​Years before experimenting with CG animation and making recent titles such as the Appleseed movie series and Space Pirate Captain Harlock, Shinji Aramaki was of and still is one of the most influential mechanical designers in the Anime industry. Working in such titles as Genesis Climber MOSPEADA, Bubblegum Crisis, Halo Legends, Project Blue Earth SOS, Megazone 23 etc. you can see how much attention to detail is put into the look of each mechanical or robotic design which is why I’ve always praised and admired him both as a designer and a filmmaker for the work he has contributed. For his second and also solo directorial work Metal Skin Panic MADOX-01 stands as being his only work in an OVA and one he not only directed but written as well. This is sadly one of his works that had there been more to it in terms of story and character, it would have left more of an impression because it clearly shows.

When it comes to anthology films Robot Carnival takes its place up there among masterpieces such as Walt Disney’s Fantasia as well as mindless but entertaining shlock such as Heavy Metal, what these films manage to do is set themselves up as testing ground beginning directors as a way of getting ready to take on future projects later on in their careers but also they have a good way of bringing out the best from both the directors and the animators in the stories they can tell as a way of coming together. To help expose their talents for future projects down the line, Robot Carnival manages to tell some rather unique little stories under the command of 9 different directors with different styles under the running time of 90 minutes using Robots as its central theme.

The evolution of the male protagonist in anime and manga is an interesting one, over the years we’ve seen how the personality and style has changed to the male character and how today it manages to leave a different impact on the audience. A “Badass” lead character in Anime or Manga has a different variety of characters to choose from, whether it be Guts from Berserk, Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star or Cobra from Space Adventure Cobra; the male leading character based on their masculinity and their somewhat tough personality is what makes them iconic characters in anime (especially older anime). One of those characters which has been running for over 30 or 40 years still stands as a “Man’s Man” in this field, one of them is Golgo 13.