4 out of 5

Directed by: Katsuhito Akiyama

Much, I have to suppose, like a fair amount of my uncultured Western brethren, I was introduced to the concept of The Guyver – an of-alien-origin ‘bio’ weapon that bonds with a human host as wicked cool body armor – through copious reruns on HBO of the grand 90s live action version.  As a youngster, I had no idea this was taken from source material, and it wasn’t until multiple rentals as an adult encouraged eventual wikipedia lookups and the discovery of Bio Booster Armor Guyver the manga, the original OVA, and later, with a Funimation hookup, the 2006 Guyver: The Bioboosted Armor, which is much more faithful to Yoshiki Takaya’s work than any other adaptation.

Much to its benefit.  While Guyver is excessively lore-heavy, to the extent that it’s constantly re-explaining Zoalords, and Zoanoids, and Guyver units, and making sure we buy into its revisionist history of how humans came to be, the reminder that there’s a story backing up things is handy, considering the 26-episode series is almost one entire chase sequence.  This is, I must say, it’s main success, along with how seriously it attempts to take the affects and effects of its events.  Yes, that means the lore is met with an equal amount of dramaturgy: heroes crying; villains laughing; proclamations about saving people and whatnot.  And maybe there are a couple of blind alleys of “secret plans” that never seem to come to much fruition, but I’m telling you: non-stop chase.  And it just gets bigger, and bigger.  Every time we think that the show has underminded its momentum by having Guyver – teen Sho, accidentally having stumbled across the armor and now bonded to it – defeat another of shadowy organization Chronos’ overpowered minions (they want the guyver back, you see), everyone heals up and just tries again.  It creates a feeling of hopelessness that the heroes are very aware of, with any attempts to run thwarted by another round of battling yet again; a war of attrition where the countless waves of baddies know that Sho will eventually just wear down.

The grandioseness of the plot and the acting balance this out, then, and it’s interesting to see the people around Sho torn between fear and the desire to help; enemies made into allies when it dawns on them that they’ll suffer under Chronos rule as well.

This keeps piling up into bigger and bigger conflagrations – Zoalords and mutated Zoanoids finding dastardly ways to add to their powers – until a surprisingly bleak penultimate confrontation.

The Guyver’s story is ridiculous, and its characters constantly over-emotive.  But this amping up is required to meet the intensity of its damned thrilling non-stop battles, Takaya’s ace creature design brought to impressive life by OLM studio.