117. Cybernetics Guardian

• Cybernetics Guardian (1989: AIC) / eps.

Koichi Ohata is name that strikes fear into the hearts of many an anime fans. Most people remember a director for being great but with Ohata most remember him for being terrible. He is the “genius” who brought us such hits as MD Geist, Genocyber, and Burst Angel. Cybernetics Guardian is another such “masterpiece” in the Ohata collection.

The story is set in the future where everyone lives in a cyber future aided by a mysterious alloy that can transfer human thoughts into energy or something. John Stalker is testing a new power suit, designed by Raia Rozetta (his sort of love interest). The goal of this test is prove that this non-lethal suit works and so they can go ahead with clearing up Cancer in a more friendly manner. What is Cancer I hear you ask? Well it is never really explained directly but you can infer that it is some sort of slum area in the city that was named Cancer as a very obvious metaphor. Adler, a man with ridiculous hair, wants to sabotage this test because he just wants to straight up kill everyone in Cancer, nice guy. The test goes wrong as per the plan but then John gets possessed by a literal God of destruction due to shenanigans via a religious cult. This eventually leads him to becoming a big monster who has to wrestle with himself, the cult, and Adler.

The plot is complete nonsense, but it isn’t quite ridiculous enough to tip this show over into being entertaining. That is my general complaint with this whole show, it is so close to being a so-bad-it’s-good kind of show but it never quite makes it over the hump. It doesn’t have the frantic 3 fight scenes every minute kind of lunacy of other wonderfully terrible OAVs, instead it has quite of a lot of downtime which quite frankly makes the whole thing a bit boring. Even when there is action it isn’t exactly amazing, this quite clearly had a low budget, and it doesn’t even have a fun amount of gore.

Honestly the best part of this show is the dub. It certainly isn’t good, but it is highly entertaining. Cancer provides some hilarious moments as you have people saying things such as “I was born in Cancer” and “I will save Cancer”. The characters aren’t even any good, mostly being a bit bland and generic, but the dub gives them a bit of life and fun.

The problem is why would you watch this? Genocyber and MD Geist are way more fun because they jump to that next level of insanity and lunacy that make them a ton of fun to watch. Cybernetics Guardian of the other hand is just a bit of a bore. I’m sure there is a fun little supercut to be made of people talking about Cancer but that is it. I think Mike Toole got it right when he ranked it as one of the least essential anime.

Final score: 2F