A kid barely old enough to understand responsibility gets handed a 50-ton killing machine and is told the world depends on him. The show never pretends this is anything but what it is: a boy playing god with a lever and headset, winning fights he has no business winning, learning that power without wisdom is just speed. Tetsujin 28 treats this scenario with complete seriousness, which is exactly why a child remote-controlling a giant robot to stop wars somehow feels like the heaviest thing on TV. You watch Shoutarou's hands shake on the controller before a fight. That detail matters more than any explosion. This is what happens when you give a kid the only gun big enough to matter.

When pre-teen Shoutarou Kaneda learns of his late father's legacy, a remote-controlled giant robot called Tetsujin, he is put in charge of it. Taking up the controller, he accepts the mission his father intended: fighting evil and keeping the peace. As the youngest member of Interpol, Shoutarou steers the 60-foot, 50-ton robot on missions around the world, beneath the sea, through time and into deep space. Mad scientists, pirates, ninjas and international criminals all field giant robots of their own, the cunning Machine Mafia adds to the danger, and Shoutarou must also keep Tetsujin out of villainous hands. His mentors are Dr. Shikishima, his father's gifted colleague, and Inspector Ohtsuka, Interpol's sometimes clownish chief liaison. The greatest threat is the Space Demon King, an alien powerful enough to endanger the entire Solar System. The result is a mecha action series built on robot-versus-robot battles.