The Mike Toole Show

The Island of Super Misfit Robots

What robots did you have when you were a little kid? Don't lie to me, you had 'em. Transformers definitely count. So do the Megazords from Power Rangers. So does Pokémon instead of the subconscious desire for awesome toy robots that exists in every single man, woman, and child on the planet. Who do you think is buying those expensive Soul of Chogokin toys? Collectors in their 40s and 50s, that's who!

Here's the thing: not all awesome anime robots are created equal. Right now, you can go to the store and get DVDs of Voltron, MazinKaiser, and scores of others. You can go to the toy store (okay, you can go to Wal Mart, because the toy stores are all going out of business...) and get your Transformers and your Power Rangers Megazords. But a whole bunch of 'em never really reached beyond the shores of Japan-- or if they did, it was in some weird, altered form. When I was a boy, I had Voltron under the Christmas tree, but there was an entire galaxy of awesome robots that I never even knew existed. That's what this column is about.

Actually, the easiest thing would probably be to start the proceedings off with Voltron, because everybody re Voltron. Thanks to the resurgence of the series on home video, even people too young to Voltron still Voltron. Most of us nerds also know that Voltron is made up of two shows: the vehiculactular Matchbox is this guy:

He's called laserdisc arcade games, too. I've seen pictures, but never encountered the game in any arcade.

So, there you go. Albegas is the mysterious "third Voltron." But wait, there's more! There's a second third Voltron! In fact, this Voltron actually had a lion motif, kinda like the super-popular GoLion. Here he is, in rockin' toy form.

The text on the box is right, guys-- it's Daltanius! Daltanius dates back to 1979, which actually makes it older than any other component of Voltron. It's notable for being both the first combining super robot to feature an animal-shaped pilot episode was dubbed and broadcast in a couple of markets, but they haven't figured out a way to release it to fans. They need to get on the case, I want to see Daltanius in English!

Take a generational step back beyond Voltron, and what do you get? You get the Shogun Warriors. Many fans are familiar with these popular toys from Voltus V (no widespread toys in America, sadly), would really put Nagahama on the map, later becoming known as his "Robot Romance Trilogy." Their influence is still felt today. And hey, Nagahama directed Daltanius, too! Isn't that awesome? Then he died of hepatitis.

Hepatitis sucks. They need to make a super robot that can destroy it with some sort of eye-beam or cool boomerang, and--

Whoops, got off track there. I brought up the Robot Romance Trilogy to highlight a neat trend that you see in super robot cartoons and toy lines-- not always, but sometimes, they're grouped by theme by the creators and toy companies. You know Gaogaigar, right? Well, it's actually part of a big, decade-long series of shows collectively called the Brave Police J-Decker, Golden Brave Goldoran, Brave Little Toaster, and of course, King of the Braves Gaogaigar. It's really awesome that we eventually got Gaogaigar on DVD, but you know what sucks? Every single goddamn Brave series had a ton of totally cool toys from Takara. Look at some of this stuff!

Mindblowing, right? But not as mindblowing as the fact that so many people were deprived of both the awesome cartoons and the great toy robots! The Robot Romance and Brave sagas aren't the only "themed" super robot shows, either. They're both actually pretty well-known, at least among devotees of the genre. But there are a couple of groups that are somewhat lesser-known. One of then is the J9 Trilogy. This 3-part (loose) saga of awesome heroes and even awesomer robots kicked off in 1981 with Galactic Cyclone Lupin the 3rd-ish, and he accomplishes this in the best way possible.


Look at that Bryger toy. Want it? I want it. After Bryger came Mazinger Z, Combattler V)? I like robots with nice, dignified faces, but there's something about the weird face protectors that guys like Optimus Prime have. Ultimately, I think they need to make more robots with beards.

By 1983, the whole J9 concept was getting stale, so to cap it off we got Galactic Whirlwhind Sasuraiger. In the far future year of 2911, a guy named Phileas Fogg er, I.C. Blues makes a wager with the Reform Club err, I mean, evil gangster Bloody God (seriously!) that he can travel around the world in eight look, you get it, right? It's a pastiche of the famous Galaxy Express 999 had trains in space, how can I make the idea even crazier?!” Sasuraiger, that's how! Just like its predecessors, the series is bursting with charm and cool robots. Interestingly, the Sasuraiger actually made an appearance on our shores, as part of the Convertors toy line. Have a gander:


The Convertors were a line of toys sold in the JC Penney catalog. They were kind of like the GoBots, and-- "What the hell is GoBots," you say?! Oh god, I'm old!

The final brick in this magnificent column-shaped... uh, chimney, I guess...? would be Matchless Raijin-Oh. Check out the toy!


It's fantastic, right? It's loaded with snap-on parts and spring-loaded missiles sized perfectly to fit into the average toddler's windpipe. I definitely want one now; I can only imagine how much my eight-year-old self would've wanted it. But now that I've got you lusting after decades-old molded lumps of plastic and die-cast metal, I'm gonna take a break from all that and bring this puppy home by talking about Raijin-Oh on DVD.

