Around 1995, Japanese animation (anime) began pouring into North America, Europe and across the globe in video form. Most of these titles were unknown outside of Japan and never covered by animation journals. Whether a title is highly popular or very obscure, a high quality theatrical feature or a cheap and unimaginative direct-to-video release, they all look the same on a store shelf. Therefore, Animation World Magazine will regularly review several new releases (including re-releases not previously covered) that have merit.

Android Kikaider: The Animation and its sequel Kikaider-01: The Animation borrow from Pinocchio.

Android Kikaider: The Animation. V.1, Lonely Soul. V.2, Conflicting Hearts. V.3, Unveiled Past. V.4, Silent Journey.
TV series (13 episodes), 2000-2001. Director: Tensai Okamura. V.1, 4 episodes/100 minutes; v.2-4, 3 episodes/75 minutes. Price & format: DVD bilingual $29.98. Distributor: Bandai Entertainment.

Kikaider 01: The Animation. V.1, Another Journey.
OAV series (4 episodes), 2001-2002. Director: Keitaro Motonaga. V.1, 4 episodes/100 minutes. Price & format: DVD bilingual $29.98. Distributor: Bandai Entertainment.

This Kikaider is a tribute to master cartoonist Shotaro Ishinomori. He began as a young assistant to Osamu Tezuka in the 1950s. When Tezuka was dubbed “The God of Manga,” Ishinomori became “The King of Manga.” He created many of the most popular sci-fi manga and TV anime series of the 1960s, and then in the 1970s specialized in TV’s live-action “monster of the week” equivalent which led to the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers genre.

Ishinomori helped with Tezuka’s early Astro Boy stories. Jinzo Ningen Kikaider (most frequently translated as Artificial Man Kikaider) was Ishinomori’s own rewriting of Pinocchio into modern sci-fi terms as a robot (“kikai” is the Japanese word for “a machine”) who wants to become a human. The live-action TV series ran for 43 episodes from July 8, 1972 to May 5, 1973, and was followed immediately by a Kikaider-01 sequel, 46 episodes, May 12, 1973 to March 30, 1974.

Ishinomori died in 1998, and there was a brief vogue in modernizing his most popular titles. Jinzo Ningen Kikaider: The Animation was a 13-episode anime TV series from October 16, 2000 to January 8, 2001, animated by the Radix and Studio OX studios. Kikaider-01: The Animation was a 4-episode OAV series by Studio OX alone, released between November 2001 and March 2002.

Kikaider is an uneven mixture of serious melodrama and the anime recreation of actors in rubber suits laying waste to miniature-set cities. Mitsuko and Masaru are the teen daughter and young son of Dr. Komyoji, an obsessed robotics scientist. Mitsuko resentfully compares their situation to Pinocchio: “Geppetto made Pinocchio because he was childless, but you have two children, father — why do you ignore us for those machines?” When the lab is destroyed and robots in the form of giant insects and animals start terrorizing the city, she fears that her father was a mad scientist. It turns out that Komyoji was taking funding from Professor Gill, who he realized too late was using his robots to build a crime empire. To atone for it, Komyoji invented a “conscience circuit” but was only able to install it in his most advanced robot before Gill killed him. Kikaider, disguised as Jiro, an adolescent rock guitarist, undergoes all the angst of a robot wanting to be a real human; while Mitsuko, seeing that her father made him in the image of her murdered older brother, is torn between revulsion and guilt since she realizes that Kikaider, the innocent victim of all this, is trying to be as moral and helpful as he can. Anguish — torment — some subtle imagination, as in the “Gemini conscience circuit” (pronounced the same as “Jiminy” as in Jiminy Cricket, Pinocchio’s conscience in the Disney version) — interrupted by all those pro forma robot-hero-vs.-giant-monster battles. Forget the Kikaider-01 sequel; both the animation and story quality drop off sharply. But Android Kikaider: The Animation is an intriguing attempt to put some depth and imagination into a formula that does not have room for it.