Mazinger Z

, known as Tranzor Z in North America, is a manga series by Go Nagai, serialized in Shueisha Shonen Jump from October 1972. December of the same year, an anime adaptation premiered on Fuji Television. The TV series ended September 1, 1974, outliving its manga counterpart. Mazinger Z is a gigantic Super Robot, constructed with a fictitious metal called Chogokin Z (literally Super-Alloy Z), which is forged from a new element mined from a reservoir found only in the sediment of Japan's Mt. Fuji. The mecha was built by Professor Juzo Kabuto as a secret weapon against the forces of evil, represented in the series by the Mechanical Beasts (mecha used for evil purposes) of Dr. Hell. The latter was the German member of a Japanese archeological team, which discovered ruins of a lost pre-Grecian civilization on an island named Bardos (although some inconsistent translations have identified the island as being the actual greek island of Rhodes); the civilization was loosely based on the ancient... full article at wikipedia