YMMV / GaoGaiGar

• Awesome Music:
  • The opening theme, "Yuusha Oh Tanjou" ("The King of Braves is Born", literally) which is sung by Endoh Masaaki. Especially the FINAL Grand Glorious Gathering version. It's so catchy that you may randomly start singing GAGAGA GAGAGA GAOGAIGAR~ for years after watching the anime.
  • After several years since FINAL's release, we're finally treated to a new revision of Yuusha Oh Tanjou, Juvenile Version, to accompany King of Kings: GaoGaiGar vs. Betterman, the song being updated to show GaoGaiGar's variants throughout the new story. However, a VERY special moment must be brought up for the end of it, as the song suddenly becomes a Villain Song dedicated to the new antagonist Hakaioh, fitting as they have taken over Genesic GaoGaiGar to begin their conquest.
  • Some of the Stock Footage music is also noteworthy - in particular, "Final Fusion" is one of the most heroic Theme Music Power-Up tunes in the series, and "Goldion Hammer" is basically music for "Kiss your ass goodbye, villain!"
  • POWER OF DESIRE and "Let's Final Fusion!", the latter sung by both Masaaki Endoh and Hironobu Kageyama.
  • The aptly named Yuuki Aru Tatakai, practically the musical cue that the villains are about to get their sh*t wrecked in a truly epic way. Most of the series's best moments have this song accompanied them (the showdown with EI-01, the final battle with the Z-Master, GaoGaiGar vs Zonuda and Gai's EPIC beatdown of Palparepa)
  • King J-Der's Utsukushiki Hikari no Tsubasa (Beautiful Wings of Light). Plenty of Super Robots have Hot-Blooded Rock themes. How many have a fricking OPERA? And sung by a legendary stage actor best known for playing The Phantom of the Opera in the Japanese production?
  • Another Theme Music Power-Up is "Dividing Driver". All the more true during the activation of the Goldion Crusher.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Mikoto's photo album in episode 37 inexplicably has live action photos in it, including a woman performing a henshin pose and a shiba inu. Also of note is the conspicuous also live action hand holding the page for one shot.
• Broken Base: The darker tone present in FINAL divides quite a few fans. Some view it as out of place and think that it results in the show losing some of the charm the original's kid-friendly ethos gave it, while others welcome it and feel that it was a logical next step for the series and that there wasn't really any way to escalate the villains beyond the Z-Master without dipping into territory that was unavoidably non-kid-friendly.
• Common Knowledge: It's been long since believed that GaoGaiGar was produced as a response to the dark, deconstructive Neon Genesis Evangelion—except it wasn't. Not only was Evangelion a dark twist on Ultraman instead of mecha anime, GaoGaiGar released over a year after Evangelion debuted and was the final entry in Takara's long-running Brave franchise, serving as a send-off to that series' themes and aesthetic. Given how long production leads take, GaoGaiGar and Evangelion were most likely in production at the same time, wholly unbeknowst to each other. Also, GaoGaiGar was largely a vehicle for selling toys; only in the latter half of the series where it turned out to be more popular with older viewers did GaoGaiGar's writing take a more dramatic turn.
• Cult Classic: One of the biggest examples among the English-speaking anime fandom. Not everyone has heard of it or watched it, but those who have tend to fall in love with it without reservation.
• Growing the Beard: The first 20 or so episodes are fairly standard monster-of-the-week-beaten-with-new-GGG-gadgetry fare and reveal the show as the Merchandise-Driven kid's show it was... but around episode 27 or so, the quality of the story, the acting, the animation, the hot blood, and the absurdity all takes a sharp uptick and the show grows ever more entertaining from there.
• Hilarious in Hindsight
  • "Made in China" stamps on Fuuryu and Rairyu toys.
  • When Fuuryu and Rairyu act under UN orders and storm GGG in FINAL, they deploy in deep space which causes them to appear gray. There are bootleg toys of them in that color.
  • "THE POWER" is the exact same name as both the premiere and finale of Regular Show.
  • The unfortunate looking hot air balloon in episode 8 looks a lot like the poop emoji.
• Magnificent Bastard: Arm Primeval, also known as ZX-07, is the leader of the Seven Magnificent Primevals, a group consisted of the strongest Primevals which he lives up to such title. Being able to make use of Eye Primeval's ability to see through the future, Arm is able to predict every direction Guy is striking towards him. Even after losing Liver Primeval, Arm is still able to remain his cool and fused with other Primevals to become Combined Primeval which gives the GGG a hard time. Later, he is able to trick the heroes into destroying missiles which release sand that immobilised them and later used the sand to help him escape. In order to hide their portal that brought the Primevals to Jupiter, Arm created a Zonder Robo to disrupt GGG’s radio sequence so they won’t detect the portal. Always being able to come up with a plan ahead of the heroes and managed to avoid getting purified for three times, Arm Primeval has proved himself to be one of the most competently dangerous Primeval GGG has ever faced.
