Production
The Giant Robo manga first appeared in Weekly Shōnen Sunday on May 1967. Written by Mitsuteru Yokoyama, it tells the story of Daisaku Kusama, the titular Robo and an evil secret society known only as "Big Fire." In October of the same year, a live-action adaptation premiered on TV Asahi. In 1990, producer Yasuhito Yamaki (Ninja Resurrection, Urotsukidoji) approached Yasuhiro Imagawa about working on an animated version of the Giant Robo manga. Imagawa, a self-proclaimed fan of Yokoyama's work, jumped at the chance of working on the project.
In pre-production, Imagawa was informed he could not use any of the supporting characters from the manga or live-action versions. Instead, with Yokoyama's permission, he populated the series with characters from the artist's entire canon of work including Akakage, Babel II and Godmars. The Giant Robo OVA still follows Daisaku and Robo, and the main antagonist is called "Big Fire," but it features an all-new storyline with a completely different cast of characters.
The first episode was released July 22, 1992 with the following three installments staying close to the proposed schedule of six months between releases. In the nine months between the releases of Volumes 4 and 5, two OVA's focusing on the character of GinRei were produced. "Barefoot GinRei" (素足のGinRei, Suashi no GinRei?) is a humorous take on GinRei's job as a spy for the IPO. "Mighty GinRei" (鉄腕GinRei, Tetsuwan GinRei?), a send up of super robot series, features Ken Ishikawa as guest mech designer. A third OVA, "GinRei with blue eyes" (青い瞳の銀鈴, Aoi hitomi no Gin Rei?), was released after Volume 5 of Giant Robo.
The final episode was released January 1998, almost three years after episode six. In between releases, members of the Giant Robo staff worked on other projects including The Big O, Getter Robo Armageddon, and an animated version of Shunro Oshikawa's Kaitei Gunkan novel.
Imagawa intended "The Day the Earth Stood Still" to be the second to final chapter in the conflict between the Experts of Justice and Big Fire. The OVA would be preceded by "The Birth of Zangetsu the Midday," "The Plan to Assassinate Daisaku - the Canary Penitentiary," "The Boy of Three Days," "The Greatest Battle in History - General Kanshin vs. Shokatsu Koumei," and "The Boy Detective, Kindaichi Shōtarō, Appears!" The final chapter is titled "The Siege of Babel". No further stories have been animated.
An 2007 Remake of the series entitled GR: Giant Robo (GR ジャイアントロボ, GR: Jaianto Robo?) was then produced by A.C.G.T.. It was written by Chiaki Konaka (Serial Experiments Lain, The Big O) and directed by Masahiko Murata (Jinki:EXTEND, Mazinkaiser). The TV series is a re-imagining of Mitsuteru Yokoyama's manga of the same name and created to commemorate Giant Robo's 40th anniversary. Aside from the source material, this show has nothing to do with this OVA.
Read more about this topic: Giant Robo (OVA)
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The problem of culture is seldom grasped correctly. The goal of a culture is not the greatest possible happiness of a people, nor is it the unhindered development of all their talents; instead, culture shows itself in the correct proportion of these developments. Its aim points beyond earthly happiness: the production of great works is the aim of culture.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
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—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)