"Wait a minute," you're all saying in unison, which is kind of creepy, "who are these Anime Midstream upstarts?" Well, that's exactly what they are: upstarts. Producer Jimmy Taylor tells me, quite coyly, that his company simply opened negotiations with Sunrise (yes, the Gundam guys) and selected Raijin-Oh from a potential list of titles the Japanese animation giant was offering for international sale. The guy makes it sound easy, but pounding and shaping a pretty hoary old super robot show into something presentable, let alone entertaining, has got to be a daunting task. Fortunately, Anime Midstream acquit themselves reasonably well, given the source material and the fact that this is a bunch of people creating their first bilingual DVD ever.

But what's the deal with Raijin-Oh? Well, it's a kids' show, so it can really be summed up in a couple of sentences, so here goes. Earth is threatened by the Jaku Empire, evil invaders from the 5th dimension, and only Eldoran has the power to stop them. But Eldoran is badly hurt, so he entrusts the guardian robot hero Raijin-Oh to a bunch of fourth-graders. Yeah, it's basically like Green Lantern, only instead of an outrageously powerful ring, it's a ten-story tall robot, and instead of Hal Jordan, we're stuck with Jin Hyuuga, a cocksure kid with a heart of gold. His classmates have their reservations about becoming defenders of planet earth, but Jin doesn't hesitate, eagerly leaping into Raijin-Oh's cockpit at the first opportunity. From there we get the seemingly endless parade of monsters of the week, but these monsters are kind of fun because they embody a number of things that the children dislike. A grain silo-sized dinosaur is going to seem more fun and awesome than fearsome to a ten-year-old piloting a huge robot, so it would stand to reason that a far scarier adversary for a C-average student would be an enormous, gibbering test booklet. Yeah, this is fun stuff.

The robot vs. monster stuff, while sporting some cute gimmicks, is kind of par for the course-- plenty of stock footage transformation and attack scenes, and Raijin-Oh almost always resorts to his spear and magic helmet to kill the bad guy. What sets Raijin-Oh apart are the little details. that old Spider-Man cartoon where Spidey lives in an apartment with Iceman and Firestar, and when you yank on a certain trophy on the mantlepiece the whole place goes crazy and flip-flops around and turns into a crime-busting headquarters? Well, in Raijin-Oh, the entire school campus does that. If that's not enough, keep your eyes peeled for the totally ineffectual JSDF secretary of defense, who arrives on campus to tersely inform the students that it's the military's job to handle invading aliens, and it's just not appropriate for children to try and help out. When it turns out that the kids are the only ones with the hardware and the moxie to win the day, the military man is all like "Well okay, I guess you kids can defend the earth... but no funny business!" and storms out. The kids themselves, once they get into robot-fightin' mode, don outfits that would look at home on the 1984 Jackson Five Victory album cover. It's just that kind of show. And of course, there's a great big roarin’ lion head in there somewhere.

Production-wise, the DVD is... a hard sell, really. Raijin-Oh is almost 20 years old, and desperately in need of some remastering-- it looks like even just finding the original film masters and giving them a chemical bath would do a world of good; the footage is grainy and a little dark. The subtitled version is workmanlike, comprehensible but full of tangled syntax. As for the Animaze's first dub, it's not really any better. I hope they improve-- lead actress Yuki has got the overconfident, brash leader thing down pat, but she can't pull off Jin's fierce, hot-blooded cries of "UNMATCHABLE RAIJIN-OHHHHHH!!" It kinda sounds like she's holding back; it kinda sounds like the whole cast is holding back. Hopefully with experience they'll cut loose. Anime St. Louis guest of honor Mike Reynolds, the elder, absolutely awesome gravel-throated voice of a thousand old guys and villains, makes a cool cameo to lend some class to the proceedings.

So, that's Raijin-Oh, a series that, in an era of cheap-o box sets, is coming out five episodes at a time in single discs. It runs counter to the entire way the anime market is going. The show is old and not at all what most American fans like. Because of that, I have to ire Anime Midstream's gumption in getting this release out. There's absolutely no way they're going to get rich doing this, and the fruits of their labor are good fun, if a little sloppy. And hey, while the DVD's technical specs aren't perfect, at least it's better than anything TOKYOPOP could have released.

So there you have it: a whole bunch of data about a whole bunch of awesome robots that you and I probably didn't get to play with as a kid. But hey, know what's cool? Anime has stuck around. It used to rear its head only occasionally, but we've had anime in our living rooms continuously for over a decade. Because of that, we're seeing a sizeable generation of fans who've grown up with Video Warrior Laserion. I omitted some robots for one reason and one reason only: more columns down the road! After all, why make one column about lesser-known super robots when I can make two? Better yet, I could make three, and then they could combine into the mighty Toolescolumnar, which would battle against the evil forces of Deadline. That would make a great toy! Someone get Bandai on the line.