Cyborg Grandpa-G: Unedited Audio and Recording Notes

Manga Details

Author - Takeshi Obata (originally as Shigeru Hijikata)

• Notable people they were an assistant for:
  • Ryuji Tsugihara (Yoroshiku Mechadoc)
    • on Super Patrol
  • Makoto Niwano (The Momotaroh)
    • on The Momotaroh
• Notable people they had as assistants:
  • Nobuhiro Watsuki (Rurouni Kenshin, convicted pedophile)
    • on Arabian Majin Boukentan Lamp Lamp and Rikijin Densetsu
  • Yusuke Murata (Eyeshield 21, One Punch Man)
    • on Hikaru no Go
  • Ei Ando (One Piece Party)
    • on Hikaru no Go
  • Kentaro Yabuki (Ayakashi Triangle, To Love-Ru)
    • on Hikaru no Go
  • Ryo Ogawa (Ya Boy Kongming!)
    • on Death Note
  • Yoshiyuki Nishi (Muhyo & Roji, Bokke-san)
    • on Hikaru no Go
• Other works:
  • Hikaru no Go written by Yumi Hotta
  • Death Note, Bakuman, and Platinum End written by Ohba Tsugumi (aka Hiroshi Gamo)
  • School Judgment: Gakkyu Hotei
    • Episode 49 of Shonen Flop
  • Show-ha Shoten! (2022-present, 5+ vols, Jump Square) written by Akinari Asakura translated by friend of the show Stephen Paul
    • A brilliantly funny series about stand-up comedy, using Asakura’s comedic writing and the impeccable comic timing of Obata’s comic layouts and goofy cartooning to make one of the most laugh-out-loud series of he modern age… except when it makes you cry, that is.
• Bonus Obata trivia (in case we take a while to circle back around to him):
  • On September 6, 2006, Obata was arrested for illegal possession of an 8.6 cm knife when he was pulled over in Musashino, Tokyo for driving with his car's headlights off at 12:30am. The artist claimed he kept the knife in his car for when he goes camping.
  • Alongside his serialisations, Obata has also made several high-profile one-shots with collaborators such as Masanori Morita (Hello Baby), Nisio Isin (Uro-oboe Uroboros!, RKD-EK9) and Otsuichi (Hajime)
  • Among Obata’s many accolades are a Tezuka Award, Shogakukan Manga Award, Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize, an Eagle award and topping the prestigious ‘Kono Manga ga Sugoi’ rankings in 2010 with Bakuman.
  • For a special one-off event in Weekly Shonen Jump, Yoshio Sawai parodied Death Note and Obata/Ohba parodied BoBoBo-Bo Bo-BoBo, with predictably insane results.
  • His collected works have sold well in excess of 70 million copies in Japan alone.

Publishing

• Run Dates
  • May 2nd, 1989 to November 28th, 1989
• Chapters/Volumes:
  • 31 chapters/4 volumes (reprinted as 2 volumes)
• Series it replaced:
• Tsuide ni Tonchinkan (18 vols, hit, gag manga)
• Series that replaced it:
  • Ace! by Yoichi Takahashi (of Captain Tsubasa fame) (9 vols, did okay, baseball)
• Series that started at the same time as it:
  • Hayato 18-ban Shobu by Ryuji Tsugihara (of Yoroshiku Mechadoc fame) (2 vols, flop, golfing manga)
  • SCRAP Sandayu by Yudetamago (of Kinnikuman fame) (2 vols, flop, about a robot with a bucket for a head)

