Our justice takes the shape of a giant robot! Its name is Zambot 3!
Zambot 3, or more fully,
Invincible Super Man Zambot 3, is a 1977 anime series by long-standing mecha anime studio Sunrise and
Yoshiyuki Tomino. Despite consisting of pretty standard
Super Robot Genre fare,
Zambot 3 stands out for two things. Firstly, it had something of a
Downer Ending. Secondly, it featured
child abuse on an unprecedented level for a childrens show. The general story is that
Earth is being invaded by aliens called Gaizok which came to earth chasing after the survivors of another planet, who came
to live and hide on earth. However, they left behind two weapons -
King Beal and
Zambot 3. Cue
Monster of the Week.
It occasionally gets featured in the
Super Robot Wars, where usually they have a high chance to appear together with its spiritual successor
Daitarn 3 (in fact it can't seem to exist without Daitarn in SRW), thus they could do combination attacks together. This, however, is mostly offset with the lessening of its
brutal nature and child abuse.
Super Robot Wars Z rectifies this sorta, by showing how their abuse takes their toll. But it still avoids the
Kill 'Em All ending.
This show provides examples of:
- Ace Pilot: The ace pilot Kappei literally pilots a robot called Zambo Ace.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Big Bad is a alien super computer.
- Alien Among Us: The Jin Family.
- Alien Invasion
- Anyone Can Die
- The Battlestar: King Beal, Bandok
- Big Friendly Dog: Chiyonishiki
- Bloodless Carnage: Whenever a human bomb explodes, the human completely vanishes.
- The Butcher: The Dragon is Killer the Butcher.
- Calling Your Attacks
- Chekhov's Volcano
- Child Soldiers
- Combining Mecha
- Cool Ship
- Death Is Dramatic: At least, it becomes so - in the first few episodes, civilian casualties seem to be completely shrugged off.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Kozuki. And also Kappei, even if in much more expensive way.
- Falling into the Cockpit: In Kappei's case, literally.
- Finishing Move: MOON ATTAAACK!
- Forgotten Phlebotinum: The Gaizok create a material that can deflect absolutely any attack. One Mecha Boost is coated in this, then it is never reused.
- Actually, the associated trope is averted. Butcher does bring back the most successfull of the Mecha Boosts for one episode and that one is included.
- Humongous Mecha
- Infant Immortality: Averted. And HOW!
- Jerkass: Kappei is a total asshole at first, deliberately refusing to have his machine combine with the others, nearly killing someone by pretending to punch them while in the machine, and pretty much mucking things up more than they need to.
- Kaiju: The Mecha Boosts are technically robots, but they generally look more like organic monsters you might find in a Godzilla film.
- Kid Hero
- Kill 'Em All: By the man himself
- Large and in Charge: Butcher
- Let's Get Dangerous
- Limited Animation: No animation supervisor, and many episodes were animated by just one or two people.
- Made of Explodium
- Miniature Senior Citizens
- Monster of the Week
- Off Model: Constantly.
- Omniscient Morality License: So it's okay for Uchuta and Kappei to mock Keiko and imply she hasn't been weened off her mother's breast milk and then laugh when she rips her birthday present kimono in the process of trying to grab them. It was all just to piss her off so she'd storm off and go visit her mother. Sure. That makes up for being, you know asses for no real reason.
- "On the Next Episode of..." Catch Phrase: "Well, how are they going to fight through this?"
- Psychopathic Manchild: Butcher's not only a completely unforgivable asshole, but spends most of his on screen time acting like a moron. Makes it all the more terrifying when he turns killing people into a game.
- Robeast: Mecha Boosts
- Scarf of Asskicking: A technicolor one made by Aki in one episode. Zambot wears this at the very end of the episode, possibly making this the Trope Maker for mecha.
- Sleep Learning: Which is only the start of the child cruelty.
- Some Kind of Force Field: Around the Bandok.
- Spiritual Successor: Daitarn 3
- Super Robot Genre
- Super Robot Wars: Super Robot Wars 4, Super Robot Wars Compact 2, Super Robot Wars Advance, Super Robot Wars Reversal, Super Robot Wars Z/2, and Super Robot Wars 64
- Theme Music Power-Up
- Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe
- The Tokyo Fireball
- Transforming Mecha
- Unbuilt Trope: Could be considered a Deconstruction of Super Robot Genre anime...decades before Neon Genesis Evangelion came out.
- Villains Out Shopping: Killer the Butcher, in spite of being a pretty depraved guy, is often shown doing stupid stuff like trying on jewelry or taking a bath.
- Why Am I Ticking?: Halfway through the series, this becomes the weapon of choice of the Gaizok.
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