When it comes to monster of the week 70's mech series, this is pretty much about as simplistic and bare bones as you can possibly get both in characterization, stories, and animation. It had its somewhat great moments and I think what kept me invested was seeing Baron ashura and his many antics and conquests to try and take down mazinger.(But certainly not as great as "Berge Katse" from Gatchamon. ) Loved the episodes showcasing the many mazinger upgrades as well and some of the stories were inventive and quite interesting in early parts of the series. It then built up steam quite a bitaround the mid portion of the show and things started to gradually become more intense how ever it lost alot of steam around the last 1/3 of the series which i felt that i just wanted things to move on to the final episodes already.

The beginning of the series helped set the foundation of what was to follow and helped establish the characters very well and it felt fresh with each episode offering new and unique ways for Dr hell and his minions to win against the good guys. However, I feel what ultimately ruined my experience was as the series went on, many of the stories and idea’s the writers threw in felt very nonsensical and rehashed to many times. To the point where it felt that mazinger kind of suffered from an identity crisis and the writers even forgot what the initial character motivations were, especially on the antagonistic side.

For example, in the premise of the story Dr hell’s main goal was always to conquer the world. World domination was his ultimate goal and many of the MECH beasts that were deployed did just that, started blowing up cities and creating massive destruction in its wake but the writers of this series sort of shoehorned in the the idea that Dr hell and his minions are trying to take over and infiltrate the photon light institute and there where many episodes where he also wanted to destroy the photon light institute. So, you get this constant sudden change of character motivations and goals for the main villain and it just felt a bit strange to see that. It got the point where the writers relied to heavly on the concept of "lets take over that photon light institute because that is our primary objective" its like the writers were obsessed with this idea. Ultimatly it kind of derailed from its original story concept of what was established at the start of the series.

The series had some decent moments but lacked consistency and especially when compared to something like Gatchamon which aired even before mazinger, was quite a great deal a much better series with greater characterization, larger world with bigger set pieces, greater story arcs, etc. In Mazinger it is mentioned quite frequently that some how these characters are going to school, but we do not even see them attend school except for maybe a few episodes. I realize the series is targeted towards japanese children and needs to mainstain that thematic element of mechs and fights but the world could have been fleshed out a tiny bit more to showcase some other locations in the mazinger verse instead of just consisting of the battle ground locations. Overall, I would give this probably a 7/10. The ending really caught me by surprise and im hoping great mazinger is quite a bit improved over this classic series but will see. With all that being said, it can’t be overstated just how influential and important this series is to pioneering the mecha genre with many of the common themes and tropes you will see in many shows to follow. It certainly left behind a great legacy for mecha and that is something I will never forget.