Betterman was an anime series I watched a fair amount of on TechTV back when TechTV was a thing and it showed anime, before it became the G4 network. At the time I hadn’t heard about GaoGaiGar, and I didn’t have any form of DVR (and never got around to programming the VCR to tape it when it was on), so I never caught the whole show. However, at long last, in 2024, I have finally watched the show in its entirety and can give my thoughts – finishing it not long after Halloween.

GaoGaiGar, falsely has been accused of being a response to Evangelion – an optimistic, non-cynical super-robot anime series with a hot blooded protagonist that is tremendously sincere and plays everything straight. With a little familiarity with the Brave franchise that it’s a part of, it’s clear that that isn’t the case – instead GaoGaiGar is very much true to form for the series. Betterman, on the other hand, feels much more like a series that is riffing on the themes that Evangelion is laying down.

Betterman looks at Evangelion, realizes that it’s a show that is not only riffing on Ultraman, but also on Devilman, and goes “let’s do a series that starts out looking like a mecha show, but is actually a Dark Hero show.” Our viewpoint character is military otaku Keita Aono – who ends up stumbling into the cockpit of a giant robot called a Neuronoid with his long-lost childhood friend Hinoki Sai, when he ends up in a soon-to-be-opened amusement park that’s being attacked by monsters. Except while Keita thinks at first he’s in a mecha anime – it turns out that ultimately he’s dependent on the aid of the mysterious figure Betterman, a transforming hero who can fight against the monsters created by the mysterious disease/entity Algernon. It’s up to Keita, Hinoki, and the staff of Akamatsu Industries and ModeWarp (pronounced Moe-Dee-Warp) to discover the source of Algernon and stop it once and for all.

In case this doesn’t make that clear – Betterman is a horror series. While often the monster of the week can take a larger, monstrous form that can be fought against with either Betterman or a Neuronoid – more often our heroes are utterly powerless against it and Betterman is the being that can save the day. Frequently all our characters can hope to do is run, hide, and survive. This includes really creepy episodes where, for example, Keita and Hinoki are stalked by killer nurses in a hospital (or a killer principal with a blowtorch in their school, or killer crash-test-dummies on an airplane). In those circumstances, they either don’t have their robot, or the robot wouldn’t actually be effective against the problem.

The horror elements are heightened by the next-time narration, by the character of Sakura, the esper who is an important part of the supporting cast. She gives a quiet, frightened narration about the absolutely horrible gruesome ways we’re going to die by the next episode’s threat. It does a really great job – particularly when binging – of keeping the mood in the right creepy tone.

The Evangelion riff also comes in with the somewhat fanservicy costumes – the pilots of the Neuronoids wear skin-tight, mostly see-through outfits which just have dark patches to cover the nipples and crotch. It almost feels like someone in the 90s had a flash of the Experimental Plugsuit from Eva Rebuild 2.0 and decided to do something kinda like that – with the difference that Keita doesn’t have quite the same femme presenting byronic vibe of

Where things get a little odd is that while the show doesn’t have the tone of GaoGaiGar – it has the character design style, which makes for a weird sense of whiplash. The characters look and feel like they belong in a more hot-blooded, less-creepy series than they are, and it doesn’t necessarily work to lay out the sense of disempowerment that I think they were going for.

I did really enjoy the show though, and my finally getting to watch it all the way through. That said, as of this writing the show only officially has an English DVD release, but has received as Blu-Ray release in Japan. As this is the last official part of the GaoGaiGar saga to be animated that Discotek hasn’t licensed yet, I would hope they’d pick it up at some point in the future.

The DVD release of Betterman is currently available used on eBay – buying anything through that link helps to support the site.

Please support my Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/countzeroor
Buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/countzero
Watch my Live-Streams on http://twitch.tv/countzeroor
Check out my Let’s Plays at https://www.youtube.com/@CountZeroOrPlays