It drops the mecha in your lap before you've earned it. Daisaku Kusama is a kid working a diving shop in Okinawa, not a chosen pilot with a destiny speech, and the contract he signs at the sunken Yonaguni ruins with a girl who only goes by V reads less like recruitment and more like something older than him deciding he'll do. GR1 is not a suit you climb into. It's a thing you stand beside and give orders to, which is exactly why the show keeps putting a very small person in frame with a very large silhouette. Then UNISOM arrives with paperwork and chain of command, and the giant robots wrecking cities worldwide turn out to be a problem with adults attached. Thirteen episodes, no fat, no shadow of the 1992 OVA hanging over it if you let it be its own thing. Bring the wristband. Say the words.

Colossal robots known as Giant Robo are appearing across the globe, destroying cities and filling the world with fear. When Japan becomes their next target, an ordinary dive shop worker named Daisaku Kusama's life changes forever. A mysterious girl called V leads him to ancient ruins on Minami Yonaguni Island in Okinawa, where he enters into a contract with the enormous robot GR1. Daisaku signs on with the organization UNISOM and is approved as GR1's commander. So begins his battle against the opposing organization GRO, a conflict full of drama that will eventually lead the world to ask what the true meaning of Giant Robo's power is. A 2007 remake of Mitsuteru Yokoyama's classic, this mecha adventure brings the giant robot back with a new look.