first up we got Fight! Iczer-1
So let me tell you what this is all about. There's these aliens, right? And they all look like women but the really bad one sounds like a man and they refer to him as a 'he'. And they're trying to conquer Earth for some reason. They think it will be easy because the earthlings are weak but then they realize that a rogue member of their kind named Iczer-1 is on Earth and she's stopping their invading forces. Iczer-1 looks like a futuristic David Bowie-esque intergalactic pop idol. She's got a light saber type thing and she can shoot bolts of yellow energy out of herself. She can also teleport and is generally a one-woman-army.
Then we go to Earth and meet this girl named Nagisa and she's a normal girl that goes to school and stuff but then strange things start happening where these horrible grotesque alien monsters start bursting out of her classmates and eventually her parents. What we learn is that the aliens want to get Nagisa because she is the only person who can 'synchronize' with Iczer-1 and what that means is they pilot a giant robot together called Iczer-Robo. But none of that has happened yet. Nagisa's parents get taken over by the horrible alien monsters and Iczer-1 appears and kills them but then Nagisa freaks out because Iczer-1 has just killed her parents essentially. Nagisa hates Iczer-1. This is horrible news because Iczer-1 loves Nagisa and that's the only reason they can pilot the giant robot together.
It's unclear if Iczer-1 loves Nagisa because they can synchronize or if it's the other way around. Anyway Nagisa wants nothing to do with any of this but then a full-blown invasion happens in the city and this lady alien we met at the beginning named Cobalt is leading the charge in her own giant robot. And so things are going very poorly for our fair Earth dwellers. Iczer-1 has no time to woo and court Nagisa so she summons the Iczer-Robo and forces Nagisa inside. But then they're getting pulverized and everything is coming up doo-doo when Iczer-1 reminds Nagisa that her parents are dead and that these alien types want to make everyone as dead as her parents. Somehow this clicks for Nagisa even though it just happened this afternoon, this has all taken place in a day so I don't know why she needs to be reminded what the stakes are but in her defense she's been through a lot so maybe I'm being overly critical but Nagisa snaps out of it and her hate combined with Iczer-1's love creates a powerful force that obliterates Cobalt's robot. The Earth is saved for now.
This is the end of part one of a three part series. But for now I think it's enough to consider why the writers thought it would be a good idea to make Nagisa so resistant and angry towards Iczer-1. When everything starts going down she just starts throwing a tantrum but not even in like a, I'm in shock, I'm losing my mind kind of way. She just gets really irritable and grouchy. Iczer-1 has to drag her into the robot and again she's just angry the way a 5 year old would be angry they have to get in the car to go to the cry store that makes you cry. There are lots of reasons a hero could be reluctant in this situation and that would make us sympathetic to the character. Alternatively, it could be fun if Nagisa was like, 'this is awesome'. Shoot, if an alien girl said she loved me and we had to pilot a giant robot together--shooooot. Also, unless I missed it, we don't know why Iczer-1 has defected from her people and wants to save Earth. She just fights stuff. Which is kinda cool. I don't hate that choice to not tell us.
The story has parallels to 2 of my favorite shows, FLCL and Neon Genesis Evangelion. FLCL also features a strange alien girl who falls in love with a human and uses them to further their alien schemes. NGE's main character is a boy who absolutely does not want to pilot a giant robot to fight aliens that threaten to destroy the Earth. Those series came out in 2000 and 1995 respectively while Iczer-1 came out in 1985 so maybe Iczer-1 provided some inspiration and those later shows fleshed-out the characters more and added their own style and humanity to it.
I don't know if that was anything but I wrote it and maybe you read it.
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