To understand the comedy here, you have to recall that in the 1990s, Tokyo had the most expensive real estate on earth. Trashing whole buildings with a runaway battle suit is a big step up from what the Blues Brothers did to a shopping mall. This is basically a one joke comedy - the running joke being that the military's most advanced machine has locked itself around some random guy who hasn't read the manual and is in the thing backwards! The action animation is very well and thoroughly executed here. So many direct to VHS anime projects cut so many corners with speed lines and by moving cameras over still images that you wind up with rather static action shots. But here, fully animated, current and authentic tanks, gunships etc. are thrown into the fray as the military tries to stop this run amok machine leading to nicely elaborate action sequences with great looking cityscape backgrounds. The characters are a bit throwaway, but that is to be expected for the period. For what it is, a one-joke action destructo-comedy, it is effective and well executed entertainment.
Review of Metal Skin Panic MADOX- 01
