3ET: Kenzen Robo Daimidaler

Yeah, he's grabbing her boobs. And he's supposed to be the hero.

Studio: TNK

Director: Yanagisawa Tetsuya (High School DxD, Kannazuki no Miko)

Writer: Yoshioka Takao (High School DxD, Ikkitousen)

Main Cast:

Shimizaki Nobunaga as Madanbashi Kouichi

Hikasa Youko as Sonan Kyouko

Character Design: Goutou Junji (High School DxD, School Days)

Music: Nakanishi Ryousuke (Kuroko no Basuke, High School DxD)

There is a fine line between cheesy and stupid. And Kenzen Robo Daimidaler blows right past that line and revels in the latter. Any show about a giant robot that fights a group of people in skin-tight penguin suits with front-tails that look exceedingly phallic has to know that it is firmly in the stupid camp. And that could work if it was a tongue-in-cheek, campy parody of giant robot shows. Some of these ingredients are even present, mostly in the destruction of the unnamed Japanese city. It looks like they're animating a smaller model city getting destroyed. Or maybe that's a nice way of saying it looks really chearp. However, one ingredient is added to the mix that didn't need to be there. That ingredient would be the disgusting treatment of all women in the show.

What makes Daimidaler disgusting isn't even the perverse plot. I mean, I've seen shows where the giant robots are powered by sexual energy (Star Driver, for example) and it worked fine. But, there's a classy way to show that, and then there's what Daimidaler does. Madanbashi Kouichi is the kind of pervert who flips up girls' skirts and grabs his teacher's overly large breasts. And he does it with a look like he's getting the biggest boner in his life. His reward for all of this is not a sharp rebuke or a trip to the police station like he deserves. Instead, he gets to pilot a giant robot while fondling the woman sent to pick him up by a secret organization under a beauty salon. Also, no opportunity to show a woman's chest jiggle is ever passed up. Or to show women naked in the shower. Or to show their panties. More than the content of the plot, I was grossed out by the way it was presented. But hey, treating women like they are people is hard, right Japan?

You know, I think I'm just going to root for all the guys in this show to have their dicks fall off.

Even beyond the morally reprehensible protagonist and the camera work that is obsessed with boobs, I have a more fundamental issue with Daimidaler. And that would be that it's boring. Each episode follows the same formula of the Penguin Empire's new giant robot showing up, beating Kouichi in the Daimidaler, Kouichi learning some new way to be a chauvinistic pig, and then beating the Penguin Empire. Even if I could look past the moral issue I have with treating women like walking titties, I needed something more than what the show provided.

And I won't be seeing anymore of Kenzen Robo Daimidaler, because it is an obvious fail. There were a couple of positive moments, the best joke being the Penguin Empire's horrible website they use to promote themselves. But, for every one moment of decent humor, there were numerous attempts that fell between ineffective and offensive. I hope this ends up being one of the worst shows of the season, because if there are several shows that are this bad or worse, I'm going to have a very long slog.