http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w9UX_ZxAmA

The first thing you must know to understand The King of Braves GaoGaiGar is that it does not understand irony. Not at all. Once you understand that, you’ll realise there has never been a more perfect fusion of show and song.

GaoGaiGar is a glorious, uncompromising throwback to the 70’s, before all this nonsense like ‘feelings’ and ‘subtlety’ got in the way of what mecha shows did best – punching the living crap out of evil shit. Our heroes are respectively a super amazing awesome cyborg and an eight year old in short trousers. The robot is made up of other robots, has a rocket punch and a lion on its chest. The villains are evil robot space aliens who try and kill the viewer with some of the most epilepsy inducing lighting ever put on screen. The show is shamelessly a toy commercial that lives to shout out about how great it is and then just shout. Needless to say, it’s pretty great.

Yuusha-Oh Tanjou (lit: ‘Birth of the King of Braves’) matches the show it opens in every way. This is a song unconcerned with musical niceties, but instead one that exists to be as catchy as possible and brag about how awesome robots are.  It suceeds handily, mainly thanks to a surprisingly decently melody driven by synth-strings and the irresistable hookiness of the opening GAGAGA GAGAGA GAOGAIGAR chant. On vocal duties is Masaaki Endoh, years before JAM Project but still just as good at hot bloodedly belting out lyrics that would make lesser men collapse into giggles.  Endoh on the other hand sells it – you can hear the excitement, the passion in his voice. That’s ultimately what raises this song to greatness.

So iconic did Yuusha-Oh Tanjou become of the series that it was remixed and reused in many many different versions, culminating in the absurdly awesome male-voice choir packing Grand Glorious Gathering version. The song is so intrinsically bound to the show it opens it people’s hearts and minds that you can’t think of one without thinking of the other – surely the ultimate accolade for any theme.