After seeing the Casshern OVA, the live-action film adaptation, and the new 2008 anime, I wasn’t sure what to expect from the original “Neo-Human Casshern” series. Certainly it couldn’t be all that bad if Keiji Inafune himself liked it. After watching the corny, dated intro, and the excellent first episode, I soon realized the atmosphere it was portraying. Towns and cities are decimated, people die, and Andro Force is a massive threat. Make no mistake: this series lays it on thick. If this anime was meant for children, I don’t see how (of course, times were different back in 1972-73 though). This is a tale of war and one man’s struggle against an entire militia of robots. Each town and city he arrives to in his odyssey provides a unique insight on the struggles of war, the overpowering wrath of the Andro Force, and how we humans choose to endure it. Some of the episodes can be downright depressing, but there are a lot of good ones too. Braiking Boss, the main villian, is an absolute beast.
Overall, I had only a few minor complaints. There were a few spelling errors in the subtitles, and some minute translation errors. For example, why do they keep calling Casshan a “newly-built man” when it should be a “neo-human?” Maybe the former just made more sense in the long run. Some of the animation quality was a bit shoddy as well, but this anime is also over 40 years old so you have to keep that in mind. Some of the episodes in the middle of the series tended to drag on a little bit too long, too. This was a really rare anime for American audiences until now, and I have to say I felt honored to have watched it. It’s easy to see how Keiji Inafune and many others were so inspired by this anime back then. If you enjoyed the Casshern Sins series, and you have a little patience for older animes, I highly recommend you pick this up. If nothing else, it’s a nice little historic time capsule of what animes used to be.
One of the biggest points I like to impart is that the during the ’70s, the creators and producers were opening up new frontiers, so the originality was thriving, before the toy companies began to dictate content and style. The plotting and writing, while less complex than some today, was also less convoluted and contrived, and the writers were all veteran, professional scribes of feature films and television shows of numerous genres (while today’s writers became such largely because they were Anime fans). Sentai Filmworks announced that it had signed a deal with Tatsunoko Productions for the original GATCHAMAN, CASSHAN, and nine other titles — could we hope for GATCHAMAN II (1978), GATCHAMAN FIGHTER (1979), TEKKAMAN: THE SPACE KNIGHT (1975), HURRICANE POLIMAR (1974), TIME BOKAN (1975), and GORDIAN (1979) to be among them? In any case, their Blu-ray release of CASSHAN will feature all 35 episodes so strap yourself in and enjoy the ride. Thanks in part to the blu-ray format; Colors are really beautifully vivid and nicely saturated. The often rather thick line detail is quite sharp, though overall this is a fairly soft looking outing, albeit one that retains a completely naturally organic look.