Game OVA Season 4: Episode 3 — Sonic Soldier Borgman

I've been looking for something to help me through the hot 'n' humid summer months and what better way to beat the heat than to stay indoors watching questionable anime and playing questionable games based on said anime? For a rundown of this little project, check out the first episode.

The Property

Get strapped into your best color-coded exosuits because it's time for Sonic Soldier Borgman (a.k.a. Chou-on Senshi Borgman)! Half-cyborg, half-man (so I guess that's three-quarters man one-quarter robot?) the Sonic Soldier Borgman (Borgmen?) are warriors of justice equipped in special Baltector gear—that's a pormanteau of balls and protector, since protecting your balls is integral to any shounen anime—in order to fight an encroaching army of "youma": devils that arrived from space via meteors (what is this, Might and Magic?) and then joined the mafia, I think. So, you know, evil space demon Yakuza. Same ol' same ol'. That's right, it's another one of these sci-fi tokusatsu things with a slight RoboCop flair: I'm going to have to be meticulous to keep this and prior Game OVA subject Armored Police Metal Jack separate in my head. The 1980s has a lot to answer for with all these action figure commercials masquerading as entertainment.

An anime original, Sonic Soldier Borgman saw its popular 35-episode TV show eventually spin off into multiple epilogue OVAs which in turn were followed by a sequel OVA series in 1993. It also received a single video game adaptation towards the end of the TV show's run which was, once again, one of the few notable anime tie-ins on the Master System/Sega Mk. III that I'm only tossing in here to lighten my workload for the next entry of Mastering the Master System at the end of the month. Peak efficiency: Sonic Soldier Borgman will accept nothing less. (Also, possibly the first Sega game to have "Sonic" in the title? Perhaps!)

Cast

• Ryo Hibiki: Standard shounen protagonist. Strong in his convictions, brave to the point of reckless, sticks up for his friends, has a dream to be an astronaut, and is a big fan of motorcycles. Did a ten-year-old write this character? Curiously, despite having "Red Ranger" written all over him, he's actually the blue guy.
• Chuck Sweager: A brash American, presumably so they could sell this show overseas. Pretty much the Ken Masters to Ryo's, uh, Ryu. In the sense that he's a little more laid-back and unserious and flirts with the ladies a lot, but still basically a good dude who might indeed one day go home and be a family man once all this is over. He's the green guy. I guess the idea with the name is that he's supposed to be like legendary test pilot Chuck Yeager but with even more swagger? I do so love on-the-nose western names in anime.
• Anise Pharm: The token girl of the group, Anise was an aspiring singer who took a mortal wound during a demon attack and was fused to the Baltector gear to save her life. She now fights alongside the others as the red guy (or gal) when needed, and works as an elementary school teacher the rest of the time. Hey, you know what they say, "if you can't sing because you got mauled by demons, teach".
• Memory Gene: Genius founder of the Sonic Soldier Borgman team, typically lending a support role while they're out in the field. Haunted by the death of her brother, Reminisce, which is to say his name was Reminisce but also that she frequently reminisces about him. She's also an absolute baddie, which is probably why the actual baddies seem so keen to recruit her.
• Gilbert Mesh: A former scientist who worked alongside Memory and now the current leader of GIL, the demon-worshipping crime organization helping the invaders in their takeover. Uses his smarts for evil. This track sadly does not play whenever he is on screen.
• Dust Jead: GIL's chief enforcer, a demon warrior who fights in a similar set of Baltector gear as the heroes (except his is black, because evil). He's also equipped with a sword and a whip, because why not go full balrog if you're a villain in a shounen anime?
• Charlie Burger: Some random cop. His role in the show is similar to Harvey Bullock's, in that he's sort of skeptical about these vigilantes running around in dumb costumes. I just liked the name. I guess "Randy Donut" would've been a bit too obvious.

