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Box Description:

Jiro destroyed the underground organization DARK, but he never returned to Mitsuko and his saga continues. While wandering from town to town, Jiro encounters a beautiful girl Rieko who is hiding a little boy from Professor Gill. It turns out that the boy is Professor Gill’s son, Akira, and the key to Gill’s malicious secret weapon and his plans to conquer the world.

Fate has brought Jiro to battle against Gill and his robots once again, but Jiro is not alone this time. By chance, he meets his older brother Ichiro who is also known as Kikaider 01. Ichiro may be more feisty and agile than Jiro but he lacks the human soul that Jiro possesses. Together, they join forces with Kikaider 00 and Bijinder to save Akira. And this time, Jiro will show no mercy against Gill and will stop at nothing to bury all evil, once and for all.

An OVA continuation of the Kikaider series, The Animation is filled with more androids and takes a different tone. The style of the previous show is still there, but the storytelling isn’t. The new pace of the show is action above all else. While the original show was introspective and slow-paced to allow the characters to simmer, this OVA is more like fast food – arrives quickly but not as satisfying as a sit-down Sunday dinner.

The first episode opens with an attack by a giant robot on an undisclosed city, but the attack fails when the power supply of the robot goes critical and the robot self-destructs. At this point, the unshown leader of the group exclaims that they 

need Akira. Starting off without any preamble, the show quickly places Rieko and Akira (Professor Gill’s son) under Jiro’s care and has them trying to escape from a horde of robots.

After surviving the conflict, an internal system guides Jiro to a Buddhist temple where he meets his “brother” Ichiro, another humanoid robot built by Dr. Komyoji, who lacks the Gemini system but has similar offensive 

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capabilities and his caregiver, the monk Fuuten. The monk claims to be Dr. Komyoji’s former mentor, and is also an expert in robots and has been keeping an eye on Ichiro until he was needed. After flying through these plot points, another robot appears outside the temple (he claims to be a member of SHADOW… yet another sinister underground organization) and orders Jiro to turn over Akira over to him. Refusing, the battle commences with Ichiro destroying everything in reach while Jiro works to protect the humans.

After the humans escape, Ichiro and Jiro follow but the lead robot manages to get ahead of them and Ichiro once again joins the battle. Defeating his foe at the expense of the last of his energy reserves, Ichiro is about to be killed by a crippled opponent before being saved by four Hakkaider robots.

Now hiding in the forest with Rieko and Akira, Ichiro and Jiro come across another android, this time a female one called Bijinder. After a prolonged battle where Bijinder has the upper hand, the brothers manage to escape when Bijinder sees Rieko and suddenly decides to withdraw.

The team now hides in a cottage in the forest where there are once again confronted by the Hakkaider robots, but the leader of them identifies himself as Professor Gill and the remainder as his closest members of DARK. The Hakkaiders break off to double team both Jiro and Ichiro, but once both brothers start getting the upper hand, Gill orders all of them to assemble into a giant robot. This new form starts devastating the brothers until they start working as a team.

The next episode starts with Ichiro battling his way through a series of enemies alone, with Jiro staying with Akira and Rieko. As Jiro starts to run away, the enemies begin chasing after their quarry leaving Ichiro to give chase through the large number of enemies. All of a sudden, a new ally arrives and it’s another Kikaider who quickly jumps headlong into battle and destroys anything in his way. The monk Fuuten arrives and introduces the new brother Rei, which Fuuten managed to create from recovered parts from Dr. Komyoji’s laboratory. The constant running has been wearing down Akira as he begins to look sickly, and Rieko suggests a nearby area to hide as she remembers the area. On their way to the area, Jiro, Ichiro and Rei are trapped in an energy net by SHADOW forces. Many explosions, the appearance of professor Gill, and androids beating on each other ensues.

To the conclusion! Now that Gill has Akira, he can now control his giant robot and he deploys it in a giant swath of destruction on the nearby city.

Jiro with his brothers and Bijinder decide to attack the giant robot to go get Akira back. During the assault, the giant robot unleashes its new weapon, the E.S.E. cannon that allows it to control any electric system. As such, everyone except Jiro is captured and taken into the robot, but Jiro manages to breach the outer defenses and heads to the heart where Akira is being held. In the heart chamber, Jiro is greeted by Gill who informs him that he now has control over his brothers and orders Rei and Ichiro to capture their brother. After a prolonged battle, Jiro succumbs and is brought to Gill’s laboratory. In the laboratory, Gill outfits Jiro with a control circuit, which will circumvent the Gemini circuit and allow Gill to order Jiro around.

There are a few more encounters leading to the dramatic conclusion, when Jiro explains to Gill that the control system completed his conscience circuit by adding evil and now he is able to lie and kill his brothers…

- Tazman

(April 21, 2004)

“You're giving up on me? Did the Rebels give up on Hoth?”

“Uh yeah, they did abandon it.”

- Mump and Gimpy (Undergrads)

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