Film Review: Karate-Robo Zaborgar (2011)

SYNOPSIS:

In 2011, A Robo Legend Will Rise Again

REVIEW:

From out of the mind of director/ writer Noboru Iguchi arrives a new title taking a more traditional (and less visually violent) approach paying homage to some of the more earlier Asian release of our past. The poster image quickly drew to mind some of the older favorites such as “Infra-man” and the TV series “Ultra-man”. You could lump in a few dozen others from that time for good measure, however Karate-Robo Zaborgar does keep things more modern at least in visual dynamics than the silly offerings of our past.

Karate-Robo Zaborgar take son the ploys of good vs evil, an odd cyborg to human romance and of course the martial arts stylings of robots vs villain. You can also attribute a touch of “transformers” to the motorbike into robots transformations that occur quite frequently.

To bring you all up to speed, Zaborgar is the personal defender to a young man by the name of Yutaka. Yutaka is no slouch himself, as a karate champ of 10 years who left to pursue ways of channeling his energies and anger. His father, a brilliant scientist was killed when he was taken into custody by an evil floating empire under the name of “Sigma”. This empire is ruled by a cyborg named Dr. Akunomiya who kidnapped Yukata’s father for his research in “daimonium”. “Daimonium” is a technology that is used to turn humans into robots using their DNA. Meanwhile, Akunomiya has been building an army using this technology with hopes of conquering the world.

We open on a scene where Akunomiya has sent out his lackeys to recover valuable DNA from the bodies of well known officials. The more valuable the DNA, the better the robot parts. The purpose? To build a mega robot weapon.

Our first encounter comes under the attack of a cyborg lady by the name “Miss Borg” who is able to detach her head and fire titty rockets at opponents. Her team is usually accompanied with a new robot weapon of choice that displays special abilities. A few of these are introduced with names like “samurai robot”, “diarrhea robot” and “bulldog car robot”. The fun is watching them battle while revealing their “special” attack mode features. For instance “samurai robot” can summon swords from his hands while also sporting a huge pair of giant lips for the purpose of sucking one’s DNA. It’s all meant as tongue and cheek humor while engaging in the traditional battles of enforcers vs bad guys.

Yutaka has the upper hand with his trusty robot Zaborgar at his side taking down challengers with skillful ease. Commands such as “boomerang cutter”, “rapid fire gun” and “robot punch”, activate different weapon choices from Zaborgar’s body armor that (on the most part) seem to be enough to defeat the variety of weird enhancements his challengers posses.

In all, this is a pretty fun movie to watch which keeping things on the lighter end of violence than others under the Typhoon Sushi collective. There is still quite a few blood sprays, head chops and robot limb dismemberments, but it’s kept suppressed in a more “less exploitative” way for viewers. Humor arrives when Miss Borg begins having relations with Yutaka and introduces her own motorbike robot “Black hawk”. The Sigma spaceship resembles that of a huge ass while members of the clan spend more time quarreling than engaging.

We do move into more dramatic parts during the film that has Yutaka having to choose between what’s “right” and what his feelings suggest. It all goes hand in hand with the frantic ridiculous pace of the film.

I’m confident that fans of Noboru Iguchi will enjoy this release and its absurdities. Despite being borgs, the ladies brought on are pretty hot who are also equipped with titty weapons that range from guns to monster heads. You should be well familiar with the style, and if you are a fan of the retro Asian releases, then this one is definitely for you.

Karate-Robo Zaborgar (2011)