Ani-Mania: ‘Jinki: Extend’

It’s good to see that they’re still making robot shows. No, really, I mean it. I grew up on Voltron — it was the first anime I ever watched, even though I didn’t know it was anime at the time — and while mecha isn’t my personal favorite, I still have a fondness for the genre. I suppose it would be easy to argue that with so many giant robot series already out there, do we REALLY need another one? We have the classics, like Macross/Robotech, the prolific Gundam universe (which incidentally gave their name to a late publication that was highly respected in the anime industry — we still miss you, Newtype) and the quintessential Neon Genesis Evangelion, a serious contender for the title of best animated series of all time. With names like these already established as the cornerstones of the giant robot genre, what more could any new series possibly hope to accomplish?

While I firmly believe that there is still room for the emergence of another ground breaking mecha series, Jinki: Extend probably won’t be it. Instead, it finds its niche by satisfying the seemingly inexhaustible appetite for giant robot fare with a few twists of its own.

Jinki tells the story of Aoba Tsuzaki, a seemingly normal girl with the odd hobby of building plastic robot models. We learn that she’s lost most of the people close to her, which makes her come off as something like Tohru Honda with a mecha fetish. And then, one day, she’s kidnapped by a strange man in drag, who takes her to a secret base (no, he isn’t Yuki), where we learn her mother (yes, her mother is still alive — the Tohru comparison only goes so far) has plans for her (and YES, this is very much like NGE).

Aoba, a hopeless mecha otaku, can’t resist stowing aboard one of the giant Jinki, as we learn the robots are called, as it goes off to battle. After a harrowing ordeal in which she loses her pants but manages to successfully contribute to defeating the enemy, we learn that Aoba and the Jinki are somehow connected, and it is heavily foreshadowed that she will go on to be a Jinki pilot.

Admittedly, this is something of a softball show. The opening scene of the first episode, with its beautiful rendering of the rain as a giant robot crashes into the city, quickly gives way to some sketchier animation. The colors are off in some of the early scenes, and Aoba’s hair looks like a sheet of paper as it flaps in the wind. The series is rife with cliches, from the standard, white haired frost maiden to angsty teenage emo-ness, which seems to be the only fuel capable of powering giant robots. Large sections of plot and devices are borrowed from Evangelion, complete with a shadowy board of world leaders — only in this case, for some strange reason, they’re all animals.

There’s so much weirdness, but somehow, the show comes out better than you might expect — perhaps better than it has any right to be. And predictability goes with the turf in such an established genre. I had a conversation with a woman in the manga section of a local bookstore who told me that she’d always known what time to leave to take her kids to school in the morning because the lions would always form Voltron at the same time in EVERY episode!

A lot can be forgiven if you take the TV PG rating as a clue that the series might have originally been aimed at kids. If nothing else, the incredibly fast pace means that while the details might not be well developed, the sheer volume of all that happens in a given episode distracts the viewer from the show’s other short comings.

So who exactly IS the target audience for Jinki? The blurb on the back cover exclaims, “Raging robots! Twisted sub-plots! And a bevy of battling babes!” That seems obvious enough, but upon actually WATCHING the series, I’m not so sure. It would be easy to cast model building Aoba as little more than a wish fulfilling, female version of your average giant robot geek, but like so many other things about this show, that label just doesn’t quite fit. Aoba is too much her own character — she’s too independent, and dare I say, spunky, to neatly fit into a defined category.

While there is some fanservice, it’s very mild, and instances of it are few and far between. The “bevy of battling babes” stay in the background for much of the show, while the real focus is on Aoba’s struggles, friendships, and (le gasp!) relationships, all of which seems to suggest a genuine attempt to court a female audience. Maybe Jinki will end up in the anime canon after all, as a series that helped blaze the way for a new era of shoujo mecha. Only time will tell. But for now, Jinki should appeal to fans of the giant robot genre who are looking for something new to watch and don’t mind that a lot of this is a rehash of something they’ve already seen before. Heck, for diehard fans, that predictability might be an asset. The series need only make a few well placed nods to established mecha franchises, and fans will know where they are.

Also, the TV PG rating makes this one a good choice for the kids, and remember parents, only pre-teens and young adolescents are capable of properly piloting the giant robots that must save the world from imminent alien invasion. Children are the future.

The cast definitely has some highlights worth mentioning. Aoba gets her voice from Brittney Karbowski, who has appeared in Kanon and Godannar, and will be voicing Black Star in next year’s Soul Eater. Ryohei, Aoba’s friend/kidnapper/potential love interest is voiced by Jason Douglas, who has made appearances in some classic properties like Area 88 and Chrono Crusade. Genta, Aoba’s older, non-cross dressing mentor is voiced by John Swasey, who was the voice of Mister in Coyote Ragtime Show, and appropriately enough, the voice of Gendo Ikari in the director’s cut of NGE. Rui, Aoba’s white haired friend/nemesis, is played by Luci Christian, who counts among her MANY credits the voice of Asuna in Negima, Chidori in Full Metal Panic, and Hitomi in Welcome to the NHK.

Speaking of the NHK, that will be next week’s review. I’ve been wanting to do a spotlight on this bizarre little show for quite a while, but until now, a massive secret conspiracy has been working to thwart my efforts. But, no more! Soon you will know the truth!