• Memetic Mutation: "Symmetrical Docking" became a Fan Nickname for two women pressing their breasts together after a memorable Super Robot Wars Yon Koma gag comic as seen here
• Narrowed It Down To The Guy I Recognise: In FINAL, Kotaro is replaced with this old bugger in the command chair, and the UN makes its move to acquire GGG's resources, which they've planned for some time. Turns out the old guy wasn't part of their plan - he even ends up holding the line.
• Padding: Especially prevalent in the first half of the series, the mediocre first half would have much shorter episodes if not for the constant blabbering and long transformation sequences during the battles.
• Periphery Demographic: The TV series was originally aimed at kids, yet suffered poor TV ratings (from a combination of franchise fatigue - a Brave series had been on air every year since 1990, making GaoGaiGar the eighth in as many years - and running directly into the electric-mouse-powered buzzsaw that was Pokémon: The Original Series. Its popularity actually came from massive DVD sales to older otaku and mecha fans, who were highly impressed with the show's second half.
• Sequel Displacement: GaoGaiGar is the most easily recognized of the eight Brave Series, particularly outside of Japan. All but the hardest-core Anglophone mecha fans will react with a blank stare and "Wait... there was a series?" when the Brave Series is brought up in the context of GGG.^note Even in Japan, it's by far the most visible of the lot and in the 21st century is treated as the franchise's flagship entry; it's pretty much always front and center of Brave-wide promotional material like the 30th anniversary celebration, and thanks to Super Robot Wars and the like, it's the entry most folks who weren't kids when the shows were airing are likely to be familiar with. This was all compounded by the fact that, for ages, only three other Brave Series (The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird, The Brave Fighter of Legend Da-Garn and Brave Police J-Decker) had been fully-subbed in a coherent way, though by 2019 much of The Brave Express Might Gaine, Brave Exkaiser, The Brave of Gold Goldran, and Brave Command Dagwon and its OVA had fan-made subtitles available, and an internet meme was born based on The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird, giving awareness even without it entering Super Robot Wars
• Spoiled by the Format: The Z-Master is destroyed in episode 47, but there are two more episodes left. Uh oh...
• Superlative Dubbing: Damn the dub is awesome. Which makes it all the more unfortunate that it was canceled halfway through, just when the show itself was entering its strongest arcs (and thus were going to give the actors even better material). Apparently low sales sealed the dub's fate and season 2 was released subtitled only.
• Toy Ship: Mamoru and Hana. Driven home with a big golden hammer at the end when their school friends present Hana to Mamoru in a wedding dress, veil and all, before he leaves.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • Not in the way you might expect — sure, there are pagers everywhere (in the far-off future of ~2005), a lot of the kids wear 90s kid fashion, GaoGaiGar's shoulders are specifically the then-brand-new 500 series shinkansen, et cetera... but the bit that makes the show stick out somewhat painfully as a 90s product is the tendency of Ushi and Ayame to gush over American military equipment. A number of episodes feature one or the other recognizing an American-made military vehicle and gushing over it (often before it becomes a Zonderized threat); episode 39 even makes a joke of them nerding out together. In 1997, this was a pretty common depiction of military fanboys (which Ayame is on top of being a toku geek), but in the 21st century, especially The New '10s and beyond, it can come across a lot differently (and somewhat weirdly, given that this is a Japanese show) thanks to the events at the start of the century. A show of the 21st century could easily be perceived as making a much different statement than GGG intends with this, and the military otaku-ism marks the show as a product of its time in a way that the production staff almost certainly didn't intend at all.
  • Episode 4 also hits this problem in a different way. To a lot of Americans, an episode about an out-of-control monster space shuttle might've been a little questionable even in '97, but it still would've been at least somewhat acceptable; after 2003, though, any show anywhere in the world doing this kind of plot would come across as being in terribly bad taste. In 1997, though, the space shuttle program and general interest in space development was still very hot and would only taper off after the events of the new century, so the shuttle story - and even the entire existence of the Space Development Corporation as GGG's public arm - was a natural writing angle.
• Values Dissonance: Child characters appearing naked. Not a big deal at all in Japan (where nakedness in that context just indicates innocence) but raised some eyebrows in the West.
• The Woobie: It's hard to not feel incredibly terrible for Mamoru after all that happens to him in FINAL.

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