Zone Fighter Episode 16 – Kyoufu-no Shuugeki! Garoga Robotto

aka 恐怖の襲撃! ガロガロボット aka Counterstrike of Terror! Garoga-Robot! aka Terrifying Attack! The Garoga Robot

1973
Written by Susumu Takeuchi
Directed by Akiyasu Kikuchi

Whoa, I drank waaaaaay too many V8s! Sorry, dude!

Zone Fighter returns because there are always more Zones to fight, be it the Twilight Zone or Commerce Zones in Sim City or the No Passing Zone, Zone Fighter will punch them all while grunting like a giant pervo. Today we have a very special episode that shows the Zone Family/Sakimoris think they are above the laws of Earth and endanger the lives of small children, including kidnapping. Sure, it turned out it was all part of a hideous Garoga plot, but they didn’t know that at the time! The Zone Family also shows a nice disregard for innocent casualties by blowing up a house in the middle of a neighborhood. This is in addition to all those fights they have with giant monsters in occupied cities. Of course, the Garoga are worse, but the Zones are only barely better at this point. If they didn’t have a theme song, the Zone family would be in jail right next to Baron Garoga. Find out the Zone Family’s crimes with the Zone Fighter Splash Page!

A kid named Hiroshi Teramura spots a meteor flying to earth via his telescope. Quick Quiz: Is Hiroshi wearing short shorts? A: YES! Of course he is. Pajama versions. Yeesh. Hiroshi is so excited about seeing the meteor, he bursts into his parents’ bedroom, which had the door shut, and his parents are moaning and groaning from just off camera, Hiroshi getting a look of horror on his face….

No, he didn’t just see his parents banging, they’re tied up! That’s almost as bad. Almost. Garoga stroll out and are like “we’re in charge now, sucker!” and then hypnotize Hiroshi and start controlling his mind via remote control!

The Zone family discusses the meteorite crash – could it be Garoga? Everything is Garoga, you dolts! At this point, they should be blasting everything that even remotely looks like it came from space.

The meteor from last night has been immediately taken from the impact site and put in a children’s museum with a box and sign already, and the only people there to look at it are a bunch of kids and Hikaru, Hotaru, and Akira (who is also a kid!) This sort of stretches plausibility, I guess scientists aren’t interested in a new huge mysterious meteor, nor worried it might have deadly levels of space radiation or something.


Suddenly the meteor starts flashing and fluid runs down it, the kids all scatter and the Sakimoris stand back as Baron Garoga’s voice begins threatening them. So they transform into Zones and disintegrate the meteor. That was easy. The hypnotized Teramura parents make Hiroshi go out to infiltrate the Sakimori family, so he can shut down the Proton Barrier that protects the house. This is why the Garoga don’t just nuke Tokyo. Though they should just nuke Tokyo anyway, and Zone Fighter will die of radiation poisoning when he leaves his house. Think ahead, Baron Garoga!

Hiroshi infiltrates by running in front of Hikaru’s car, and the ace racing car driver runs over a small child. Good one! Shockingly, Hiroshi is not dead, so the Sakimoris do the sensible thing and take the kid to their home instead of the hospital or call the police or anything, even bringing his smashed robot toy along with. The toy is totally not a suspicious device or something.

Hiroshi claims to not remember anything, so they keep him at their home, like a pet or something. Hotaru seems very eager to adopt Hiroshi as a pet, which is sort of creepy. They also fix the robot toy, which was very very broken in the car accident. Which is why the Zones not noticing it had horrible Garoga circuitry in it is sort of suspicious.

That night, hypnotized Hiroshi puts the robot by the power source for the Proton Barrier. Luckily, Hikaru gets up in the middle of the night to wander around all the time and he finds it, and tosses it out of the house just in time for it to explode.

They find Hiroshi lying in the middle of the street, unconscious. He’s still out by the next morning, and an x-ray of his skull reveals a Garoga ESP receiver in his brain. They’ve still not bothered to take him to the hospital, by the way. Zones don’t believe in that whole doctor thing.

Hikaru and Hotaru drive around until they find Hiroshi’s house (I am not sure how they found his house), and his parents come outside. And laugh at them! Then they transform into Garoga! Hikaru and Hotaru transform into Zone modes, the two Garoga then laugh and transform into Mogranda! Is this the new thing, Garoga turning into the monsters?

Zone Angel takes Hiroshi away while Zone Fighter shoots Mogranda. Zone Fighter is still in tiny human mode, but his gun blasts do major damage to Mogranda.

Mogranda looks like a goofy version of Mechagodzilla, with a giant metal lobster claw and a drill rising up from behind his head. He breathes fire, because that’s always a good effect.

Zone Fighter wastes a bunch of time running around before he finally grows big, and then he starts walloping that big idiot robot while the Zone Fighter Theme plays.

Until…

Hiroshi calls down a meteor, which crashes nearby and is filled with tiny red dots, which Mogranda then sucks up into his mouth, his head drill begins spinning around, and Mogranda begins spewing out lots of explosive red power all over Zone Fighter. This is bad for Zone Fighter, because I guess Zone Fighter is one of the lizard aliens from V and is poisoned by red dust? Mogranda then starts burning random houses as Zone struggles on the ground.

Hotaru calls her family to let them know what’s up, and they send Zone Junior to fly Smokey to Hiroshi Teramura’s house. Zone Junior goes to the Teramura house, guns down the two Garoga inside, and sets a bomb which blows up the whole house. I hope there were no precious mementos in the house. Also did Zone Junior just murder Hiroshi’s parents??

Hiroshi collapses, Mogranda starts freaking out, and it’s time to kick some butt! Zone, Zone, ZONE! Zone Fighter fires a lot of bullets into Mogranda until he explodes!

Actually, a very very crude mockup of Mogranda explodes. It looks worse than the bad mockup of Wargilgar

Somehow Hiroshi’s parents aren’t dead and aren’t even that mad their house was blown up. It’s a happy ending for all, except Hotaru, who no longer has a pet human boy to play with. At least until Hikaru runs over another human boy! The episode showed the Garoga recharging one of their monsters with an in-fight power up, something only the Zones have been doing so far. Maybe they can even use more than one monster at once again, because that works whenever Godzilla isn’t there to mess it up. But who expects the Garoga to be master strategists? Otherwise they’d just take over one of Akira’s little friends, get invited to a sleepover, and blow up the Proton Shield that way. Or maybe they could have done it when they had the fake Hotaru inside the house. Stupid Garoga.

Rated 6/10 (opening rings, busted bot, morpho effects, boom!, yet another meteor, red M&Ms were banned for a reason!)

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