TOSHO DAIMOS

[RedKing]

This is a giant robo anime series from Toei and Sunrise studios that aired from April 1, 1978-January 27, 1979 for a total of 44 episodes. This was the third and final installment of the "Romance Robo" trilogy created by Tadao Nagahama, the others being COMBATTLER V and VOLTES V. Combattler didn't really have any romantic element, and I'm not sure about Voltes, but Daimos is basically a Romeo and Juliet style love story with giant robots and monsters. Unlike Go Nagai's giant robot tales, Nagahama's feature villians who aren't pure evil, and Daimos has probably the most character development of any 70s super robo show, with the "villians" not really being evil or even bad really. The planet Brahm has been destroyed, but one colony of survivors has managed to escape the planet in a huge city/spaceship. The Brahmins look like humans, but they have retractable angel-like wings. At first they engage in peaceful negotiations with the earth, but, as it's revealed later, Brahmin power-seekers poison the king and make it appear that the earthmen did it, which leads to outright war.The king's son and daughter are not old enough to ascend the throne so the king's top advisor, Olbin, becomes the new king, while Prince Ulrich takes command of the forces attacking earth. princess Erika has training as a doctor and sees to the wounded soldiers. Olbin was actually behind the king's death. On the earth side,Richard Hartford(these are the names from the Phillipine dubbed version I have, the original names are different) is the son of the head earth delegate, who was also killed when the Brahmin king was poisoned. A black belt in karate and a space pilot, he and his friend Edward, who sports a "cool" 70s white guy afro and always carries a katana with him, are returning to arth with the "Dymo-Light" an energy core powered by star energy or something and are attacked by Brahmin UFOs. They make it back to their base where the Dymo-Light is installed in a huge truck-looking vehicle called Tranzer, which is in fact the super robot Daimos! During his first battle, Richard sees a beautiful young woman collapse near the fight and after dispatching the enemy robots, he rescues her and discovers she has amnesia. She is the Princess Erika of Brahm(with her wings retracted). They fall in love and eventually Erika recovers her memory, and terrified, she runs away and ends up back with her people, but she still loves Richard. This is about where I am in the series, at episode 8 Erika,s love for the enemy is discovered by her brother, and though he spares her life, he considers her a traitor and no longer his sister. This is quite a good series, and already has me wondering what will happen next and if Erika and Richard will be able to be together by the end of the series. The Phillipino english dub is decent, but they tend to be overly dramatic, which can make the intense emotional scenes kind of funny. In fact my wife was watching it with me and she said it's sappier than alot of her chick flicks, and i told her as soon as they get some giant robots in a chick flick, i'll watch it! This series could really be seen as the link between the super robos of the 70s and the more character driven mecha/war shows of the 80s. Interestingly, the japanese voice actor for richard is Akira Kamiya who also voiced Ryouma in GETTER ROBO and Hiroya Ishimaru, who voiced Koji Kabuto, guest stars in an episode. The series' music is by prolific genre artist Shunsuke Kikuchi who worked on everything from the Gamera films, Kamen Rider and Grandizer among many others!

[August]

redking said:

This is a giant robo anime series from Toei and Sunrise studios that aired from April 1, 1978-January 27, 1979 for a total of 44 episodes. This was the third and final installment of the "Romance Robo" trilogy created by Tadao Nagahama, the others being COMBATTLER V and VOLTES V.

Nagahama didn't create any of these series; he was the main director, but he didn't write the original stories or treatments. COMBATTLER V was created by Toei's in-house think-tank, known by the pseudonym "Saburo Hatte" (which included producer Takeyuki Suzuki and writer Masaki Tsuji). In the case of these shows, after the departure of Go Nagai's partnership with Toei Animation, different up and coming manga authors/designers were brought in to help shape the stories and establish the character design. For COMBATTLER it was Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, for VOLTES V and DAIMOS it was Yuki Hijiri ("Locke the Superman"), whose designs were further refined by animation director Akihiro Kanayama—Hijiri and Nagahama worked together again on FUTURE ROBO: DALTANIUS.

redking said:

Combattler didn't really have any romantic element, and I'm not sure about Voltes

Actually, the main villain in the first arc, General Garuda, was in love with his compatriot, Mia—but it was a star-crossed love. As for VOLTES, there are a lot of tragic story arcs, including the main villain Prince Heinel and his doomed romance with his lady love (to say any more would spoil the climax), and of course, the main characters are hoping to be reunited with their long-lost father. Out of the three series, I felt that VOLTES is the strongest, overall. Too bad the company that brought the rights to the series for the US market in 1980 bungled the syndication deal—otherwise we'd be talking about VOLTES V like we do STAR BLAZERS or BATTLE OF THE PLANETS.

redking said:

Daimos is basically a Romeo and Juliet style love story with giant robots and monsters. Unlike Go Nagai's giant robot tales, Nagahama's feature villians who aren't pure evil, and Daimos has probably the most character development of any 70s super robo show, with the "villians" not really being evil or even bad really.

The tragic villain is a running theme in these shows, which has it roots in BRAVE RAIDEEN, but was first made explicit in SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO with Dessler. One did eventually feel sorry for Baron Ashura in MAZINGER Z, but you knew that he/she deserved death in the end. There were other "tragic villains" in Japanese anime before these shows, but it was YAMATO that created the biggest impact, and other series patterned themselves after it—and these series really solidified the subgenre of the "Beautiful Rival," who is not really evil—and helped to bring Char in GUNDAM to life.