The ancient 80s robot anime Acrobunch threatens to become interesting, but rarely follows through

I’ve been looking at my stacks of Blu-Rays, a collection started largely during 2020 Covid lockdown, and realizing maybe I oughta watch some of them. You never know when a Discotek title is going out of print— in fact the only way you can buy the series I’m about to talk about is from a scalper for $250— so I snap them up, put them in a box, and… admire them, I guess.

Well, no more, damn it! After watching the entire Aim for the Ace TV series— a masterpiece, a work of true art, why aren't you talking about that, Dave— I went for the next title on my stack: Acrobunch, a weird robot series from creator Yuu Yamamoto and studio Kokusai Eigasha. These guys would go on to create the J9 series (Braiger, Baxinger, and Sasuraiger), which would make Acrobunch kind of a practice run or rough draft for their funky vision of sci-fi adventure.

It is quite rough, actually. This opening sequence is very unique as the genre goes: Yukio Yamagata's low, growling "be silent!" demands reverence. It points towards the ancient, the mysterious and divine, and it doesn't mean the robot. All the characters look crazy cool, too! Unfortunately, the actual show makes little of that impact.

Why is it called Acrobunch, anyway

I love super robot names because they’re these weird linguistic mashups: weird made-up words that maybe sound like something in Japanese (Sasuraiger is from the Japanese “sasurau”, to wander, Mazinger is from “majin,” demon), or in Acrobunch’s case, a couple of English words weirdly put together in a way no English speaker would have ever thought about.

Acrobunch implies a bunch of acrobats, and the flashy character design implies some kind of combination of circus and cowboy vibes. But— and you’ll get used to this if you ever watch this show— the show never really gets into why everybody’s dressed like that. After saying the youngest hero is “the best at acrobatics and fighting”, it drops the acrobat angle completely without the kid ever doing so much as a cartwheel in the entire show.

So that’s weird. The Rando family (Listen, they couldn’t have known what Internet slang would be 40 years later) are our ensemble protagonists led by single dad Tatsuya, a self-made jack-of-all-trades with an adventurous streak that sets him on a quest towards the mysterious treasure Quaschika. When their marine farm is destroyed in the first episode by the underground Goblin empire's UFOs, the 5 Rando teens join their dad’s mission and they all set off on a road trip around the world’s landmarks in Dad’s secret project, the giant robot Acrobunch.

Quaschika is the biggest and most important thing ever, and it’s going to appear right now

For the first half of the show, Acrobunch is trapped in a holding pattern by its own premise. Every week the Randos get a lead on an appearance of Quaschika, or some ancient lore that might be related to it. Whatever Quaschika is, it’s stressed that it is the biggest imaginable thing, so at the start the stories just aren’t about anything else. There's an early episode where they find Atlantis and the vibe is "hey, Atlantis, whatever. So I heard Quaschika was here?" The heroes show up, the bad guys note their giant robot's presence and attack the same place, and during the fighting the great treasure reveals itself for a moment. Everyone drops everything to chase it, and it disappears from view like we knew it had to. End episode.

Acrobunch repeats this formula around the world, against the background of various ancient mysteries like Atlantis and Noah’s Ark, most of which turn out to be at least tangentially Quaschika-related. (Putting aside that one episode in the Congo, which I'm pretty sure was there entirely to be racist.) Quaschika is real, it’s over that mountain, and damn it, it’s gonna show up this time! And then it doesn’t, and the show rolls credits.

Why are there six of you?

Nor is there much character focus or backstory, which is really odd with such a huge cast. My favorite thing about Braiger is its personality and the sense of a larger world beyond the heroes, largely missing here. The choice of six main characters is perplexing when they get so little individual screen time, and no real hint of their personalities.

Little Jun is hot-blooded and impulsive, which gets him into trouble exactly one time. Big bro Hiro is the Cool Knife Throwing Guy (an early Norio Wakamoto Cool Dude Voice role!) who all the Cool Guy stuff happens to. Middle brother Ryo may as well not exist, except in this one episode where he becomes conscious of the fact that he may as well not exist. Sisters Reika and Miki are The Girl, with Reika being the tomboy and Miki being the girly-girl. The most development any of these characters gets is falling in love with a weekly guest character. (That's not true; the most development a Rando family member gets is when Reika gets her clothes homoerotically whipped off by the female general.)

