1982 Post-Apocalyptic Comedy Dumbass Robot Anime: Combat Mecha Xabungle

If you were to ask me what makes 1982’s Combat Mecha Xabungle special among the 80s glut of robot anime, or the works of Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino, my answer would be very simple.

Xabungle is very silly. Japanese robot names are pretty silly to begin with, but Xabungle… that sounds silly on purpose. It’s got the word “bungle” in there. And so it is.

Xabungle is a borderline parody of the whole “sci-fi war waged by kids in robots” subgenre, only a couple of years after Gundam established it, created by the person who created Gundam in the first place.

Even the protagonist of Xabungle is silly. Look at meatball-head Jiron Amos. There are a lot of different kinds of people on this show, but nobody looks like Jiron. Behold the roundness of his every feature. Jiron, a reckless man of action, is also an outlier in his world: he makes his way by furiously mowing down what few rules exist on his lawless planet.

See, Xabungle is post-apocalyptic parody on top of it all. Planet Zola is a wasteland where people eat a lot of lizards, and nomadic traveling merchants travel between what tiny Wild West outposts of civilization still exist. By necessity of protecting their product in the absence of law and order, merchants become de-facto local warlords, riding in massive landships and fielding mercenary armies riding in “Walker Machines”, giant robots with steering wheels and gas pedals.

Of course, the merchants spend their days in battle with each other, while a mysterious ruling class called the Innocent pull the strings of the in-fighting and supply all the military hardware. As the story goes on, the political situation gets quite a bit more complicated.

People in this world are at once desperate and resigned. One of the few laws we’re told about is the “three-day rule”, by which all wrongdoing— mostly theft and murder in this world— has a statute of limitations of three days. Nobody can understand why poor Jiron is in pursuit of his parents’ killer: it’s been a week, after all. It’s a grim laugh when you consider that most of the cast of this show was probably orphaned long ago.

Jiron falls into a gang (the Sand Rats), and then they fall in with the crew of the Iron Gear, a merchant landship so pointlessly cutting edge that it can transform into a massive punchy robot itself. He naturally lands in the cockpit of the titular toy-selling Xabungle, a wonderfully gaudy blue transformer that looks nothing like any of the spartan weaponry used by everybody else on this show. There are two of them.

Having just lost its captain to an untimely death and lacking much professional or even adult crew, the Iron Gear is flailing and frantic. Absolutely nobody has their shit together on this ship (on this show). Least of all is new captain Elchi, who dreams of leaving her life of constant warfare behind and running away to the Innocent, who live pampered upper-class lives in domed fortresses.

As a borderline parody, Xabungle does have a developed world, some serious drama, and some genuine sincerity in it.

But as a parody, it refuses to execute according to formula: as evidenced by its occassional fourth-wall-breaking jokes, it’s aimed at a smart audience that understands anime and its cliches, but loves it anyway. (Consider the post-Gundam otaku revolution.) There are plenty of genuine curveballs as Xabungle goes on, and the show doesn’t leave you the room to see them coming.

But my favorite thing about Xabungle is the sheer joy it takes in being a cartoon, and how deeply goofy it is as a result. The Iron Gear’s pursuers— one a cowboy caricature, the other a horny idiot— come across more like Dick Dastardly than Char Aznable. People and robots alike waddle, stumble and pratfall. When it snows, the robots ski.

In Xabungle, Tomino’s standard world-building attention to detail frequently points out the absurdity of giant robots themselves: people nearly falling out of the cockpit in their robot’s face, for example. (I’m pretty sure I saw a giant robot fall off a cliff like Wile. E Coyote somewhere in this show.)

My favorite character in Xabungle is little Chill, the youngest member of the Sand Rat gang. Chill can’t be older than eight or nine, she doesn’t have any other guidance than the dysfunctional youth of the Iron Gear, and she willingly participates in battle on the front line. Luckily for her, she has the clarity of a survivor and a child’s simple intuition: often she unknowingly (and effortlessly) cuts down the egos of the Iron Gear’s posturing teens.

In closing, Xabungle is very silly. Sillier than ZZ Gundam, sillier than G-Reco, and yeah, sillier than any super robot genre parody you could come up with today. If your sci-fi robot wars must be waged with the utmost seriousness, it will probably make you cringe. If you’d prefer one with a lot of laughs, on the other hand, Xabungle is really good at that.

And Xabungle is sincere, from time to time. Tomino’s usual theme-- troubled kids fighting to be understood and loved in a spineless adult world— ultimately shines through the gags. I’m really fond of the ending song, “Kawaita Daichi” (Parched Earth).

“As long as we’re alive, let’s tell the truth
This parched land makes my heart wear thin.”

As for availability, you basically have to stream Xabungle at Hidive now. An English subbed Blu-Ray exists, but it’s out of print and goes for over $200 these days. If you find it for a normal price, by all means snap it up, but you probably won’t. I bought the set before that, and honestly there’s no particular reason to hunt down the Blu-Ray: it’s in standard definition and as you can see from these captures, the video quality is poor even by DVD standard.