About the Manga

• Plot
  • The Kaizou family woke up with a shock one morning to discover that their grandpa had turned himself into a cyborg. He is now Cyborg Grandpa G, an elite farming cyborg fueled by methane gas and a fierce hatred of crows. After using his new cyborg weaponry and machine gun scarecrows to defeat the evil mayor of their town, grandpa decides to move everyone to Tokyo to start anew. The family tries to adjust to their new place, with Kei and Ai, the younger brother and older sister, starting school. Grandpa’s insane and controlling nature unfortunately results in them becoming cool delinquents. Meanwhile Grandpa’s old nemesis Dr. Sharekuoube has re-emerged to try to take over the world but cannot stop the extreme power of grandpa’s cyborg body, with his shitty son Inasaku creeping on Ai. Kei wants a dog so grandpa builds Gantetsu, a really ugly old cyborg dog, and Sharekoube puts out a bounty on Grandpa for 5 million yen and a years supply of Orange Juice. The whole town starts coming after grandpa and he straight up kills a bunch of them. The bounty calls out Cyborg Hunter Z, or Zetto, who was so upset at being unable to watch a cyborg anime when he was a little kid that he dedicated his life to fighting them. However he’s never actually seen a cyborg and after grandpa defeats him he decides to live in Gentetsu’s dog house and join the cast.
  • 
    
  • Grandpa soon decides to bring his wife back, and while he initially tries to bring her back as her beautiful 20 year old self, Gantetsu pushes a button that resurrects her as an old lady with saggy breasts that are just going to be out there for the rest of the manga. She is Cyber Metal Iron Grandma Q who loves heavy metal and plays a BC Rich Warlock, the most metal of all guitars. A giant senile monster named Jijira has attacked Tokyo, sucking up the youth energy of the young. Grandma and grandpa fight back, using Gantetsu’s transformation to steal it back and become their young hot versions, although they transform back almost immediately. After this Grandpa gains the ability to turn into his young self for 30 seconds at a time, and grandma modifies her body to be young again, although she turns back to her old self when she gets surprised maybe? It’s unclear. At one point Kei gets a friend who’s a giant delinquent rhinoceros beetle who fights a giant stag beetle and that’s pretty cool. They fight an Italian stereotype who loves gold and spaghetti, and when Yuu, Kei and AI’s mother discovers that Eichiro, their father, may be cheating on her close to their anniversary, they get in a big fight.
  • 
    
  • Grandpa makes a super youth regeneration potion to turn her back into her young self which will make Eichiro love her again but Yuu refuses and talks about how she wants to have the love of 15 years. Eichiro hears this and they reconcile. But when they throw the youth regeneration potion away, Sharekoube, who was just chilling in the trash can, gets it and turns back into his own young hot self. The mayor from chapter 1 returns having now become their cyborg landlord. Grandpa fights him as he reveals that Sharekoube transformed him to defeat grandpa. Sharekoube kidnaps grandma who as a reminder is also young and hot now, and declares that he will take her for himself. We get a flashback to 50 years ago where Sharekoube and Grandpa were scientists in WW2. Sharekoube wanted to create an evil cyborg army while grandpa wanted to make a bunch of cyborg farmers. Grandma was Sharekoube’s fiancé but leaves him for grandpa, which drove Sharekoube insane. Grandpa quickly defeats the landlord mayor using the power of cigarettes before defeating cyborg Sharekoube despite him using the destructive power of horrible farts. Everyone reverts to their senior forms and the Kaizou family wakes up the next day to discover that grandpa has forcibly transformed them all into cyborgs.
  • 
    
• Characters
  • Grandpa aka Tokijirou Kaizou
    • “Jii-chan” is an informal, affectionate way of referring to one’s grandfather
    • Motherfucking cyborg
  • Doctor sharekoube
    • Makes dumb inventions
    • Has a grandson
    • Is a perv
  • Grandma q
    • Brought back from the dead
    • Loves metal

Why it failed

• The humor is a little weird with the pacing of things
• It's really just lolzanny with little substance
• No one except Grandpa is really fleshed out
• I did not understand the driving test chapter at all
• I feel the chapters just go on too long so something silly like the dream chapter feels dragged out
• What the fuck why is there an attempted date rape
• I feel this falls for “not be doctor slump syndrome” where it really tries to do things intentionally to not be dr slump, like a lack of wacky inventions, stronger focus on side characters, etc

