Google Sightseeing takes you on tour of the world as seen from satellite, using the free Google Earth program, or Google Maps in your web browser. Each weekday your guides James and Alex present new weird and wonderful sights as suggested by readers.

The editors: James & Alex

Mazinger Z

Posted by James, Monday, 23rd October 2006

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars

Mazinger Z is a giant manga robot who had his own anime show in the early 70s, and according to Wikipedia had a great influence on the Super Robot genre.

In this satellite photograph we can see a giant statue of Mazinger, standing proudly in a Spanish field. Nope that wasn’t a typo (’Japanese’ being quite a few keystrokes away) - this really is in Spain! But who built him there and why?

I’d never heard of Mazinger Z, but the show was a surprise hit in Spain, despite being edited down from the original violent Japanese version. A babelfish translation of this Spanish article might shed more light on the statue’s origins…

The statue of the Mazinger was constructed 20-25 ago years, when they emitted the series by tele, so Mazinger is the guardian of our urbanization.

Umm, nope, that didn’t help much. Loved the Power Rangers poses though.

Thanks: Gumbor

9 Responses to 'Mazinger Z'

  1. 1. ipf84 says:

    ‘emitted the series by tele’
    tele = television = tv
    ‘emited on tv’

  2. 2. Michi il Disperso says:

    Maaaaaaaaaaazingaaaaaaa!! (the italian for Mazinger…)

  3. 3. Chuck says:

    I remember watching “Tranzor Z” as a kid. There was a pink female robot that lauched its breasts as missles, and a fat sidekick that had an equally fat, clumsy robot.

  4. 4. Carlos says:

    The female robot was Afrodita, and the clumsy robot was made up by scrap metal, by Mazinger’s pilot’s competitor.
    Kind of reminds me of the “Festival of the robots”, a collection of animes including “El Vengador”, “El Galáctico”, “El Gran Dragón del Espacio” and “Super Magnetrón”. The “Vengador” (or Avenger in english) had quite the same script as Mazinger. Kind of neat to remember. Here is a link in spanish for some Mazinger stuff. http://zonadibujos.8m.com/mazinger2.htm

  5. 5. James says:

    Am I the only one to notice the funky shaped swimming pool just north of the statue?

  6. 6. lemenos says:

    Yeah James, that is a funky shape for that pool….almost like a guitar, but more like the plastic jars of honey that are shaped like bears, if you know what i am talking about….

  7. 7. Irimia says:

    It’s a statue made in a estate more than 20 years ago, when the tv show was being aired here in Spain (don’t know why) but here is a link that shows some pictures.

    http://ceo.upc.es/extras/eventos/mazinger/mazinger.htm

  8. 8. Irimia says:

    Ups… the link was repeated.. sorry

  9. 9. Controlcé says:

    The explanation (in spanish) and few pics are here

    The statue is located at the “Mas de Plata” urbanization’s pinewood, which was a project, but was never built. Mazinger was raised at the first ’80s with the point to be the main entrance to the place.

Leave a Reply

This form will auto-link URLs or you can use simple HTML, <a href="http://googlesightseeing.com">Like this</a>.

Link to specific places either as a Google Maps page or a decimal latitude and longitude written like this: lat/lng:55.949400,-3.200000.

If you've found an unrelated sight that you think should be posted in its own entry then use the suggestion form!