Here is the first episode of Go Nagai's awkward giant robot anime from 1976, "Groizer X," with an all-new raw & full English subs.
The raw was ripped in 576p from the hard-to-find Portuguese ISOs, which included the original Japanese audio. I took ARR's old sub script and re-timed it to my raw, plus edited their "Engrish" for proper flow and grammar. I also fixed some of the translation mistakes they made, and subbed the lines that were missing.
The fansub itself is a soft-sub MKV with white subtitles, since that seems to be the trend these days. Because I'm no good at translating song lyrics, I searched for them online and was only able to find them for the opening song. I decided not to sub the songs, because I didn't have a complete set of lyrics for both. If anyone out there knows where I can find the closing theme's lyrics, in Japanese or in English, I would be very grateful!
The show itself was nothing more than a side project Nagai undertook while he was busy working on his Mazinger-verse. It had 3 manga series, and was eventually turned into a 36-episode anime series by Dynamic Planning and (shiver) Knack Productions, who did their usual cheap-ass job on nearly everything. Still, the cheapness of the animation is what gives this clunker its charm, and the gimmick of the giant flying mecha turning into giant robots does work on a base level. Sadly, the hero robot, Groizer X, is terribly ugly, and did not appeal to Japanese children. Much like with Machine Blaster, the toys bombed, and the show was canceled.
The plot revolves around Nagai's overused vehicle of an alien invasion by the Gaira-seijin, a race of aliens who live in the arctic. They attack Japan first because it has "good strategic points and factories," but start by laying waste to Japan's airfields. This is the goofy stuff that makes no sense in Groizer X, and it gets worse as the series goes on. Groizer X comes into play when an escaped Gaira citizen named Rita Yan pilots the token robot to Japan and crashes it into a remote island, which is home to a stunt piloting team. The lead pilot, Jo, becomes Rita's co-pilot inside Groizer, thanks to the simple fact that he's a pilot. If that wasn't the most obvious plot device in Nagai's robot shows, I don't know what is. Rita becomes a solid character and pilot in her own right, and Groizer later acquires a friggin' huge missile that can destroy the robot-of-the-week in one shot, which Rita uses quite frequently whenever she's going solo.
If you're a fan of Toei's back catalog of robot shows, or you just want to watch this thing with subs that make a little more sense, than feel free to download & give it a go, and be sure to seed for a while after you're done!
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