What it did well

• Art is so 80s but great
• Dumbest thing I’ve ever read but amazing
• The stupid evil scientist stuff is great
• Stays true to itself
• The delinquent continuity is great
• Lmao the moriking chapter
• What great art, good sense of energy for

Where it could have gone

• Maybe actually talk about robotics,? Idk this is hard to think about
• Actually have it be super short spy vs spy style comics between grandpa and the evil scientist
• Be more positive really sell the people be weird and that's how it is kinda thing
• Really go into the chindogu element, like how can a crazy invention help with farming or something. It could have been a commentary on how the old can still provide value to society in their own way

Misc Thoughts

• This feels like a fake manga you’d ask an AI to make
• The Dr. Slump inspiration is tangible
• I saw a dog driving a car in Italy it was very cute
• 
  
• Maxy Bee thoughts:
  • Debut work of one of the most important artists in modern Jump.
  • The fan translation was handled by strangerataru for a good bunch of these chapters, a dude who came up in the scene around when I did, giving very dry, literal translations to a lot of classic Jump works that, while clumsy and hard to understand at times, were the best we could hope for back then. He’s long since moved on to doing muscle fetish art on deviantart, living his truth.
  • Mangakas Makoto Niwano and Nobuhisa Tsuruoka cameo at least a couple of times throughout the series, the former being Obata’s mentor and the latter being his friend.

Final Verdict

• Six Word summary
  • Community
    • Maxybee: How about… Robocrop. Is that anything?
    • BumpBob Looly: Cyborg Grandpa G the suuuuper farmer.
    • Diego (Phantom Seer): Cyborg Grandpa is Not Actually Inuyashiki
    • duderocks the earthchild stan: wish it stayed at the farm
    • duderocks the earthchild stan: Worth trying for its art alone
    • Flufflez: do cyborg farmers raise cyborg sheep?
    • Glornak Ironspawn: Old man Kaizou augments with grace.
    • Grey the #1 Kagurabachi Stan: The future with Right to Repair | Classic prequel to “Run! Daihatsu Tanto!”
    • LordAnubis, #1RedHoodFan/Mourner: So that's where Lao G's from
    • Meru (Charly): Grandfather Universal Neutraly Different Alloy-nium Mobilesuit | I have been doing gundam acronyms from time to time tho
    • Portal man: finally, cyborg 9 has an ending! | did Inuyashiki rip this series off!?!
    • Riel: I love Mobile Farmer G Grandpa
    • Sbubby: Good thing he didn’t get dementia
    • Scott: (How  SEED of you. No, this is not intended to be a six word summary so skip this.)
    • Spike: Chrome domed cyborg causes clear consternation
    • Spook (Sir Skelington): Do cyborg dream of electric sheep?
    • SuperDave: All the jokes! All at once!
    • 𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕸𝕱 𝖄𝖊𝖙𝖎: Absurd Automaton Agriculturalist Aggrandizes Average Antics
  • David: the inflatable tube man of manga | honorary power word: chindogu
  • Jordan: what if Mr. Magoo turned into Robocop | behold the power of robo boomer | cyborg boomer ruins his family’s lives | The kettle dick was so good
  • Guest: cyborgs, kettle dicks and saggy tits
• Flop or not
  • If flop, what they could read instead
  • If not, how it compares to Chainsaw Man
• Is this the best/worst series we’ve talked about

Shoutouts

• Thank the guest, guest plug
• Props to Jordan for making the opening and ending theme, being a great co-host, and helping with editing
• <Jordan thanks David>
• Props to Mer Liel for the awesome cover art, you can find her online at liel_mer, and Nigel for being our generous art benefactor
• Thank you Dylan for assistance with editing, you can find his podcast Anime Out of Context at animeoutofcontext.com
• Thanks to Tucker and MaxyBee for assistance with pronunciation, translation, and other miscellaneous research
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