The Anime

Since the OVAs are sequels, we'll be looking at the first three episodes of the TV show. Sonic Soldier Borgman was created by Ashi Productions, directed by Hiroshi Negishi, written by Hideki Sonoda, and with character designs from Kia Asamiya. Ashi's coming up on its fiftieth year of operation (omedetou!) and is primarily known for shows that cater to a shoujo or joshi audience—that is to say, shows for women—including magical girl anime and slice-of-life stuff with a romance focus. Their most recent shows include 365 Days to the Wedding, a wholesome fake relationship farce that nonetheless seriously explored the travails affecting young professionals looking to tie the knot, and How I Attended an All-Guy's Mixer, an LGBTIA+-adjacent romcom about women who cross-dress recreationally. They've dipped into shounen as well, as in addition to Sonic Soldier Borgman they also put out the anime adaptation for the Chinese Kung Fu adventures of Ironfist Chinmi, the Macross sorta-successor Macross 7, and the original Vampire Hunter D movie. Notably for our sakes here, it's their second appearance on Game OVA after Iria: Zeiram the Animation (the second ever Game OVA episode), and are perhaps best known to western audiences of a certain age for the official Mega Man cartoon from the early '90s. The one that gave Cut Man a curiously germane Peter Lorre voice.

Hiroshi Negishi was just starting his career as a director with Sonic Soldier Borgman but would later go on to found studios Zero-G and Radix (Radix being behind several Sakura Wars adaptations). He's perhaps best known for directing several Tenchi Muyo! movies as well as its 2014 reboot, Ai Tenchi Muyo!. He also directed Tekkaman Blade, which is a potential candidate for this feature owing to some Nintendo console tie-ins. Prior to Borgman, writer Hideki Sonoda had done scattered episodes of various TV shows and OVAs—including Bugutte Honey, the official Adventure Island anime, and a couple of the OVAs for previous subject Dirty Pair—but by now is best known for being the scribe for a huge number of movies in the Pokémon series. I checked his Bulbapedia page: he's worked on at least 15 of them (on a related note, TIL there's over 15 Pokémon movies). Kia Asamiya's a mangaka and anime character artist for a great deal of famous shows, including sci-fi harem romcom Martian Successor Nadesico, another possible Game OVA candidate Detonator Orgun, and the cyberpunk Bubblegum Crisis-alike Silent Möbius. He also was a guest "Blade" designer for Xenoblade Chronicles 2, which featured multiple such artists for that whole gacha-waifu nonsense they had going on. Seemingly a fan of western media, he created the official Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace manga adaptation as well as a Batman manga called Batman: Child of Dreams. Batmanga. Now I've seen everything.

Anyway, moving from Batman back to Borgman, let's get started on these episodes:

Episode 1: The Youma Have Come. Borgman to Set Off!

(I've no idea if the title is accurate but that's what we're going with. Youma are what the show calls the alien demons; it's a term used for the very similar monster villains in Sailor Moon as well (the ones that got unfortunately translated to "negademons").)

It's the first episode, so time to get our exposition on (after a gloriously '80s rock ballad OP, "Don't Look Back"). The youma landed on Earth something like 30 years ago destroying what looked like most of Tokyo (it's 199X now, so I guess they showed up around the time the Beatles were performing at the Budokan, tough break) and have managed to procure a foothold but not much more since then. Humans are still at peace, which just rankles the youma hegemony something awful. The leader of pro-youma group GIL (that would be Gil Mesh) explains, while wearing some sick Kabuki make-up, that they need to conquer Megalo City next: the ultra-modern metropolis that replaced Tokyo as Japan's new capital. Some dopey underlings tell him that they've pre-emptively sent some of their weaker youma to the city (they didn't say weaker but I have to assume they're not sending their best quite yet—there's gotta be a difficulty curve for this sort of thing).

