Plawres Sanshirou
Originally writen on 2/10/2024
Three things I love are anime, robots, and wrestling and Plawres Sanshiro has all three. Plawres Sanshiro is a 1983 anime series about Plastic Model Wrestling, but most of the "wrestling" has happened unsantioned outside of the wrestling federation in the show. The robots are kinda the backseat in the characteraztion though, there some good designs and match of the handler, but the shine in the characters are for the handlers. Such as the episode where Shanshiro (the main character and hero) has to fight a Vietnam Vet sniper who was hired to defeat his robot.
There are three main "tournment arcs". Now I say tournment arc, but really all three tournments are done in one episode. There is a build-up to the tournment in the part of the story of Shinshiro upgrading and training his robot for the tournment, but when the tournment happens he does two or three fights in one episode. This fights are also some the weakest fights in the show, espically the end of the Asia tournment against the Indian Champion. I really hope the people who want to that tournment got there money back.
One of the things that I enjoyed about the show was the romance between the main character and the main heroien, mostly because it actaully developed and went somewhere. Slowly through the show the two characters have some nice interactions, but during the last cour it starts going somewhere and by the end they do get the on-screen kiss!
After finishing the show, I did the first thing I normally do after finishing an older show I liked...I looked for merch! At the time of writing this the cel value is at interesting price points, with the standard being at a slightly higher averaging 4000yen for a random cel, 8000yen for some solo male character cels, and for one of the main female characters there is a really good cel at 30,000yen price range. Although I want that not paying that price, I'll keep in my rotation when I cel hunt. The more interesting thing I found was though the series had several figma figures, and in fact they were some of the first ones in 2009. I'm guessing they are based on the manga version of the characters though since the anime doesn't have any designs like that. Speaking of the manga another interesting thing is currently the artist of the manga is on skeb. https://skeb.jp/@minorukamiya
In the end though I really enjoyed my time with Plawres Sanshiro and I ended up giving it a 7.7 with only 37 episodes it was a quick fun watch typically putting 1-3 episodes at a time every night the show flew by and makes me want more. I might read the manga in the future, but it is untranslated and like 14 volumes so that would not be any time soon. I hope some day this show gets some recognition in the western anime fandom, as it seems an impact in Japan.
