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Sixty Years Since Mighty Atom: 1975
From a year from which I had enough anime series to watch I could weigh some choices, I’ve gone on to a year from which I have just one show available. It’s a title I’ve been not just aware of but curious about for some time, though. Way back in the last days of the original Transformers comic from Marvel (days when I had a vague understanding Robotech had “come from Japan” but it still seemed a singular relic to be mulled over), I spotted a bit of letter-page art that pointed me back to an earlier giant robot toy-inspired comic from the company, Shogun Warriors. I managed to buy a few back issues for reasonable prices and took in several adventures of a trio of piloted giant robots, one of them named “Raydeen” (and another one called “Combatra”). Rather later I understood just where the Shogun Warrior toys had come from, and it so happened that a certain number of “RahXephon is not ‘just an Eva clone,’ thank you very much” comments explained that later “modern giant robot” series could be seen as paying homage to a 1970s giant robot anime called Raideen.
To see the resemblance myself it did seem I would have to see Raideen, but “fansubs” of it were taking a great deal of time to accumulate. Not that long ago the closing episodes of the series became available at last, but through a group that seems very much “quantity over quality.” For the moment, of course, I’ve only watched the first one of them. As I’d gathered Raideen did seem rather more mystical in origin (and boarding ritual) than the “super” yet human-constructed giant robots in series I’ve already seen that were made before and after it, although I did get to thinking I haven’t yet seen a slightly earlier title that also seems quite significant to the genre, Getter Robo. Beyond a powerful giant robot and nasty monsters (although the largest beast didn’t turn out the “monster of the week” after all), I happened to ponder smaller details such as playing soccer “already,” a glimpse of sailor-suit school uniforms (it seems the first time I’ve run across them in this speedy tour, even if this is opposed to “suit-styled high school uniforms for young women”), and character designs that had me looking up that Yoshikazu Yasuhiko had worked on this series four years before the original Mobile Suit Gundam. I also ran into some details that did have me thinking of RahXephon, although the later series doesn’t yet seem “just” an echo of this earlier one either.
To see the resemblance myself it did seem I would have to see Raideen, but “fansubs” of it were taking a great deal of time to accumulate. Not that long ago the closing episodes of the series became available at last, but through a group that seems very much “quantity over quality.” For the moment, of course, I’ve only watched the first one of them. As I’d gathered Raideen did seem rather more mystical in origin (and boarding ritual) than the “super” yet human-constructed giant robots in series I’ve already seen that were made before and after it, although I did get to thinking I haven’t yet seen a slightly earlier title that also seems quite significant to the genre, Getter Robo. Beyond a powerful giant robot and nasty monsters (although the largest beast didn’t turn out the “monster of the week” after all), I happened to ponder smaller details such as playing soccer “already,” a glimpse of sailor-suit school uniforms (it seems the first time I’ve run across them in this speedy tour, even if this is opposed to “suit-styled high school uniforms for young women”), and character designs that had me looking up that Yoshikazu Yasuhiko had worked on this series four years before the original Mobile Suit Gundam. I also ran into some details that did have me thinking of RahXephon, although the later series doesn’t yet seem “just” an echo of this earlier one either.
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