Six Combinations, Three Robots, One Blu-Ray

Lightspeed Electroid Albegas aired from March 30 1983 until February 8 1984 on TV Tokyo Wednesdays at the oddly specific time of 5:55pm. This Toei robot anime show filled the time slot formerly occupied by Toei’s Dairugger XV, aka “the Voltron with the cars”. Both Dairugger and Golion, aka the “Voltron with the lions”, were sort of experiments for Toei, trying to move past the now-standard super robot, science center, alien invaders, youths burning with the fires of justice cliches. And Albegas… features super robots piloted from a science center by justice-seeking teens battling alien invaders. Maybe Toei’s experiment didn’t work out? TV Tokyo would replace Albegas with Wako’s fox anime “Cry Of The Wild” and next season the slot would, for some reason, feature reruns of Knack’s Manga Sarutobi Sasuke, aka Ninja The Wonder Boy. Much of the staff from Albegas would carry over into Toei’s next robot anime Laserion, a TBS show.

But let’s get dimension, already. Lightspeed Electroid Albegas stars hero boy Daisaku Enjoji, moody loner Tetsuya Jin and teen miss Hotaru Mizuki, three top robotics students at the elite Aoba Academy private high school, where the students learn robotics along with literature and math. All three win the school robot olympics with their Alpha, Beta, and Gamma robots, just in time for Earth to be attacked by the Dellinger Corps. Led by the Great Deran, the Dellinger are an advanced race from beyond the stars, against whose mechanical monsters Earth’s military is powerless. Even the Aoba Academy champs can’t stop the invasion. That’s why the three break into the Robot Center research facility run by Hotaru’s father Professor Mizuki and try to upgrade their robots with the Center’s advanced technology.
 

As it turns out Dr. Mizuki was conveniently working on a plan for three super robots that would be able to utilize extradimensional power and combine into six different configurations, and when our three heroes shout “Get Dimension!” they find themselves piloting Albegas.

Combining Daisaku’s black Alpha robot, Tetsuya’s blue Beta robot, and Hotaru’s red Gamma robot - Al(pha), Be(ta), Ga(mma), get it? - Albegas can become the Denjin Dimension, Magma Dimension, Marine Dimension, Space Dimension, Sky Dimension, Rescue or Guard Dimension depending on which robot is where when the transformation sequence starts. Since the Alpha, Beta, and Gamma already look pretty similar, it takes a sharp eyed viewer to really distinguish between the six different possible combinations. I guess this saved the toy designers some headaches, but it doesn’t make for visually engaging mecha.

various Dellingers

The evil Dellinger Empire - referencing 70s rock icon Rick Derringer, maybe - is led by the Great Deran, perhaps named after folk rock icon Bob Dylan. After all, both are immensely powerful mysterious beings whose true motives are unknown. Sadly the rest of Dellinger’s hordes of space mutants are armored lumps with non-musical names like General Duston, Catastra Commander, the wise staff chief Dime, the female-coded Mirror Zero, and midshow replacements like New Generalissimo Bios and the crab-armor General Dali. Most Dellinger are characterized by hoods or masks or some other face covering that saves animators the trouble of animating mouth movements, and this includes their “Reploid” masked goons, who carry out vital tokusatsu-sentai show masked goon villainy every episode. Of course their inevitable defeat requires Dellinger to unleash that week’s giant Mecha Fighter, in the hopes that this Mecha Fighter, unlike all the previous Mecha Fighters, will finally defeat Albegas. Dream on, losers.

Mecha Fighter Jazz Hands

Albegas leader Daisaku Enjoji could be any one of dozens of robot anime heroes, a regular teen who loves justice and is great with robots and computers but hates studying and schoolwork, which is why he gets a harsh after-school tutor who turns out to be a Dellinger spy. Daisaku is athletic and popular with the girls, but he’s also required to deliver goofs, blunders, and juvenile lechery, when he isn’t being hassled by his kid brother Jiro and little sister Natsuko, or being disciplined by his blue-collar dad. Of course since Daisaku is the hero, he delivers every episode’s finishing blow with his Denjin Sanbei Sword.

Daisaku and Miss Danko

Tetsuya Jin holds down the “moody loner” position on the team, moody for many reasons, but mostly because because he gets accused of ransacking the school (a Dellinger plot), because he’s an orphan whose only relative is a doctor on a far away island where a local girl gets promised to Tetsuya in marriage (also a Dellinger plot), and also because the girl he actually has feelings for turns out to be the daughter of a Dellinger general as part of yet another Dellinger plot.

