the it than i personally did, with that made clear, onto the rest of the review.

Years ago, following the great war, all of the world's most notorious criminals were imprisoned in the mineral rich machine island and cut off from the rest of the world via a device called the gravity curtain, now, generations later, the gravity curtain has started to malfunction due to the conflict between the prisoners' descendants. 

to prevent the gravity curtain from swallowing the planet, the government sends in the hell caprice squad, a pair of mercenaries infamous for being the only ones to ever come out alive of any mission they are sent in.

 

 To say that the plot in SKL is irrelevant would be a big understatement, with several aspects of it being either left up for interpretation or ignored entirely, rather, SKL is what i like a call an "album cover" Anime, with its story serving merely as an excuse to anime cool stuff happening. and while a lot of the stuff that happens does indeed look fairly good it unfortunately lacks a lot of the polish and attention to detail that i feel is otherwise warranted when making an anime solely for the sake of its visuals.

However, at only 3 episodes, SKL requires very little investment from the viewer, having roughly the same total runtime as a feature length movie, and, while other animes have proved that it is possible to have something of substance in that much runtime, i feel that there is enough here for those familiar with the source material to get something out of.

 

 

                   RATING: SUIT YOURSELF