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YMMV / UFO Robo Grendizer

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  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Broken Base: Between the Mazinger Z/Great Mazinger fans and the ones from Grendizer anime (especially fans from France, Canada and the Middle East for the latter). This is due to the distribution of the anime in these countries previously to the two prequels, leading to the confusion that the former series were actually rip-offs of Grendizer. Besides clarifications over time, there is still a feel of mutual hate, since the anime version of Grendizer differs very much from the original manga and the concept of the whole Mazinger saga, leading over time to Mazinger fans call Mazinkaiser as the true third series from the saga, and Grendizer fans considering their anime as a self-contained universe, somehow settling the conflict (except if a Mazinkaiser vs. Grendizer in Super Robot Wars multiverse turns up...)
  • Complete Monster:
    • Original manga: The psychotic Barados is the worst of the Vegan commanders. When attacking Planet Fleed, Barados built a mountain out of the civilian dead while abducting the women and children. Barados used them as hostages to get Planet Fleed to turn over their best weapons and proceeded to "release" them—by dropping them down miles to shatter upon the ground. Upon taking command of the invasion upon Earth, Barados targets civilians to abduct and ties them to his own mecha when engaging Grendizer, killing several just to prove a point and intending on killing them all to secure his victory.
    • Gosaku Ota's manga: King Vega, ruler of the Vegan forces, is a brutal conqueror who abandoned most of his people to die on their doomed homeworld, deeming them unworthy of rescue. Conquering world after world, Vega had Planet Fleed annihilated, with the people massacred, converted into Cannon Fodder soldiers, or having the women sent to "service" Vegan officers. On Earth, Vega commands widespread destruction from his forces, and when he takes command, intends to set off every nuke in the world to exterminate all life on the planet, something which horrifies even other Vegan commanders like the ruthless Zuril.
  • Gateway Series:
    • In France. Goldorak, as it's known there, arrived in the late '70s on a public channel and created a public outcry. The reason was the French opening song, that some found kinda xenophobic, extending this to the show itself. It was a HUGE success anyway, and it's basically thanks to this show that the anime fanbase exists in France, since it created the first French generation of anime fans.
    • Likewise in Quebec, when said French dub was exported to La Belle Province in 1978 and became a Saturday morning institution on TVA, staying on in reruns through at least 1984. Years later, when it was rerun again to coincide with its DVD release, it caused a sensation all over again. It wasn't the first anime aired in Quebec, but it had a cultural impact that few other shows have had, before or since.
    • Many Middle-Eastern anime fans name this as their very first anime.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Good god. There's actually a case for naming the trope "Non-Japanese Love Grendizer", as the show has an absolutely enormous following in the Arab world, as well as in Europe, particularly in France and Italy (where it was the first exported anime to get truly, monstrously popular). In Italy, where the show is known as Goldrake, it's still very popular, particularly with kids of the '80s. Quebec also got the imported French version and it did well there — in sharp contrast to how it ultimately fared in the U.S. The video game adaptation for 2023 is also published and developed by French companies (with little involvement from Bandai Namco and their usual crossover where Grendizer showed up occasionally), showing just how loved this series was there. A French sequel comic was also released in 2021.
  • Ho Yay: A section of the fandom sees the relationship between Kouji and Duke like this. Two handsome men who are good friends and rivals — it'd be odder if some parts of the fandom did not latch onto this.
  • Narm:
    • Grendizer's appearance when equipped with the original Spazer can be unintentionally hilarious to some, as the way it goes around Grendizer makes it look like its head and chest are coming out of a giant hamburger or somebody wrapped it tightly in a towel to restrain it like a bird. This is probably why it's changed in Grendizer Giga into being a giant UFO that the mecha itself rides inside of.
    • The Theme Naming for the Saucer Beasts can also invoke this, as their repititive names often come across as silly and cutesy sounding, not to mention how a lot of them share the concept of emerging from saucers that give some of them an appearance that's best described as an "evil space hamburger".
  • Nightmare Fuel: Commander Barados' method of dealing with hostages.
    Duke: And it was then... That cruel rain began to fall! A deluge from children began to rain upon Fleed. From three-thousand meters in the sky... The children...
  • No Problem with Licensed Games: UFO Robot Grendizer - Feast of the Wolves is a fun albeit short action game that's also very faithful to the show with its storytelling, which is a given considering how despite being a licensed game the developers are diehard Grendizer fans who put a lot of passion into it.
  • Older Than They Think: The marketing for the 2023 video game UFO Robot Grendizer - Feast of the Wolves claims to be the first time Grendizer itself has ever been playable in a video game, when in actuality it was first playable in Super Robot Wars 2 a few decades earlier along with it also making a playable appearance in the 1994 Mazinger Z Shoot 'Em Up.
  • Sequel Displacement: Grendizer was aired in France and in Italy before Mazinger Z, becoming phenomenally popular. When Mazinger-Z was aired, it was accused of ripping-off one of its sequels in France. (Italy, on the other hand, happens to love Mazinger as much as Grendizer, probably the only occurrence of this outside of Japan).
  • Ship-to-Ship Combat: In this franchise's fandom you find two kind of people: those that think that Kouji Kabuto was in love with Sayaka Yumi, and those that think that he barely cared for her like a friend (Sayaka has always been his Official Couple or at the very least Implied Love Interest, but you talk about facts to a shipper) and he paid more attention to any other woman that showed up in the series (Misato, Erika, Minerva...). Kouji/Maria are the largest faction of the second group by far, due to the sheer amount of people watched Grendizer first. And then you have the people who ships Sayaka with Boss, or the arguments among Duke/Hikaru and Duke/Rubina shippers. However, debates between shippers are refreshingly civil and without mud-slinging.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Arguably, several of the one-shot Vegan ambassadors/officers, whom could have added some interesting complications to the war (Rubina being the worst offender in this regard).
  • The Woobie: Honestly, Rubina could not catch a break.

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