Search - Tekkaman Blade Collection, Vol. 1 on DVD

Amazing version

Georgios Papadakis | Athens, Greece | 03/05/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This version of Tekkaman Blade is simply the best! The video and audio quality is far better than Tekkaman Blade Ebay's version. The subtitles are very good and the special features have also subtitles. So if you don't know which version should buy, I recommend getting this one, especially if you are a tekkaman blade fan."

"Voltekka!!!!!!!!"

Strategos | In Space above Planet Earth | 03/27/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The 80's is like some kind of bottomless treasure trove. Every time I think I've seen every great sci-fi movie and anime from my favorite decade, I find another awesome piece of entertainment. A while back I rented a piece of anime history known as Detonator Orgun. While I loved the character designs and basic storyline, I found the overall quality of the OAV somewhat lacking (in particular I wasn't crazy about the music). Fast-forward a few years and I found myself on a whim renting Tekkaman, just to see if it was any good. I LOVE getting surprises like THIS.

If you dig the whole "personal armor suit" genre of Bubblegum Crisis, Detonator Orgun, The Guyver, ect, you will LOVE this show. Basically it's everything a fan of 80's anime could ever want. You have a world in peril being attacked by giant bug aliens (known as the Radam), a brooding amnesiac anti-hero protagonist, the usual assortment of sidekicks to keep things from getting too serious, lots and lots and LOTS of bad guys for the hero to fight, sweet animation good enough to be a movie but instead a whole long TV show, great symphonic score soundtrack that adds so much to everything in every way, some really great story and characterization by way of an excellent script, and very good acting all around. But of course the real reason to see this show is the manic, over-the-top, explosive action sequences which feature martial-arts style fights between the hero and his many enemies, huge chain explosions of the aliens, and of FANTASTIC sound effects that sound like they came out of the remastered Gundam Trilogy. Awesome.

On the flip side you could say that this show is your typical monster-of-the-week fest that just has our protagonist fight battles over and over, but no one knows how to do a show like this the way the Japanese do. We have protection missions, destroy-the-superweapon-before-it-destroys-Earth missions, and of course the tension of Tekkaman having to change back into a human being before the suit takes over and turns him into a Radam too. The script just keeps things interesting the entire way, and there's always something new and unexpected coming. Two of my favorite episodes in this volume were protection missions, one with a mysterious transport pilot who sacrificed himself for the Earth only to be considered expendible by the military, and the other the very next episode where some European soldiers try to get high-speed craft from the alien-occupied orbital station, and the commander refuses to call of the mission because he secretly wants to visit the bodies of his dead comrades who died on the previous attempt (and he keeps breaking into song, singing Danny Boy). You could this show cheesy or silly, but I just love it.

We also get (late in this volume) to see Tekkaman's Radam twin brother, and the great psychological and physical battle between the two of them. And that leads to (spoiler alert) the fantastic episodes where Tekkaman finally exceeds his 30 minute limit. His body goes on a whirlwind journey of destruction while his mind is tortured by agonizing nightmares of a past he tried to forget and leave behind. Toss in the unresolved question of where exactly he came from and what happened to the rest of his family, and you have some really great drama in this volume at the end.

If you love action and love 80's anime you definitely owe it to yourself to check this one out. From the great music (one of the themes reminds me a piece from Holst's Planets!) to the explosive action (I love the Voltekka attack!), to the endearing characters (I think every one of them is interesting and there's surprising depth), to the classic story (saving the human race and planet Earth never gets old), this is about the most perfect anime show I've ever seen from the 80's. Rent it, watch it, buy it. You won't regret it."