NOTE: I am not talking about the Guyver manga. I've never read it, I don't intend to.

Guyver

Guyver is not very good. After finishing Votoms (a very good show), the highly legal website I was watching it on recommended Guyver to me. I thought it was live-action tokusatsu from the thumbnail, but it turned out to be an OVA (specifically, the OVA from 1989 to 1992, which is 12 episodes long). It was not very good, but in a kind of interesting way.

The cool things about the Guyver OVA

  • It's got a budget of a piece of string and some bellybutton lint. Most would consider this a flaw, but I really like old anime that fight against their constraints. Guyver does its best to present a shonen fighting show while scrabbling for yen, which results in lots of slightly-too-long still shots, drawings being slid across the screen, and fights being choreographed to hide action shots. It's honestly cute.
  • Guyver himself is an interesting design, especially Guyver 3. I like monsters that are a mix of mechanical and biological (Zeiram and Hakaider come to mind) so this was up my alley.
  • I like that Guyver rips off his titties to use the megasmasher. I also like that it's called the megasmasher.

The uncool things about the Guyver OVA

  • It's misogynistic. The main female character is just there to be in danger or to be a romantic interest, and there are ZERO female zoanoids or guyvers.
  • It doesn't really go anywhere. It clearly only adapts part of the manga, but there's no attempt to really wrap anything up, and it ends at an awkward point. I wonder if the money really ran out, or if it was always meant to end there.
  • It's just not that great. Nothing about guyver stands out; the writing is mediocre, the backstory is uninteresting, and the plot twists are very obvious.

After watching and being generally unimpressed by the OVA, I decided to torture myself and watch the American live-action movies. I am VERY critical of American tokusatsu. From my experience they're ashamed to even be associated with their origins, and because of that go for a younger audience and have a wink-nudge sense of humour that screams 'I'm embarrassed to exist, so we can all agree this is dumb baby stuff, yeah?'. That, or they majorly overcorrect and become bland overly-gritty snorefests. The new American Godzilla movies are a sign that things might be changing a bit, but they've completely wiped out the practical effects aspect, so it's only tokusatsu by association. The Guyver and Guyver: Dark Hero did not raise my opinion of American toku.

The Guyver

Poor Mark Hamill. He's acting his heart out in this movie and for nothing - it's garbage. It's very clearly trying to go for the TMNT or Power Rangers crowd, so goes for grossout humour, straight up racism, and the most basic of basic plots. You can see some aspects of the original Guyver plot, but it has been so sanded down that you're left with a movie that wants to be anything else except what it actually is. Tokusatsu or martial arts fans will also be let down, as the suit acting is well below par. The Guyver is now an aikido aficionado, which mostly means he has a really silly pose when fighting. The Zoanoids aren't much better - it's all just boring, fights included. Seeing Mark Hamill turn into a cockroach was pretty funny, though.

Guyver: Dark Hero

The sequel is better than the first movie, but not by much.

The cool things about Dark Hero

  • This movie actually takes itself seriously, which I appreciate.
  • The martial arts is better. There's still a lot of rubber suits lumbering around, but there is now wireworks, real fighting, and cool moves.

The uncool things about the Dark Hero

  • It's misogynistic again. The main female character is just there to be in danger and to be a romantic interest, and there is now ONE female zoanoid, who is called a bitch and is useless in a fight.
  • It's so long!!! Oh my god!!! This should not have been two hours!! There's easily half an hour of guff that should have been cut.
  • It's just not that great. Nothing about guyver stands out; the writing is mediocre, the backstory is uninteresting, and the plot twists are very obvious. Deja vu...

In the end, Guyver is just not a very good franchise (manga excluded, I'm sure it's fine). I almost feel bad for it. There are so few American tokusatsu shows or movies that aren't just mutilated versions of Japanese shows. If you want to watch a movie about a hero fighting a biomechanical monster for the fate of humanity that includes humour and cool fights, watch Zeiram.