Armored Trooper Votoms was a 52-episode made for TV anime series. It is set in a (relatively) hard science fiction space setting, with its focus entirely on a mech pilot named Chirico Cuvie. While the character designs and development can be thin in this show, the mechanical illustrations are pretty lavish. It’s got a pretty slow pace, but the subject matter is fairly involved for a children’s program. Chirico is a mech pilot who gets caught up in a conspiracy when his mission turns out to be a raid on one of his own government’s facilities. He is left for dead in space, but when he survives, he swears to get to the bottom of whatever happened to him and whomever was responsible. As he does so, the show explores slave labor, despotism, secret societies, war crimes against civilians, mercenary culture, paranoid politics, cult fanaticism, and an ancient secret hidden on a mysterious desert planet.
The only character with any real development is Chirico, and even that seems fairly thin. There is a female love interest with zero character development, which is too bad. She is introduced as a super soldier, artificially enhanced to be a superior pilot, but after a few episodes of kicking ass she gets more or less relegated to watching everything unfold around her. There are a few side characters that occasionally serve as comic relief, though sometimes they were used as an effective source of commentary on the changes they see in Chirico.
I can’t exactly say this was an excellent series, but I did enjoy watching it. It was not gory, but it didn’t shy away from the uncomfortable aspects of war, including the fact that Chirico himself took part in some pretty awful war crimes in his youth. There were echoes of World War II and the Vietnam war, and one arc involved Chirico having to face someone who was a victim of the crimes he committed. The finale also had some interesting, if overt, nods to Dune and 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was incredibly slow, however, and I kept getting burnt out watching it and would have to put it down for a while. The animation could also pretty lazy sometimes, but is par for a made-for-TV show from 1983.
The mechanical designs were definitely the highlight of the show, and the part of the show that got the most attention from its creators. The mechs are each given an interesting design that reflects its capabilities. There is a lack of “hammer space” with this show, that is giant things that people and mechs seemingly pull out of nowhere or robots that impossibly transform into shapes their mass doesn’t reflect (like Transformers). I put quotes around the term “hard science fiction” to describe this show, but it certainly applies to the mechs.
If I had seen Votoms as a kid I would have loved it. As an adult, I thought it was ok, but primarily served as a vehicle for cool robot design, intricate illustrations of missile volleys, and cool space battles. It’s not so bad, but the substance is way too spread out, and the end feels a bit rushed and hammy despite having some great ideas. It started great, gets bogged down somewhere in the middle, and keeps having great moments spread far out and only concerning Chirico.
One of the threads that runs through this show is the concept of human augmentation and “perfect soldiers.” Fyana is a woman who was engineered to be a perfect soldier, and requires a special substance called jijirium in order to survive. Chirico is something else entirely, and the show gets into some very convenient, very plot-hole-esque superman subtexts involving AI, the nature of the gods, what a god consists of, and an overarching conspiracy about who will rule, and who is worthy to rule, the universe. It’s interesting, but it takes a long time to put together. Worse, it gets feeling contrived as the secrets become unfolded. This was an ok series, but it had all the makings of a great series if a little more attention had been given to piecing it together more cohesively. That, plus its emphasis on the truly hellish nature of war, make it’s worth checking out. Just be ready for a long haul and lots of people yelling Chirico’s name.
Lotus Reviews 