Nobody talks about this one. That needs to stop. Dai-Guard takes the giant robot formula and asks the question no one else bothers with: what happens the other twenty-three hours a day when you're not fighting the alien invasion. The real story isn't the monster battles, it's three salaryman navigating insurance claims, equipment requisitions, and their actual boss while saving the world on a budget. The animation is rough even for 1999, but the writing is sharper than shows with ten times the production value. You watch this for the moment a pilot realizes he needs to file a damage report before he can even look at the next alien, and suddenly the entire genre clicks into focus differently.

When the alien Heterodyne suddenly return after vanishing thirteen years earlier, a giant robot long dismissed as an oversized paperweight is pressed back into service. Three office workers at the 21st Century Security Corporation become its operators, taking Dai-Guard out to fight the invaders. The catch: the machine is outdated and badly in need of repair. Between monster attacks and ordinary office life, these salarymen have to keep their aging robot running while trying to save the world. The result is a mecha adventure with a strong comic streak, built around the idea that everyday company employees can be heroes too.