We then switch over to Ryo, a black-haired daredevil riding his bike to where his companions, the confident blond guy and the mild-mannered and competent woman of the team, are waiting to meet up with— wait, did I just accidentally load up Zillion again? Is this like the Golden Ratio but for anime shounen hero team compositions or something? He's distracted by an alert that a youma is close-by: turns out it's some kind of three-eyed jackal-looking creature. He corners it down an embankment but loses it, only for it to phase through the wall and attack. Despite holding it off with martial arts (since he got off his bike, which had the guns on it) he's ambushed by a second dog and needs to be bailed out by Chuck, arriving in a suit like he was interrupted on his way to a board meeting. A Meg Ryan-esque youma, the tamer for the jackals, observes them leave intact with some curiosity.

We now join Anise, the third and last member of the SSB crew (Marth and Ganondorf wouldn't be added until later), as she performs her thankless day job of guiding dumb kids around Megalo City's most critically vital locations, in this case the "Central Part" that houses the supercomputer that runs the entire city. Two kids break off from the group to go explore—that would be Shinji Oda, presumably no relation to that ambitious guy, and Molly Rangwald, who's going right back to detention with Judd Neilsen and Ally Shoddy after this escapade—and find the main computer room, surrounded by the corpses of guards produced by the aforementioned beast tamer and her intimidating Power Quiff who are busy hacking away at the city's infrastructure. Not to keep harping on about Zillion but didn't they do this exact storyline with another absurdly vulnerable security bottleneck? Anyway, some free hostages/emergency dogfood just landed in her lap and she seems kinda happy with how easy this whole infiltration mission has been so far. That's one difference from Zillion (the game) at least: there aren't alarm trip-lasers every five meters. Anise finds them but, I guess since she's not powered up yet, becomes another hostage.

Somehow sensing the urgency at hand, Ryo and Chuck are sleeping in (they have cots in the same hangar, it's a little cute) until Memory wakes them up and informs them of the hostage crisis. They jet on over—I forgot to mention, but Ryo's bike is called Thunder and it talks to him like K.I.T.T.; I just figured it was a fancy Sat Nav until now—but not before Memory hands them some armband devices with no explanation ("It can wait until later." Uh, OK? But we're about to get attacked by demon dogs right now, and these aren't the cute "bau bau" kind). Turns out by "later" she meant "on the way there, when you should be focusing on the road". The devices are Sonic Receivers, which digitally transfer the Borgman suits over to them directly—after speaking the key phrase, "Borg Get On" (very literal, I'm into it)—and after a snazzy transformation scene that I just know this show will be reusing a lot, they're on the way as the newly founded Sonic Soldier Borgman. Pulling their best Kristi Noem, they drive their vehicles directly at the dogs to kill them but the pups instead remain unphased, combining into a massive two-headed monster. The duo shoot at it for a while to no effect, when Memory phones in to suggest running up to it and punching it real good. Ryo does just that, causing it to explode in such a grisly manner that there's no way this show is meant for kids despite the script suggesting otherwise, and the day is saved. Well, except there are more monsters inside the building, along with the youma lady and all the hostages. Cliffhanger time! (The ED, incidentally, is the even more ballad-y "Forever". Japanese heavy metal band Earthshaker performed both it and the OP.)

Episode 2: Who's That? The Third Borgman

We begin with a recap, since this is a two-parter, and reminds us that the youma agent Vallian (I swear this is the first time they've called her by her name, and it was in a recap? What?) is poised to take over Megalo City's entire network unless the Sonic Soldier Borgman—of which there are currently two—can stop her in time. Realizing they're going to have to be subtle about this if they're going to save the kids in time they drive their vehicles into the government building at full speed. Thankfully, the lobby of this place is at least ten miles long so they run into no problems even when they decide to unleash an entire missile battery to take out some camera turrets. While they're downstairs being all stealthy, Vallian breaks through the password system and enacts the second part of the plan: merging with the supercomputer core directly like that one poor woman in Superman III. She then changes to her true form, which looks an awful lot like Perfect Cell, and starts wrapping her tendrils around those sweet, sweet servers. If she's already harboring a deep hatred for mankind, I shudder to think what being connected to ten million users' internet history will do to that sentiment.

