TAB: Tom's Anime Blog

There's a genre of anime that focuses on giant robots that combine in midair to form even larger giant robots, often to the strains of some sort of theme song mentioning justice. I had thought that this was lost to short parodies, like Gekiganger in Nadesico or the funny one in one of the Galaxy Angel series. But then along came Gravion, which once again places the super-robots at the center of attention (even as it mixes them with elements of a maid anime).

The story focuses on Eiji, who infiltrates a castle to try to rescue his sister. He doesn't immediately find her, but is instead roped into piloting the G-Attacker, a plane that combines up with various other drills, planes, and small giant robots to form a large giant robot that can use the power of gravity and shouted attack names to fight monster from space. Along with Eiji, pilots include Luna, a girl who lost her father to an alien attack; Ena, a maid; the large-breasted Mizuki; the mysterious girl Leele, and Toga, a boy who was raised in the castle and trained to pilot the core Gran Kaiser. Other characters include the rich Sandman who owns the castle where everyone lives, his sidekick robin raven, and the various maids who maintain the robots or the people in them.

It's an interesting choice to tell the story from Eiji's perspective, as it's Toga who pilots the core unit. IIRC, Eiji winds up forming one of the legs/feet of the combined robot.

I think the problem with Gravion is that it introduces the elements of what could turn out to be an okay show, but then utterly fails to resolve any of them. There's a monster of the week, but we never learn what the monsters are after (apart from them wanting to destroy humanity). Eiji doesn't find his sister. We learn that one of the non-Toga characters can pilot the Gran Kaiser, but then he or she never does it again.

There is the occasional good bit. I got quite the chuckle out of the battle that they fought on a beach in Okinawa, in which they re-animated all the stock footage so the characters were in bathing suits. But overall, this show smacked of wasted potential.

Now, I could change this after seeing the second series (Gravion Zwei), which could actually resolve some of the outstanding series. But for now, I'll call Gravion just okay.