Another monster of the week super robot series in the sea of many with a premise based around an alien invasion and a mecha piloted by two people, both of which end up being underutilized to the point of at times not being used at all. It also has a gimmick that ends up being a crutch due to who was in charge of making the IP come to life. The series unfortunately fails to stand out. Well... kinda. More on that part later. The story starts with an alien expedition crashing on earth and deciding to go war craze and conquer the planet insteadof just trying to cohabit. Not all of them are onboard with this idea, and thus, a civil war ensues, with the warmongers winning in the end. The father of the female lead, who happens to be their best scientist, is kept alive and is then forced to build a robot to aid in conquering the earth. He does so, but not before tasking his daughter to escape with it upon completion and to warn earth about the incoming attack.

This sounds like a cool start, right? Well, too bad, because all of that is crammed up in episode 1 at breakneck speed with the only part that ends up properly shown being the female lead's escape aboard the giant robot with everything else essentially happening offscreen, and being rapidfired by the female lead which she makes contacts with earthlings. And honestly, that's basically the only real plot the show ever gets. Every now and again, it does try to be nuanced by using the fact that the female lead is technically of the race of the invading aliens, but it utterly fails at that every time it tries to do so due to poor execution.

So, how about the characters? Sadly, they're one dimensional. It does try to give depth to the FL but it only ends up being superficial, since much like the plot, everything is always either black or white as far as who's good and who's bad, making any attempt at theme exploration surrounding her a pointless endeavour.

One more thing of note before I continue with the rest. For a series made for and aimed at kids, it has a pro bullying message for most of its runtime. The cast constantly spends their time bullying a lower class fisherman character, who wishes to become a pilot, and they do so simply because he's of lower class. They constantly tell him that he shouldn't aspire to be anything more simply because of conditions he has no control over (his birth/living status). It tries to do it in a comic relief type of way, but it always come off as them being cruel. It also never showcases what they're doing as a bad thing. In fact, it reinforces it. It would be fine if it was used as a way to portray the reality of life, and/or to teach some sort of good moral lesson to its young audience, but it's not. It constantly does the opposite where it shows that disrespecting other people is a perfectly fine thing to do. What a great message for kids!

Bad writing, dubious morals, and one note characters aside, at the end of the day, it's a super robot series. People already expect spectacle over substance before going in, with the core appeal being their action. So, how is said action? Oh boy...

You see, Go Nagai would go on to have a feud with Toei over the rights of Gaiking, which would lead him to seeking out other studios for his following adaptations/original works, one of which, as far as today's entry is concerned, would be Knack Production. Yes, THE Knack Production. The infamous studio behind works such as Chargemen Ken. Their works look cheaply and amateurishly made, and Grozier X is no exception to that. It not only looks bad, but the lack of talent behind the mechanical animation hinders how the action plays out. Let me explain.

At its core, Grozier X is a giant fighting plane housing a multitude of sub vehicles and small aircrafts. Said giant plane also happens to capable of turning into a full blown super robot. Honestly, not the worse gimmick for a toku to have. Well, it's all animated and drawn by Knack, which clearly CANNOT do a mecha anime. 90% of the series sees Grozier in plane form with close up shots of various artillery being fired at where the bad guy is before cutting away to a close up of whatever is hitting said enemy. Rinse and repeat over the course of multiple minutes to fill however much time is necessary, and there you go. That sums up most of the "high octane" sequences present in the entire runtime. All in all, there's very few episode where the super robot form is utilized. The few that are actually present are also pretty lackluster as far as choreography is concerned. All of this to say, the action sucks.

The one part of the show that doesn't blow is the sound design, so yay for that I guess.

In the end. I wouldn't recommend this. It's just another footnote in Nagai's repertoir which doesn't happen to be worth exploring. That is, unless you want to see him at his worst, then enjoy the train wreck.