Japanese Kid Vid Volume 1: Ganbare!! Robocon

When it comes to manic children's TV programming, it's hard to top the Land of the Rising Sun. The Japanese approach entertaining kids with a hell bent for leather attitude that takes no prisoners in the war to delight and overstimulate their youth. God knows if I'd watched this stuff when I was a boy you would have had to pry me off the ceiling with a rake, such would've been my cranked up state. I'm not to old to still get a kick out of this stuff, so I figured I'd share YouTube discoveries from time to time.



Here's a partial clip I found of the first episode of "Ganbare!! Robocon" (Translation "Do Your Best!! Robokon") The show featured Robocon, a student robot trying to help humans as part of his studies. It ran from 1974 to 1977 and was rebooted in 1998 as "Burn!! Robocon", the title of which suggests that Robocon wasn't very helpful at all and the humans seek revenge.




This is in Cantonese, not Japanese, but I don't speak either so I'll just have to guess what's going on. A Japanese lady opens the door all happy thinking it's the Domino's delivery guy with those pasta bread bowls she ordered. What's this? Ack! A robot! He'll probably ask if she's heard the good news about the Robot Lord and if she'd be interested in a subscription to to the Robot Watchtower. Undeterred when she closes the door Robocon rips apart their home only to be chased off by a cockroach, the natural enemy of germophobic automatons.



Robocn then retires to a picnic bench where he receives a transmission from a silver robot with a mouth like Carly Simon asking what the dilly-oh is. Robocon paces around like Hamlet for a bit, some pink plastic hearts in silver frosting glow off and on and he recites the English alphabet up to "G". More pacing and arm flailing and then Robocon drops to the ground and pops his hood. He's almost out of gas and going through withdrawals! Staggering around like Courtney Love with the shakes, he brazenly goes behind a refueling car and moves the nozzle into himself. This causes his eyes to go all Mr SexyFace until two somewhat homely kids stare at him from the back seat and make his eyes lose all control. ("Auggh! Those teeth!")

Moustache-san the gas pump guy catches wind of the scam and starts chewing him out. Robocon pops his hood and everyone marvels at his precision German engineering. The family takes off, apparently forgetting that the gas went into Robocon and not their car. As the family makes an ill advised attempt to push a mid sized car up a hill, Robocon comes over to help...or brutally murder them Terminator style if the scowl at the end of the clip is any indicator.

So that's all for now. Look for more mind-fudgery in the future!