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August 17, 2007

My Chronicle: Journey Through Anime II

Posted in: Personal

You can find the previous post for this here:

Continuing where I left off, it wasn’t until this particular anime did I start to find a liking to Japanese animation. It’s blue, it’s round and it has a pocket that has everything you could ever imagine and more.

Doraemon

DoraemonI don’t think there’s really any need to go too deep here. I’m pretty sure everyone knows who is Doraemon. The cat robot from the 22nd century with the all useful 4-dimensional pocket filled with gadgets from the future.

It was a pity that The Doraemons story arc was never animated (at least to my knowledge) since that arc has some of my favourite stories for Doraemon.

Shogakukan recently released 5 new volumes of never before seen story in 2005. If anyone knows where I can get this (translated of course) please do let me know 😀

Doraemon was probably my first true anime experience, in the sense that I knew it was a Japanese animation. I would never miss a single episode on TV or any volume of the manga (with some exception to the long stories and The Doraemons arc).

Around this time…

It was around this time when I first caught glimpse of some anime like Ranma 1/2, Slayers and some others that I can no longer recall. I didn’t pay much attention to Ranma 1/2 and Slayers until a bit later, but there are a few that I could somewhat recall being crazy over at the time.

Isami’s Incredible Shinsen Squad

I believe the Japanese title for this is Soar High! Isami! and it was released in August 1995 and ran until June 1996. It doesn’t seem to be very popular since I could no longer find any information regarding the series on Google. I couldn’t find any decent image of it either.

The story is about 3 descendants of the Shinsen Squad that had once defended the world against the evil Black Tengu and his faction a few hundred years ago. At the start of the story, the Black Tengu Faction reappeared once more and Isami and her two friends Soshi and Toshi discovered that they have inherited the powers of their ancestors and decided to use it to defend the world against the Black Tengu Faction.

As I recalled, the ending was somewhat of a shock, when the Black Tengu was revealed to be the kindly old man who always plays with Isami. It was also revealed that the Black Tengu was in fact the very same one that Isami’s ancestors had fought hundreds of years ago. I can’t remember how he had gained immortality, but in the end the Black Tengu decided to disband his faction once and for all.

Gosaurer

This is actually very similar to the first Power Rangers. A group of kids were given control over a mech called Go-Saurer by Earth’s ancient protector, Eldoran, to against the the Kikaika (Mechanization) Empire. The Kikaika Empire had already conquered most of the solar system and Earth was it’s next target. However, with the appearance of Eldoran and the Go-Saurer, Earth was saved over and over again.

Go-Saurer was a cool concept, and I still find it to be so even now. Eldoran had altered the school blocks to become Go-Saurer itself and everytime they had to launch the whole school started to move about and merge like some sort of jigsaw to complete the Saurer Jet.

The Saurer jet could then split into 3 different dinosaur robots; the Mach Ptera, Land Stego and Thunder Brachio. These 3 mechs could then merge into the Gosaurer.

Magnasaurer and Gransaurer were introduced later on, and they could each merge with Gosaurer to form either Magna Buster or Gransaurer.

King GoSaurer
King Gosaurer

When GoSaurer, Magnasaurer and Gransaurer combines together, they become King Gosaurer, the ultimate mech in the series. I’m pretty sure King Gosaurer had another upgrade during the final battle against the Robot God. Eldoran had used the rest of his power to transform whatever was left of the school into an armor upgrade for King Gosaurer.

If you’re interested to know more about the different mechs found in Gosaurer, you can check this link out.

Ninja Senshi Tobikage

Ninja Senshi Tobikage - Ninja RobotsFirst watched this on Cartoon Network as Ninja Robots and it actually took me a while to realize that its anime. Humans had colonized Mars by the year 2200 and the main protagonist, Joe Maya, who managed to get an ancient lion beast mecha to function and protect the alien ship, Xenos Five, that crashed on Mars. Only ninjas or their descendants could operate these war mechs, and Joe happened to be one, though that wasn’t really made clear until they got to Earth.

The lion beast mecha, Kuro-Jishi (Black Leo – a rather funny name for a yellow-orange mecha), wasn’t the only one aboard the alien spacecraft. There were 2 others – Hou-Rai-Oh (Phoenix Thunder Strike) and Baku-Ryu (Brust Dragon). Both machines were piloted by 2 of Joe’s closest friends – Reny and Mike. All 3 mechas are in a humanoid form when piloted.

But the coolest was yet to come. Tobikage, a ninja-like machine, often appeared out of nowhere when the 3 mechas are in danger and merges with one of them to form the animal version of the mecha.

The real fun began when Joe realized he could control Tobikage and began piloting Tobikage instead of Kuro-Jishi. Another highlight of the series was the final confrontation between Tobikage and Mantis near the end of the series. It’s a pity though, the story could have continued since it hasn’t really ended yet. All they did was get out of the solar system.

Coming Next…

While I’ve discovered what anime is by now, I had not become a big fan of it yet. My favourite channel at the time was Cartoon Network and Disney Channel, but since my source for anime at that time was still very limited I guess it was to be expected, really. But the few that I did managed to watch later on got me started to hunt around for anime VCDs, and some of those have become my favourites even until now. In fact, I’m still watching one of it right now :)

Related posts:

  1. My Chronicle: Journey Through Anime I
  2. CLAMP Chronicle IV – Tsubasa Chronicle & xxxHolic

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