Giant Gorg is easily one of the best anime of the 80s, and it has now been remastered and is finally available on Blu-ray.
When the DVD version of the series was released back in 2016, I was understandably elated. Originally aired in 1984, Giant Gorg was a huge missed opportunity on the part of Sunrise. Mainly because if it had been given an international release when it was originally made, it would have likely blown people’s minds.
The animation alone for a TV series from this era is insanely good. There is no earthly reason why the animators had to go so hard on this show. But hard they went, and the results were and still are genuinely wondrous.
It also had a great story and delved into mysterious ancient civilizations, which were all the rage back in the 80s for cartoons. I, for one, grew up watching the likes of Mysterious Cities of Gold and Ulysses 31, both of which had a Japanese production back-end, and I can entirely see Giant Gorg fitting in very neatly between those two shows.
However, Giant Gorg was and is on a different level, and in 2016, I was very happy to finally have it available in any format outside of Japan.
Fast-forward to the end of last year, when Giant Gorg’s Japanese Blu-ray remaster was released in the West, and again, I am faced with the question of “what if?”
This new Blu-ray version shows again just how insanely good the animation is for a TV anime series. While the likes of Future Boy Conan defined a whole generation of anime for kids, Giant Gorg does likewise. The sad truth to all this, though, is that in Japan, when Giant Gorg was released, it did so to indifferent silence.
Since my review of the DVD version, I have interviewed Giant Gorg’s creator and director, Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, and heard directly from him about how the show was received. I have also talked with Mamoru Nagano about how he worked on the show and redesigned the internals of the buddy vehicle called the Beagle.
If anything, having spoken with both of these legendary figures in anime has only made me appreciate Giant Gorg all the more.
When a new mecha show dropped in the 80s, the mecha had gimmicks and were squarely featured in the first episode for all to see. This was a big part of how the money was made in the backend through model kit and toy merchandising.
Giant Gorg flipped all that on its head by having a titular mecha that didn’t turn up until the fourth episode and had no gimmicks to speak of, apart from being blue and looking really cool.
Instead, Yasuhiko and his team focused on crafting a fun take on Treasure Island with an interesting idea of meeting aliens that had arrived in Earth’s distant past and had fallen asleep only to wake in the present day.
Much of the appeal of the show, apart from how great it looked, was the thoughtful and gradual pacing, where you found out what’s so special about this tiny island in the Pacific and why very powerful corporate forces wanted to control it.
Back when I reviewed Future Boy Conan, I was pretty upfront about how great it was for families, even today, decades after its initial release. I really feel the same is true for Giant Gorg. It’s a great show on so many levels and is also more nuanced than you would first think, with many of the characters playing against type in surprising ways.
As for this Blu-ray release, like with other Discotek Blu-rays, there aren’t any real extras to speak of. It’s just all 26 episodes remastered beautifully with a solid translation handled via English subtitles. However, all of this is subsequently priced at a very reasonable $37.46, which is a fraction of what the Japanese Blu-ray boxset cost back when it was released in 2022.
That said, one minor addition is that the cover has a map of Austral Island on the flipside, which is a very nice touch.
Overall, Giant Gorg is a genuine classic in the medium of anime. With great animation, a wonderful story and involved characters, this is one of the best anime ever made. So don’t mind me, as I watch this at the same Gorg time on the same Gorg channel.
Giant Gorg is available on Blu-ray from the Crunchyroll online store for $37.46.
Disclosure: Crunchyroll sent me this Blu-ray for the purposes of this review.
Follow me on X, Facebook and YouTube. I also manage Mecha Damashii and am currently featured in the Giant Robots exhibition currently touring Japan.