Every so often Acrobunch will hint at something really off-kilter and interesting for its genre— like the a where Dad strongly implies to the kids that he had an affair with this week’s scientific colleague, before any of them were born– but those are just sparks; they never go anywhere. Perhaps this is why it feels like a practice run for the J9 series, which are relatively full of life.

I’m well aware from experience that old giant robot anime can be extremely repetitive, but this wasn’t even satisfying. Halfway into the show I was about ready to write it off. Stop watching, though? Lord, no! I paid for this Blu-Ray!

Puts itself together as it goes

At about the halfway point, Acrobunch starts to get actual stories in its weekly jaunts and as such becomes a more entertaining version of the same show. I particularly enjoyed Hiro’s one-off “Queen of Sheba” episode; even if Hiro is just a one-note Cool Guy, those vibes are enough to get good stories out of him. These episodes are pure 80s sci-fi formula, mind— some tragic romances, a little bit of “but are they really the bad guys?”— but also that’s what I actually came here for and what I wasn’t getting!

The mystery of Quaschika actually accelerates and begins to move towards a conclusion in the last five episodes or so, and the ending seems to have had a lot of the early episodes in mind. It feels very much like this show was putting itself together as it went along. It's a bit like how they never quite finished drawing the scene where the robot combines.

Actually, let’s talk about the robot

I guess it’s “Acrobunch” because the Acrobunch robot is made out of multiple vehicles, a bunch of them, you know? (The attack catch phrases are “Attack Bunch Out!” and “Attack Bunch Blow!”) It’s a very ostentatious design: over the top even for its era. It’s wearing a mask, it’s got those giant wings, that paint job, the combination… In fact, one of my favorite details about this show, something that I think really represents its nature, is that the combination animation never gets finished up.

The animators bit off more than they could chew on this one, as you can see in an early version of the animation. It’s tempting to call the rough monochrome animation with red highlights “stylized”, but if you look closely it’s apparent that it’s just not done, a fact which will become more obvious as the series goes on.

Eventually more cuts of animation get added to this scene, and even further down the line they finally color it in and assemble it into an actual sequence.

Ghost won't embed this youtube properly, perhaps the account doesn't allow embeds, but it is probably the only footage on the entire internet of the completed combining animation. This is from a full English fansub of the series that I don't recommend actually watching: the English is quite bad.

Only in the last few episodes is the Acrobunch combining animation actually complete, and in order to get it there they had to jettison a lot of the cooler ideas they had in the rough version of the animation, like the camera flying by the characters as their vehicles fly into place. In Braiger you’ll see these ideas actually come to fruition.

Like in a 70s robot series, issues of scale and logic are thrown out as the robot is piloted by Any Combination of Persons and equipped with pretty much Whatever. In one episode it’s a big deal when they find a sword— up until this point the robot charges through enemy UFOs with its bare hands— but in another later episode the robot just pulls out a tommy gun and it’s totally unremarked upon. I would really like a toy of the Acrobunch, and I looked it up while I was writing, but this isn’t a popular series and there was only the stuff that came out during its original run.

Conclusion

One thing I can say for all this is that I’m probably one of the very few English-speakers on Earth who’s ever finished Acrobunch in its entirety, and that there is probably a pretty good reason for that. I’ve talked a lot here about a series I would absolutely call inessential. Only bother if you are just really curious despite that, or if you really want to experience the bonkers ending for yourself… through really, you could just watch the J9 series and enjoy a cult classic.

Discotek gave Acrobunch its first English release anywhere, and also that same release was almost immediately taken off the market by request of the rights holders, along with the J9 titles. (Can’t catch a break.) The standard-def Blu-rays for this ancient, low-budget series are... as good as these materials will ever look, so you’re not missing anything if you just go download it. Retrocrush is currently streaming.

As you're aware, the Gamesoft Robo Fun Club is a one-man labor of love that depends on your support to exist. If you really enjoy this newsletter/blog I'd be very happy to see you upgrade to a paid sponsorship.