Mashin Eiyuuden Wataru

Mashin Eiyuuden Wataru is a gag heavy, late 80s anime with a super robot and fantasy theme.

Japanese grade schooler Wataru is chosen to become the hero in a parallel realm and travel their holy mountain Soukaizan, a fantasy world, structured like a videogame with various layers and bosses ruling each layer. Wataru is brought there by a dragon called Ryujinmaru, who can also transform into a giant robot. His ultimate mission is to fully liberate Soukazain, which is currently occupied by Demon Lord Doakuda.

Wataru is soon joined by naïve and energetic Ninja girl Himiko and samurai warrior Shibaraku, who often becomes the butt of many ... jokes.
Temporary guests are the shady birdman and know-it-all Kurama, Himiko’s ninja father and a rival type character called Toramaru. Although he’s clearly a fan favorite and often seen in promotional materials, he has a rather minor roll in the show until late episodes.

Animation and artwork is decent for a 1988 show, with the quality fluctuating between episodes. The spiritual sequel Granzort, released just one year later, raised the bar quite high. Later Wataru shows objectively look better, although I personally prefer the chubby look of Wataru 1.
The action is nicely animated but it has to be mentioned that Wataru also has its fair share of reused scenes for robot transformations and combat.

Character designs are simple, effective and fairly unique. I haven’t seen any characters that resemble the main cast. Most characters are drawn in a half chibi style. The characters, especially Wataru and Himiko, are cute, but without feeling forcedly so. Adult characters have chibi bodies with realistically drawn heads. It’s kind of gross at first but fits the tone of the series. I missed that by the time they largely dropped it in (Super Wataru, the 3rd Wataru series. The giant robots our heroes and villains use for combat share the giant head theme.

Music is good, not too many themes aside from the main theme and ending theme though. Sound effects are a standard affair, pretty much the same quality as in contemporary robot anime and up until the mid 90s.

Voice acting is excellent, with the only criticism I have is certain enemy character’s actors were reused of the course of the show multiple times. Mayumi Tanaka does an excellent job as Wataru, younger viewers probably know her more from her work as Luffy in One Piece.

The series creators seemingly enjoyed playing with Japanese language. Having a certain grip of Japanese language is not required to enjoy it, but certainly makes the experience better (e.g. many names are actually puns). What is required though is to kind of flow along with the action and gag oriented story. Real drama and thinking too much about real world rules ruins the enjoyment (e.g. most of Soukaizan should be dark as all the worlds are layered on top of each other)

Knowledge of the toy series and videogames based on Wataru is not required.

I recommend Wataru to anyone that enjoys gag based anime, cute characters (male and female alike), just a hint of shounen genre action and shows with an optimistic theme.

8 out of 10 points

NO SHIT THAT JAPAN KEEPS THEIR BEST STUFF FOR THEMSELVES !! ):
Lots and Lots of chibi charachters, Sunrise Inc after the huge success of the gundam serie's that at that point aired from 1979-1988 (char's counterattack was the latest one at the time) found somewhat a new populair direction by creating a more kid friendly serie's in addition/rivalised of Toei Animation's Dragonball serie's wich was gaining hto uge popularity rating in japan, Mashin Eiyuuden Wataru , with a huge pointer to Dragons since that is very important in japanese culture.

The whole serie itself is more a friendly mix between RPG, Action adventure, ... Mecha's wich sunrise was best in doing and deformed charachters with funny traits to give, even for the villians.
The first wataru storyline goes about a legend that saved the 1st godrealm ( there are i believe 3 realms in total according to the ova' and last serie's storyline) and that hero was named 'wataru', and it seems a 9 year old boy is a descendant or something of that legend and is asked to cleanse the godrealm of darkness and let the rainbow shine.

Animation reallly fits for its time beeing it a kidsshow both the OP & ED to me was likable because some of the singing was stuck in my head together wich the good ol oldskool popmusic, and the models looked drawn very colourfull and funny even for the bad one's with a very positive look at 'chibi'as i said, with every now and then some strange behavior is sometimes a good thing to keep the show going.same for the mini mecha models that is personalised for every charachter wich their own unique powers and abillitie's

Musicwise: Copy, Cut& Paste wich was quite normal at the time and cheaper to do it, how repetitive it became god only knows, it could use some more variation for my account!

The charachters were one of the main things that made the show populair and shows a very strong diffrence in personality's, behaviors, looks ect ect.
but fun nevertheless, wataru himself is not a typical hotheaded ambitious type , more a heroic, helpful boy just to point out, and i like the side chara as well for their part.

I enjoyed it for a big part minus the 2 or 3 fillers every 10-12 episodes but then again it summaries some previous chapters, but the biggest enjoyment of it all was the rpglike action adventure encounters wataru and his friends had, returning all inhabitants to a normal state.

overall i give it a 7/10, good to enjoy for a kids show , could give some more so hopefully the next serie's (minus the ova wich i have seen) give some less repetitive music and some more new encounters with more actionpacked scene's and a more darkerside storyline!