Well this was a turn up for the books, someone is fansubbing this 1973 Toei adaptation of Mitsuteru Yokoyama’s manga. Later versions, an OAV and TV series, have been released in English, but not this version of the tale.
Very much a product of the 1970s, what is fascinating is how many similarities it has to what was going on in US superhero comics at the same time. The whole vibe of the show feels similar to Jack Kirby’s Fourth World work at DC Comics, complete with Erich von Daniken “spacemen as gods” idea. But there’s also Kirby’s excitement about new science and technology at work here, with similar fudging of how that science works. Koichi, our hero gets an ungrade by a surrogate computer parent, similar to how Buddy Blank did in Kirby’s OMAC, and there’s a sequence extolling the science of genetics that reminded me of Kirby’s joyous celebration of electronics.
It’s not all Kirby vibes though. The big villain, Yomi, is pretty much 70’s Dennis O’Neil/Neal Adams Batman arch-villain, Ra’s Al Ghul. Dresses in green, interesting facial hair, lives in a mysterious compound in the Himalayas, has a private army of assassins and harbours ambitions of having the hero work alongside him.
So what’s going on in this first episode then?
Schoolboy Koichi is kidnapped by Ropross, a giant Pterodactyl and taken to the real Tower of Babel, where he meets Rodem, a woman in classical dress who takes him into the tower, which is full of computers. Inside he receives a recorded message from Babel, an alien who crashed to earth millennia earlier and mated with a human woman. He explains that Koichi is his descendant, the first that is genetically identical to Babel himself. As such he will inherit his alien technology as Babel II. To protect him he has three guardians, Ropross, a giant robot called Poseidon and Rodem, who is actually a shapeshifting Black Panther. They have Koichi enter a pod that will educate him for 100 days and learn everything he needs to be Babel II.
Meanwhile Koichi’s family try and find him. In shockingly accurate leap of logic, his dad deduces that the tower Koichi had been dreaming of was the Tower of Babel and so they head to the Middle East. Met at the airport by a taxi driver, who turns out to be Rodem, they are told they cannot see Koichi because he is no longer their son. He is now Babel II. Oh, and he’s in the Himalayas to meet Yomi, a man the Tower’s computer had told him to see. Rodem then flies off to join him with Ropross, leaving Koichi’s family in the middle of the desert.
Meanwhile Koichi is caught by gunmen and taken to Yomi’s secret compound. Yomi makes Koichi battle one of his underlings in a sword fight. When it looks like the underling is about to win, the man dies, clutching his chest. Yomi claims this is the work of Babel’s servants. Yomi then proposes they join forces and rule the world together. Koichi says he’ll think it over, but Yomi seems to already know what his response will be from the determination in his eyes. As Koichi leaves, Yomi declares they must destroy him before can return to the Tower. TO BE CONTINUED…
If you’ve watched Imagawa’s Giant Robo OAV then you’ll recognise Babel II as the character Big Fire, the leader of the organisation of the same name. His servants also showed up in a similar role in that series. Apparently more characters from Babel II were used in Giant Robo, but they aren’t in this first episode.
For its age, this holds up fairly well as a piece of schoolboy superhero wish fulfilment. The worst thing you can hold against is the sometimes quick leaps in narrative it takes, but having watched Charge Man Ken lately, Yokoyama’s manga got off pretty lightly. Personally, I’m interested to see how the psychic powers element plays out given the OP song makes as big a deal out of that as it does his servants. That song is pretty amazing, basically asking kids don’t you wish you had a computer as a parent, super powers and monsters & robots as friends?