Here come the Robots!

The certainty that Kodansha’s Weekly Shōnen Magazine began life with of all things - a classy Tetsujin 28 competitor - is a frankly unknown curio amongst super robot fans outside Japan. Amongst his works besides Kuro Obi Kun and the less popular Tokyo Tarzan, No. 13 Take Off is a creation of Yoshiteru Takano, an unsung manga author turned camera store pioneer. 

Despite its more hokey design, it’s much unlike the remote controlled and ugly-cute Tetsujin 28, who likely has the interesting title of being ‘the first robot character of what’s now considered the unlikely but true first Mon-themed work ever’.

Although indirectly inspired by Manoel Messias de Mello’s Audaz the Demolisher, the first piloted non-American super robot with its own eponymous comic, Ken Ishikawa’s Getter Robos have more famous exploits. Frankly, the Getter Robos also have another stylistic predecessor in Leonel Guillermo Prieto’s similar but lesser known Invictus from Mexico. 

While also inspired by Invictus, the manga’s eponymous super robot is otherwise a much more direct predecessor to Mazinger Z and its companions, but it can only claim the rather more unknown title of ‘the first piloted Japanese super robot in a weekly manga format’, because Mazinger Z truly is ‘the first piloted Japanese manga super robot to go international in many places’. Nonetheless, No. 13 Take Off did get a reprint by Pan Rolling relatively recently, even though it’s only in Japanese. 



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