The Guyver

Bio Booster Armor Vol 2

Review by Matthew Anderson

12 Episode OVA series

Company: Manga Entertainment

Running Time: 120 Min

Rating: R (Language, Violence, Gore)

EXTERNAL EXAM

Chronos has a plan for world conquest. Using genetically engineered monsters called Zoanoids, Chronos is poised to take over the world.

That is until Sho Fukamachi accidentally fuses with an alien technology called "The Guyver". Possessing awesome powers, Sho is the only one that can stop the evil of Chronos.

After destroying Chronos Japan, Sho and his friends are on the run. With the help of a news reporter named Murakami, they manage to keep one step ahead. Deciding to take the war to them, Murikami takes Sho and Tetsuro to Chronos HQ. Meanwhile, Agito (Guyver III) has infiltrated Chronos HQ, and has become the right hand man of Dr. Balcus, leader of Chronos.

Dr. Balcus, infuriated at the failure to capture Guyver I implements a plan that may destroy Sho's life forever, and cause him to loose his powers!

DVD VISION TEST

VIDEO: Decent, better than the video release. The colors are clearer and the image sharper although, there are some light moments. There is some light artifacing on images with a solid color. While there is film grain and specks, these are from the source material.

AUDIO: The Japanese 2.0 and the English 2.0 are about the same in tone and volume. There are some decent surround sound elements, but nothing to get excited about. The English 5.1 is a little fuller and stronger than the English 2.0, but not by much. It's pretty average compared to other DVD's.

EDITS: All Japanese episode titles have been replaced with English ones. The ending animation has an placed black overlays on the Japanese text and replaced them with English. No edits to the actual episodes have been made.

Like they did with Virus, they hacked up the opening animation. The opening crudely splices in scenes from different episodes in order to match up with Mad Dog Winston's awful "Guyver Rock" theme. It also added cheesy overlays on the Japanese text to cover up the fact that this is not the original opening animation.

The next episode titles look like some 12 year old was trying to make a web page, and failed.

EXTRAS: We have extensive Zoanoid data files, the original open and closing, unedited episode 12, character bios, and a photo gallery of VHS covers.

WIDESCREEN REVIEW

STORY: The Guyver is an awesome series. There is drama combined with bloody action. Very closely based off the manga by Yoshiki Takaya, the staff of writers know and understand what kind of story the creator wanted.

ACTING: The Japanese does a fine job. Full of dynamic range and emotion. The only one who is a little off is the voice for Commander Guou. Compared to the English voice actor, his voice isn't menacing enough.

Well, the original dub cast was pretty good, all though there were a few times that the lines felt a bit rushed. Like sub fans hate changes to the script, dub fans hate it when you change voice actors . Why they changed the voices for some of the characters, I don't know.

FAN SERVICE: Those of us who are fans of the manga will delight in how close this anime is to the source material. Sorry, no nudity on this one.

FINAL EXAM

When we left Sho, Tetsuro and Mizuki, in volume 1, Chronos Japan had been defeated. It seems that everything would go back to normal.

Wrong.

Dr. Balcus, the amoral genius that founded Chronos and created the Hyper Zoanoid Team 5, is royally pissed off that a little boy has been able to defeat his most powerful creations. Deciding to take things up a notch, he decides to capture everyone that is near and dear to our hero, and force the brat to come to him at Chronos HQ. No one, not Tetsuro, Mizuki, or even his father is safe from their evil plan.

However, help may rest in the abilities of Murakami, a reporter, who seems to know a lot about Chronos. Armed with one hell of a big gun, he is a bad ass that no one can mess with.

The writing continues to be top notch. We start to learn more about the formation of Chronos, where the Guyver's came from and Agito's plan to use Sho and Chronos to further his own ends. There are some disturbing moments, that show exactly how evil these people are.

The only down side is that episode 12 leaves things hanging. If you want to know what happens next, pick up a copy of "Heart of Chronos", released by Viz, if you can find it.

With these episodes, there is a notable decline in the animation quality. The level of detail that made the first 6 episodes so impressive is missing here. These episodes look and feel rushed.

The Guyver holds a special place in our hearts here at DVD Vision Japan. This series also was the one that got Ann Marie, our managing editor, into anime. It was also one of the better dubbed series out there (US Renditions Macross II was just horrible).

When Manga announced that they were going to re-release "The Guyver" on DVD, we were so excited. Now, I could retire my VHS copy, and enjoy this series on DVD.

Then I watched it.

First offense was the editing of the opening. Surly they had to know that this would royally annoy the hard core otaku. There was nothing wrong with the original. Splicing in scenes from the episodes, just so it could match some crappy Euro-trash techno tune is just plain wrong. To make things worse, the opening ends with Sho transforming into the Guyver. Since adding this animation causes the opening to run over the "Japanese theme", you are stuck with 10 seconds of silence on the Japanese audio track. How dumb is that?

Next, they redubed and remixed some of the voices. What was wrong with the original dub voices? They all did a great job at matching or even improving their Japanese counterparts. At least they kept the voices of the main characters the same. The adding of additional electronic noise to make the monsters and the Guyver seem less human is just that, noise. There were times I couldn't understand a single word.

The Guyver is one of the best anime series out there. No matter what edits are made, or how many Zonanoids Chronos sends, our love for this series will never change.

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