Dancers, Robots, and Dancing Robots

As far as unique attractions go within Tokyo, this one's been tugging at my sleeve for a while. At the steep price of 6000¥ per entry, Robot Restaurant in Shinjuku isn't cheap, and I thought for certain it was merely a very high-budget themed restaurant, where the waitresses serve the customers while piloting robots. Neat, but you can imagine I wasn't keen on the price.
 Thankfully, I was wrong. Robot Restaurant is much more than restaurant with a theme. Actually, food is more of an afterthought, even. Robot Restaurant delivers a show rather than a meal, and it's much more like a circus act than any kind of actual dining establishment.
 If you're looking for a place like the others, where odd assortments of food are brought to you from a theme-specific menu, you won't find what you're looking for here.
 But I can tell what you will get is a performance unlike any other you can find in the world.

Before I even get started about the show itself, it's important to bare one thing in mind which I myself hadn't figured would be of any importance before stepping in.
Robot Restaurant is in Kabukicho. That's the red light district of Tokyo, a fact I would've almost forgotten if men in suits hadn't stopped Basil and I in the middle of the street, while saying "wait, wait! Look, sex!" while showing us brothel catalogs.
 The show has a distinctive Kabukicho twist to it, in that the robots are really only half of what draws the crowd in. The "Gira Gira Girls", a small army of scantily clad young women with a multitude of talents, are in truth the main performers here.

Not suitable for the very young or the epileptic.

The show is actually 75 minutes long and divided into several segments, each one quite a bit different from the next. Upon arriving, customers are seated in rows and told not to leave their seats, seeing as the show itself takes pretty much all the space of the venue, with many of the robots and performers coming surprisingly close to the front row. Both in English and in Japanese, the customers are instructed to "dodge" any of the robots' or platforms' protruding edges. Alarming, but I can dig it!

 Our show opened with the incredibly cool "Girls' War" segment, where the Gira Gira girls make their first appearance riding large mechanical platforms lined with drums, with one such contraption on either side of the stage. They then engage in a team-drum face off, with their platforms spinning around each other and going around the stage, while other dancers dart between them, carrying dragons and wearing masks. It's pretty engaging, and I definitely thought it a highlight.

From there on, the show cascades into singing performances accompanied by bands, with all performers dressed in really interesting shiny robot themed-apparel, to straight on mock-boxing matches, with people in robot suits fighting each other, with an announcer and all that jazz. There is also pole-dancing on moving platforms, and a short skit featuring amazons versus robots. The segments flow from inspiring, to cheesy fun, to provocative, to just downright surprising and full of special effects.
The final segments in particular bring out a tank, motor cycles, and big-ass robot suits, which is pretty sure to make you piss yourself in excitement if you're any kind of fan of those mechanical suits as seen in Gundam.
 All throughout, the show doesn't fail to be entertaining and, most importantly, unique, which is really a huge point in favor of Robot Restaurant.
 Being that the show is both in English and in Japanese, it's pretty easy for foreigners and locals alike to enjoy, and, indeed, the seats were mostly occupied by tourists.
 Come to think of it, I think it's a pretty good representation of what draws tourists to Japan, and specifically, to Tokyo. It's quirky, sexy, modern, and different, and at the end of the day, I don't feel like the sixty bucks I paid went to waste at all. Granted, I wouldn't do it again any time soon, but I might just end up bringing all my friends who visit Japan to this place. It's not like there's any other place where you can find robots dancing to Gangnam Style.