YMMV / Great Mazinger

• Accidental Innuendo: He's talking about docking the Condor Brain and Mazinger:
  Tetsuya: Great Mazinger and I are one. We can combine whenever we want.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Tetsuya Tsurugi in the original anime was excessively prideful, prone to fits of jealousy, could not stand someone showed him up and sometimes he seemed more concerned about showing off than protecting the humankind. Other versions of him, though, are less jealous -he retains his pride, though, and he does NOT like him when someone doubts or slights his skills-.
  • Let's say that everytime he is featured, while every other character uses old version with slight modifications, he gets a brand new one while still keeping enough elements to resembles its original version. Good example is Mazinkaiser version which turns him into an older brother figure to Koji in a "protective older brother" kind, which is nowhere near the most other versions. And then there's the Shin Mazinger version...
  • Jun Hono in the original anime was a Type A Tsundere, half-black girl. In the original Go Nagai manga she was a Type B Tsundere and she looked full-Asian. It is said Gosaku Ota drew her like a half-black girl, though, and Go Nagai liked the idea and her race was retconned in canon.
  • Kenzo Kabuto can be a benevolent but harsh Mentor and a lousy parent... or, depending on the adaptation, one of the villains.
• Anticlimax Boss: Archduke Gorgon is The Dreaded since his first appearance in the last third of Mazinger Z. However, he ends up being accidentally struck and mortally wounded by Mazinger's thunder while trying to push one of his monsters to fight.
• Base-Breaking Character: Tetsuya is either a more interesting character than Koji, or not Koji. Super Robot Wars Alpha Gaiden make it even worse. Whether his breakout is totally awesome or he Took a Level in Jerkass in the same game.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Originally the Great General of Darkness was the Emperor of Darkness's right-hand man. However, he became incredibly popular. In fact he is so popular than in the Mazinkaiser movie he led the Mykene invasion. The Emperor, Marquis Janus, Minister Argos... are not even mentioned, and even though the seven generals of the Mykene hosts show up, they are not identified like such.
• Even Better Sequel: While the original Mazinger Z is iconic, Great Mazinger is widely considered the superior work, due to the greater Character Development, right story and darker tone.
• Jerkass Woobie: Tetsuya, Tetsuya, Tetsuya. In the beginning of the series, he's an Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy extraordinary and his ways of trying to drive out Boss might look like outright bullying, but he has occasional moments to show that he's not stonehearted. Then we find out why he's like that: losing his parents, ignored by everyone in his old orphanage, and only noticed by his adopted father for his piloting skills, so he had to be on the top of his piloting skills, otherwise he feared he'll get abandoned again. He's that insecure, the arrogance was just his cover.
• Replacement Scrappy/Creator's Pet: After decades, Kouji fans STILL bash Tetsuya by accusing him of being this. In any way, it's nothing compared with their even worse treatment of Duke Freed/Daisuke from UFO Robo Grendizer. Fortunately for those diehards, Kouji one-ups Tetsuya in Mazinkaiser, and Tetsuya himself acknowledges that he owes Kouji his life.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: People hated Tetsuya for replacing Koji during the 1970's. By the time of Mazinkaiser, theres enough number of people that is disappointed by the fact that Tetsuya doesn't have enough screentime and overshadowed by Koji since Tetsuya is a much more interesting character. These days, he's primarily seen as an awesome, primary Manly Man amongst Super Robot pilots.
• Robo Ship: Great Mazinger and Venus A.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The main difference between the Mechanical Beasts and the Warrior Beasts, which are used by the Mykene Empire, and thus serve the role of the Monsters of the Week in this installment is that the Warrior Beasts are in fact cyborgs who are the result of their soldiers merging together with giant mechanical bodies, retaining all of their sapience in the process. Despite this, only a select few of them speak and show signs of personality.
• Too Cool to Live: Ankoku Daishogun, and Tetsuya in Gosaku Ota manga. Not much different, eh?
• Values Dissonance: Lots of people don't understand why Tetsuya feels so jealous of Kouji's position as Kenzou's true firstborn son, to the point of refusing to help him at some point - which causes Kenzo's death in the end. This is actually because Tetsuya is an orphan, and in a society where family and stability are all, orphans are extremely looked down upon even in adulthood. Therefore, when the full-blooded son and heir of the man who raised him came in, Tetsuya was shit scared of being abandoned again and he knew that. if that was the case, the still very traditional Japanese society would likely make him a pariah. It was way, WAY more complicated than mere jealousy between two adoptive brothers: for Tetsuya, it was a very tangible fear and a threat to his self-worth as a whole, even when it's not exactly fair to Kouji.
• Values Resonance: Jun is the daughter of a Japanese woman and an African-American man, and she's been bullied for it ever since childhood. Seeing racism touched so directly in Japanese media is still rare.
  • One of the most exemplary and praise-worthy parts of this is that the racist bullying that Jun Hono was subjected to actually resulted in her internalizing the racism she experienced as a child, and lead to her having issues with her own skin color, and there is an entire episode dedicated to her learning to overcome her internalized racism and learning to accept herself for who she is with the help of her friends.
• The Woobie:
  • Shinchiro
  • The Great Marshall of Hell sees himself like this.