English Dub Review: Getter Robo Arc “Blood of Dragons, Heart of Man”

Overview:

Getter Arc crew is taking orders from the Dinosaur Empire and gets no rest. They even have their own Getter, the Gettersaurus. Takuma doesn’t really get along with the pilots and a fight breaks out. Takuma and Baku find out the truth about Kamui and his mother. Kamui’s father is the previous Emperor so he actually has a claim to the throne and is the current Emperor’s half-brother. Takuma helps Kamui and his mother get a moment together.

Our Take:

I’m a sucker for political intrigue so I definitely hope this stuff with Kamui and the Emperor actually go somewhere. Though I looked up the episode count for this series and saw that it’s only thirteen so my hopes aren’t super high. I feel like there’s too much going on for things to be wrapped up in five more episodes but I’ve been wrong before.

The Andromeda Flow Country is more worried about the Dinosaur Empire than the humans. They are really concerned with them creating an alliance which is understandable. I have to wonder if they don’t know that they already have an alliance or maybe I am misunderstanding something but I thought that was already the case. The Getter team is even taking orders from the Dinosaur Empire so that’s how it seems to me.

I will say the Dinosaur Empire having a Getter is pretty cool. It’s called the Gettersaurus and it looks pretty cool too. That is one thing this series really has going for it is mech designs. Seeing them fight underwater was really cool too so the animation there was on point as usual but it suffered in some places. I say suffered but I kind of feel like it’s intentional to get that old animation aesthetic. I just know it’s a bit jarring to see the poor character animations at times, though it is hilarious to see super cartoony-looking characters drop F-bombs.

We see the “prince in hiding” trope show up with Kamui and I honestly am not surprised. I really like this trope so it doesn’t bother me but I could see how many people are sick of it. As I said earlier I hope it goes somewhere but with this show, it seems the plotlines I am interested in don’t get fleshed out that much. Takuma showed some character growth by doing what he could to get Kamui some time with his mother. He did it in an asshole way but for him, that works.