Name(s): Mazinger Z vs The Great General of Darkness / Mazinger Z vs. Ankoku Daishogun / Mazinger Z tai General Dark / Mazinger-Z vs General of Darkness / マジンガーＺ対暗黒大将軍 / Mazinger Z contre le Général Dark
Format: Movie
Studio(s): Toei Animation

Mazinger Z vs The Great General of Darkness is a remade special of the final episode of the Mazinger Z TV series. Though the endings of each ultimately lead to the same continuity, this extended version allows for a slightly different, more dramatic series of events.

After the “ending” of Mazinger Z, Kouji Kabuto and friends are enjoying their summer vacation when a mysterious prophet appears and foretells an apocalyptic scenario where the Mikene Empire’s Great General of Darkness and his Warrior Beasts will defeat Mazinger Z and ravage the Earth. Despite this warning, Kouji does the only thing he can do and battles the overwhelming Warrior Beasts. Amidst the fighting things look bleak as Mazinger Z is proven to be no match for the new enemies, and Kouji’s brother Shiro is seriously injured in the crossfire. Hope eventually arrives in the form of Tetsuya Tsurugi and his Great Mazinger, a new and improved brother to Mazinger Z.

The fact that this special actually has continuity is enough to place it as superior to most Mazinger Z specials, or even most episodes of the original series. This isn’t a monster-of-the-week format episode where things will reset back to normal afterwards, it’s an important shift for the series. Granted, it’s not a very major one. Though Great Mazinger can blow things up more easily than Mazinger Z, it is still largely the same in both design and attacks. This special is essentially an introduction to a reskin of Mazinger Z in an attempt to drum up more interest in the franchise. Nonetheless, it establishes several important new elements of Mazinger‘s story that fans will always bring to mind whenever the series is mentioned, so it has value.

Though the serious tone is much different than what Mazinger Z is normally with its simple comedy, it doesn’t amount to much after everything basically goes back to normal again with Mazinger Z being replaced by the very similar Great Mazinger. There’s still not much consequence here, and the cliffhanger ending is deliberately unsatisfying to set up the Great Mazinger TV series.

For 1974, the animation is certainly above average, which you would expect from something aired in theaters. The framerate is rarely noticeable, and though the art quality itself is generally average for the 70s there are a few detailed animation stills here and there with the monsters destroying the cities being one such example(s). There’s a lot of theme music played, which is one of the traits of the old Mazinger series that holds up the best, so that’s great (but no Mazinger Z theme?).

All in all a good piece of super robot history, but as expected it’s for converted fans of 70s super robot anime only.