We then check back in with Anise and Molly, both of whom for whatever reason have been held up in some kind of web sphere dangling over the edge of the building as I guess some sort of special punishment for identity theft. Vallian's just a huge Sixteen Candles fan, turns out. While Anise assures Molly that the cops can totally deal with alien dog monsters she takes a glance at her Borgman device. Now, this helped answer something I was curious about: did Anise's transformation into one of the Borgman, which took place after she was injured, occur in this episode or did it happen earlier off-screen? Turns out it's the latter, since she has the device but didn't think to use it before she got grabbed by Gozer the Gozarian. Speaking of whom, since she's determined that Anise is not a god she begins slowly chopping off the pieces of the building holding up her blob orb prison as a means of inciting more fear, which I guess the youma also feed on? I don't know if they mean that metaphorically or what but I guess if it worked for the demons in Chainsaw Man it should work for them. Ryo's on the case, driving his motorcycle through office corridors and up and down staircases (couldn't he just take an elevator?) in a mad search to find anyone. Vallian uses metal gates to trap him in one stretch of corridor and then ups the AC to 500 degrees Celsius, or at least hot enough for the walls to start visibly melting. It's not heat though: it's the effect of the youma taking over, turning it into the liminal office corridor of hell (didn't Severance do something like this?). Anyway, he punches... I guess the wall? And it all falls apart and lets him resume his motorcycle journey through the backrooms.

Just as the last tether disconnects the orb from its perilously floating perch, Ryo is able to leap from the window and catch them as they fall; however, Anise lets Molly get saved as she uses her now free hands to Borg Get On herself, leading to a not-at-all sexualized transformation sequence similar to the one we saw last time with the guys. Chuck catches her but their combined weight causes them to collapse through the floor, which makes me wonder (and not for the first time) how heavy these exosuits actually are. Like I figured they were carbon nanofiber or something but they often move like they're lugging several kilos of kevlar around. She introduces herself as the third Borgman (though technically she'd be the first, since she already had the gear and passcode). Abandoning the unconscious Molly in a broom closet somewhere—she'll be fine, it's not like the entire building hasn't turned into a hostile demon or anything—the group decide to go save the other children captured near the main computer terminal before confronting the demon hacker before she does something truly catastrophic, like cancelling everyone's student debt. The trio finally decide to take the elevator (oh, so this building does have them?) wary about it being a trap. Despite a few mosquito youma though, it's plain-sailing to where the kids are tied up and the boys decide to let the woman handle the touchy-feely hostage rescue stuff while they go on to where Vallian is waiting.

Vallian the valkyrian villain is indeed waiting to show off how much she's managed to integrate herself with the computer's wiring, appearing even more like Perfect Cell, and attacks. She proves formidable, knocking the heroes around while they remain cautious of damaging the computer behind her. Anise rushes in with a secret weapon—cotton candy shooters—but Vallian effortlessly burns it away. Before Anise can get started on a weaponized funnel cake or a nuclear corn dog, Vallian tries to stun them with a combination of shrieking and flashing effects, which would only prove fatal if they were epileptic. They use this chance while the bad guy is wasting time doing something of questionable effect to maneuver around her so they can shoot at her back without worrying about hitting the computer and accidentally erasing their PSN accounts (all those platinums gone, like tears in rain). Their combined firepower pins Vallian against a wall and pushes her straight through, leading to what might or might not be her demise (GIL seems to think she's dead, at least, but maybe that's just a "might as well be dead for failing us" situation). The Borgman leave a note for Molly to hand to Charlie Burger, the cop that's been stationed outside the building, while Memory is visited by her colleague Fritz—the only other person to know about the Borgman project in detail—and cautions her on getting her "team" killed by underestimating the youma. Like this dude did anything to help? As we close the episode, it's revealed that Memory is also the principal at the school the kids are from, and she introduces the two new teachers Ryo (language) and Chuck (P.E.) as we fade to credits. Really? You gave the language teaching job to Ryo? What language is that, violence? I guess we'll find out what his phonics curriculum is like on the next thrilling episode of Sonic Soldier Borgman!

