In 1998 I sat watching the Prince of Space episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I heard Tom Servo ask if the Satellite of Love’s weekly experiment was going to be a “hyper-violent porn cartoon” and immediately flashed back to the Guyver. And there goes the last otaku in the room. He was willing to put up with me until now, but that one was just over the line. Bye, dude! ‘Least he left before I started talking about Evangelion.

But first: based off a long-running, serialized manga series with some of the same characters and a similar name, Guyver: Out of Control took a long time to reach the U.S. But when it got here, in the dark year of 1993, it spread far and wide. Like a tentacle monster, it crept into the orifices of North American geekdom and, for better or worse, colored a generation’s perceptions of what anime was and could be.

But mostly worse since, as we’ll see below, it’s pretty crappy. Continue reading Guyver: Out of Control (1986) →