English Dub Review: Getter Robo Arc “Deep Desire”

Overview:

Both sides have a reason for fighting and refuse to back down. As the battle rages outside, Takuma and the others prepare to confront McDonald.

Our Take:

Lots of mixed thoughts on this one, from storytelling all the way to technical things like animation. This show is super weird to me cause it had a rough beginning but the middle got really intriguing but now it has been rough again. I can barely tell what’s going and where certain characters’ allegiances lie.

I am all for political maneuvering and backstabbing but this just doesn’t have a high enough episode count to make it work in my opinion. Everything feels undercooked and the pacing is not good. I understand Takuma is the main character but he’s an insufferable asshole. Baku barely has any characterization at all, leaving Kamui as one of the only interesting characters of the main trio. Even he doesn’t have much going on but I will say the last few episodes did a lot more him than anybody.

On the technical side of things, I guess there was a budget issue or something. One of the mech scenes early in the episode looked absolutely godawful. Then not five minutes later there was a fight scene with Getter Arc and it looked amazing. I understand budgeting for the main robot but I don’t know at least make the others look a little better. The character animations haven’t really improved much either. At first, I thought the 80’s style of animation was a choice but now I am starting to think it was what had to be done.

There are only two episodes and there is a lot of work to be done. I still can’t wrap my head around all the time travel and everything else. It’s like they wanted to include every single thing from a science fiction B-movie and didn’t care about the consequences. It’s a convoluted mess is the best way I can describe Getter Robo Arc so far but I hope it manages to stick the landing.