Jinzou Ningen Kikaider The Animation is an Anime aired at 2000 based on a manga from decades ago. While it tries to do something interesting, it fails in almost everything. First, despite being an Anime released in the year 2000, without context, it looks like a 70s Anime at very least since its respecting Ishinomori's original artstyle instead of just using a typical 2000s Anime artstyle. Even if it was watched when it was released, the artstyle is hard to get used to considering its not common to see. But the artstyle is probably one of the few positives things about this Anime. Unfortunately, theanimation is very poor most of the time which its not even average by 2000s standards. It even ruin the supposed sad scenes this Anime tries to do.

The characters are probably the worst aspect in this Anime. While having basic archetypes are ok as long they are tolerable, this Anime clearly is not going any favors. Jirou, the protagonist, and the Kohmyoji siblings, Mitsuko and Masaru, are very annoying. Masaru is your typical kid who he's just there and when he does something in an episode, he only made things worse since he unintentionally led an enemy towards Jirou and her sister. It doesn't help he's completely irrelevant outside of being Mitsuko's brother. Mitsuko is the source of romance in the show, which its extremely poorly developed, she's doesn't really know what to do, sometimes she hates robots, sometimes she cares about them to the point of having sex with Jirou before the last battle lol! They even dedicated an entire episode for her and her mom where she didn't contribute anything at the end (I think it was even a filler episode!). She's clearly inconsistent. Jirou is just plain, he doesn't know some obvious stuff but he knows more complicated stuff, the character is supposed to learn about human emotions but the show forgot for him to learn about common sense first. It doesn't help his personality doesn't act of someone who's mentally young, he should act as someone curious instead he's just cold, angry when he's controlled by either Gill or Saburo or just no emotion. Outside one-time characters, the irrelevant comical private investigator known as Hattori and his assistant don't contribute to anything relevant to the Anime (being the Kohmyoji siblings transport is not really useful especially since the siblings never have issues traveling places far away later lol). I felt the Anime could remove Masaru, Hattori and his assistant and use their scenes to develop better Mitsuko and Jirou.

The antagonists are slighty better but not by much. The good part, they are quite threatening and evil and generally their designs are good. The bad part, outside Saburo and the Bat Robot, they are the same character with just different designs. The generic robots are only introduced to die in the same episode, there's little to no variation among them if we talk about personalities. During the last 2-3 episodes, the Anime stopped doing this formula but it was already too late. Saburo has more personality being Jirou "little brother" and acts more as a deadly rival to Jirou, despite being allied with Gil, he doesn't really follow his orders (that's why he was betrayed later) and he has Dr. Kohmyoji which the show doesn't bother to explain why he has it (its even a plot device, its the only reason of why Jirou never kill him). Unfortunately, he was introduced too late and he was killed in the last episode. The Bat Robot is more eccentric and he was made to create a constrast to the rest of robots presented, since he can feel emotions and never killed someone, at least on-screen. Gil is just your typical evil scientist which evil for the sake of evil, he runs an evil organization and plans to take over the world, nothing is explained of why he wants to do such thing and he's just stupid like in the last episode its reveled he has a massive robot army of the same robots which Jirou fight over the entire Anime even from Saburo but he never used them before and it like the world is unaware of the existence of robots in the first place. The weird part Saburo has no idea of this robot army even if he doesn't really have to follow Gill's orders.

The pacing is bad. Its completely out of place, the episodes are mostly monster-of-the-week with little to no variation between them. When the Anime stopped doing this, it introduced Saburo but it was too late by this point since its just a single 1-cour. The drama is probably the worst aspect of this Anime, almost everything is overdramatic to the point its hard to take it seriously, the most obvious aspect are the bond of the Kohmyoji siblings and Jirou. Since the pacing is very fast, they don't really interact much before Jirou went missing the first time and the Kohmyoji siblings wants Jirou to return at all costs. No bonds of friendship were formed and they even wasted an entire episode in a recap instead of dedicating an entire episode for them at the beginning. Also, there's this drama with the Kohmyoji siblings's mom; she's supposedly a ruthless spy working for Gill to the point of having babies for him. The episode where she killed herself attempts to paint her as a Gill's victim when she's just clearly an evil women for having and abanding her own children. The Anime never implies or even suggest she was controlled by Gill, she did all by herself. The fights are not really worth to comment, most are win by Jirou having powerups or hitting more. It's pretty standard. Finally, the comedy is almost inexistent making the atmosphere very hostile for the viewer to sympathize with the characters.

Jinzou Ningen Kikaider The Animation desperately needs to have more episodes, alternating the monster-of-the-week episodes, introducing Saburo much earlier, Gill being much smart and erasing useless characters. As it is, it's an abomination of series and stay away from this.