Episode 3: Destroy the Nightmare, Sonic Power!

All right, that first arc was pretty Shadowrun-esque with its juxtaposition of magical demonic forces and cyberterrorism, so how does the show follow up on that delicate bridging of two distinct thematic genres? How about a dream demon? Dreams are kinda like brain electricity, right? So that's still sci-fi. Bagbell, the dream demon in question, has already been dispatched to Megalo City but the other GIL lieutenants are skeptical he can get the job done. Presumably they skipped the Nightmare in Elm Street series (these guys really seem more like Hellraiser fans). Dust Jead also takes advantage in this moment of discord to introduce himself to the audience as someone who can step in and get things done if this Sandman dude shits the bed (instead of his intended goal of getting the humans to shit their own beds).

Bagbell, who's absolutely going for that whole Gothic vampire thing because what else is a dream demon meant to do, works his magic on a sleeping horror movie fan: turns out his power to manifest into reality the dreams of sleeping humans, rather than go in there directly and scare them to death, so now there's Gremlins running around the city. Ryo, recreationally driving his motorcycle around at night as he is wont to do, picks up the signal for a youma presence and heads over only to get attacked by Bagbell and his bat familiar directly. Bagbell can also throw objects psychically should the whole dream manifestation thing prove useless in a fistfight. Given the bat and the Gremlins are all essentially illusions though, Ryo finds it difficult to destroy them. He sure does a good job destroying this high street though so he's forced to bail before the cops show up.

The brain-source for the Gremlins turns out to be Jun, a student at the same school the Borgman operate in their civilian lives. After crashing out on the parallel bars in gym class, requiring Chuck to do his best Six Million Dollar Man impression to rescue him, he rests fitfully in the school's medical office as Bagbell once again works his magic to pull out even more borderline copyright-infringing nightmare fuel from his fertile imagination. In this case, an army of Harryhausen skeletons (this kid's got taste I tell you what) who march on the school facilities. Anise is distracted from looking up Jun's history—his mother died in a traffic accident some years back, which the show suggests might be behind something as dysfunctional as liking horror media—when a skeleton crashes through the window and chases her around the archival office like a Scooby Doo skit. One "Borg Get On!" sequence later and the team's ready to punch the shit out of some ossified offenders. However, before make much progress Jun suddenly awakes and the army vanishes. After narrowing down the possible source of these dream demons to Jun through a deductive process called "moving the plot along", Memory theorizes that the trauma of losing his mother at such a young age caused Jun to amass a huge amount of "psycho-energy", which may one day cause him to become M. Bison manifest an illusory demon powerful enough to destroy the city.

However, the demons don't need to destroy anything if they can trick the over-equipped militarized police into blowing up the place for them (man, this show really is prophetic). The Borgman race out to calm the cops down and tell them what the deal is with these new youma—that they're the magical dream manifestations of a young boy, something they'll be inclined to believe immediately—but instead managed to corner Bagbell, who they find pretty quickly since he has a habit of standing on rooftops trying to look cool and mysterious while his demons do his dirty work. Bagbell sends them all to an illusory realm where he has his bat attack them, now considerably larger, and the Borgman have the bright idea to grab it instead of just having their bullets pass through it. Bagbell raises the stakes by merging with his bat to become some sort of "Batman" as it were, using his echolocation as a weapon to defeat the Sonic Soldier Borgman (how ironic?). He then sics a pretend tidal wave on them but they turn the tables by... using their computers to identify his new form's weaknesses (the wing joints! Of course!) and summon enormous guns to just blow the shit out of him. I'm not sure that's a satisfying conclusion to this fight—I figured there'd be more overcoming their fears and insecurities and we'd learn more about their background and motivation in the process—but it's a conclusion all the same. The dream world and the illusory monsters vanish and life returns to normal for Megalo City. A skeptical Fritz still thinks the team won't be able to handle what's coming as we ominously fade to credits with Dust Jead stepping up to the plate. I'm sure that episode will be perilous and dramatic and won't immediately be resolved once there's only thirty seconds left in the episode, but we won't be finding that out here.

