Otakuism

On the tenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me: ten EVERYTHING FOR BIG FIRE’s, nine SKULL MAN’s,eight SYNAPSE ATTACK’s,seven GARO’s, six OH GAWDS YUNO IS MOE!, five ZERO!, four VOLTEKKA!, three PRIMAL SCREAMS OF HOT BLOODED FURY!, two(million) RONs!, and one GIGA DRILL BREAKER!

This is the tenth post in a series as I look at the twelve best anime moments of the year from shows I watched. Key there being watched, as a few of these moments are going to be from some pretty old stuff, but I think they’re damn good enough to talk about at any time. This is a joint ABC blogging project with other contributions from Roxas, CCYoshi, Orion, Owen S, Xerox, Nekoron, Martin, Michael Huang, usagijen, and Moogy. Yeah, there’s a lot of us. And if you haven’t seen Giant Robo then go watch it now, as this post contains some ending spoilers.

You have to watch both clips to really get the full impact of the moment. Sadly I can’t find any with subtitles, though.

I’ve said before how I consider Giant Robo to be an anime classic that needs to be seen by every person who calls themselves a true fan, whether they like mecha or not. Its themes of growing up, noble sacrifice, responsibility, and the power of legacy are universal and well worth seeing in action. There are literally a dozen great moments in Giant Robo, but my favorite comes in the final episode. Genya is about to strike the crushing blow to the battered fighters of the IPO, and Daisaku is paralyzed in his inability to rescue Ginrei. However, Daisaku does not wallow for long. He still does not have the answer to whether happiness can be obtained without sacrifice, but he will fight to protect the world right now.

It’s a great emotional moment as everyone rallies around Daisaku to protect him so he can get to Giant Robo and fight as one with him. The moment where Daisaku stands up as one with Giant Robo and everyone shouting behind him to fight Genya is really the climax of the series. It’s also the climax of Masamichi Amano’s music, with the score here perfectly intensifying the raw emotions. I can’t describe enough how perfect Amano’s music is; his work on Giant Robo is probably the best anime soundtrack ever made. the moment may be a bit melodramatic and slightly cheesy, but is awesome to the end, everything that I love about Giant Robo.