So that's the show. These sci-fi shounen are all starting to blend together a bit and I'm retroactively thankful I didn't do this and Zillion in the same month. Of course, the more action-oriented shows tend to make for more logical video game conversions so that's largely what we're dealing with on Game OVA. Speaking of which, someone made a video game of this garbage?

The Game(s)

Chou-on Senshi Borgman, or just Borgman going by its title screen, is a side-scrolling action game released on the Sega Master System in late 1988 that Sega developed and published themselves. The story sees Ryo solo dolo as he tackles a youma base close enough to be a threat to Megalo City and must work his way from area to area, collecting useful power-ups along the way as well as keycards to open the route forward, to eventually reach where the youma leader lies in wait.

The game's structure is partially non-linear in that the player can take on any of the first three areas in any order. However, Area B needs an item from Area A before it can be accessed in full and Area C has tougher enemies that are easier to deal with by collecting the weapon found in Area B. Each area requires you take down a number of "Chiefs"—typically around three or four—by carefully exploring each floor of each area before they're allowed to leave. Areas C, E, F, and G all contain bosses which need to be defeated to reach the end of the game; the rest are comparatively optional but tend to contain items that make the rest of the game substantially easier. Other novel features include an always-visible mini-map as well as a first-person view (presented in wireframe) that lets the player know of approaching enemies. Initially, Ryo fights with his fists but can also find and equip stronger weapons.

With that introduction done, let's see what this game looks like:

Fine, you got me, what we're actually playing today is Cyborg Hunter. Like many anime tie-ins that were released overseas—Sega published the game in PAL territories while Activision, of all places, brought the game to the States—anything related to the license was scrapped and replaced with an original story and characters to avoid paying anyone any money. The player is now Paladin, taking orders and advice from Adina, as he fights his way through the cyborg fortress and takes down its leader, Vipron (or maybe he's just a very important person called Ron). Otherwise, it seems to be functionally identical. Let's get into it:

So the way the game's inventory system works is that you have to press the Select button. On the other controller. That is to say, you need a second controller plugged in so you can access your inventory which you'll need to do to use any weapons or items, such as the ID Card needed to move beyond Area C. Without this extra controller you literally cannot progress the game. So now you might be asking, "OK, so what does pressing the Select button on the first controller do if they ran out of buttons that they needed to get a second party involved?" It does absolutely nothing.

Does it do right by the anime? Somewhat. You are a guy in bad RoboCop armor fighting monsters with either a gun or your bare fists, so they got that part right, but otherwise this feels like a game that could work with any characters and still function as well as it does. Maybe the power-ups have more relation to the show—I don't recall them ever busting out a jetpack or a laser-resistant shield or guns that could fire in the dark, but then I only watched a handful of episodes—but what makes Cyborg Hunter feel original isn't the premise so much as its wild gameplay conceits. Seriously, what was with that second controller thing? Did this game inspire the Psycho Mantis fight? Nahhh.

...Except, didn't I have a psycho power gauge, come to think of it? Someone get me Kojima on the horn, I need to get to the bottom of this. Death what? Oh, I guess he's busy. I'll bring this sorry state of affairs to an end here then. Thanks for stopping by The Anime Zone once again and I'll get to figuring out what I want to cover next. Here's a hint: No more shounen sci-fi superhero trash for a while. Maybe a nice slice-of-life? Or a comedy? Or maybe even something people have actually heard of, heaven forfend? Be sure to check back in soon to see what fresh animated hell awaits.