Voiced by Hiromi Tsuru (Jodie Foster’s voice in the Japanese version of “Bugsy Malone”), tomboy Hotaru Mizuki is the daughter of the professor responsible for our super robots. She’s the idol of the Aoba School, athletic, brainy, and attractive, but not smart enough to spot Dellinger plots, like for instance when they impersonate her long-dead mother. Aside from defending the Earth, Hotaru’s biggest problem is dealing with the unwanted attentions of classmate Goro, when she isn’t encouraging her dad’s relationship with his assistant Saeko.

Professor Mizuki and Saeko

Goro and his Gori-Robo

Goro Kumai is this show’s Big Moose, a giant goof so jealous of Albegas that he builds his own super robot out of scrap, and so smitten with Hotaru that sometimes viewers will find themselves wondering if they should file a restraining order. Reminded of “Boss” from Mazinger Z? You sure are. Goro’s gorilla-esque Gori-Robo lumbers out to get its robotic ass smacked down by Mecha-Fighter after Mecha-Fighter, episode after episode, but Goro never gives up. Extra comedy relief comes courtesy their homeroom teacher Miss Danko, whose size and demeanor gives Albegas scripters a chance to use up all the fatphobic, misogynist cringe they had left over from the 1970s.

If the “Tetsuya falls in love with an alien girl” plotline feels Acrobunch-adjacent, well, don’t be surprised, Albegas character designer Shigenori Kageyama worked on both shows. Albegas also had mechanical design by Koichi (MD Geist) Ohata, and screenwriter Shozo Uehara worked on hundreds of tokusatsu and sentai series episodes, which might explain the “monster of the week” pattern Albegas adopts early on. Every week some Dellinger infiltrates in disguise, every week their heinous plot is uncovered, every week the Dellinger unleash a giant, havoc-wreaking mechanical beast, which every week is defeated by Lightspeed Electroid Albegas, after another replay of any one or two or six of six different transformation sequences.

Albegas walks a line between super robot drama and high school comedy, and it’s when the show gives in and lets itself be funny that Albegas really entertains. There’s a New Year’s party episode where the heroes and villains relax and enjoy themselves while also conniving to sabotage each other, and the results are surprisingly fun. There’s a story arc involving General Dali and how his daughter Julia sneaks off to Earth to enjoy regular teen life that ends in tragedy and remains an important story point for the rest of the show, including a convoluted yet touching episode where Daisaku’s confused little sister decides she’s really an adopted Dellinger and that General Dali is her real father. At times the series is extremely culturally Japanese, with episodes involving Japanese holidays, traditional Japanese theater, and one built around the folk horror legend of the murdering innkeepers, who are, of course, Dellinger aliens in disguise.

our hero

Albegas was originally planned to be syndicated on American television as part of World Events Productions’ Voltron series, which, as we all know, was built out of King Of Beasts Golion and Armored Fleet Dairugger XV. The story is that WEP saw the positive audience reaction to their Lion Voltron segments and instead of dubbing Albegas, they simply subcontracted for more episodes starring the Voltron Force. However, after watching Albegas, I’m unsure as to how well the series would have fit into the Voltron aesthetic. After two shows full of cosmic adventure, the largely Earth-bound high school hijinks of Albegas would be a definite tonal shift, and handling the cultural Japanese elements would be challenging. I don’t know how WEP would have localized the show for ‘80s TV, but I’m sure the results would have been amusing.

On the whole it’s not hard to see why WEP took a pass on Albegas. The show is dank, the color palette is muted, there are a lot of greys and dull greens and browns, and the animation is utilitarian at best. A lot of anime from this period will have an episode or a sequence that really stands out, where somebody like Yoshinori Kanada would be unleashed for three or four minutes to really show off and blow our minds, but that’s not happening in Albegas. This show’s animation is all subcontractors and sub-subcontractors, the sort of clumsy, outsourced, by the numbers, get it done already look shared with dozens of contemporaneous productions. By no means is this an artistic achievement to be lauded, but… if you were an American anime fan in this period and you’d been seeking out anime on cable and UHF and in the kiddie section of the local video rental, you’d recognize this sort of budget-type dollar-store generic animation instantly, having seen it everywhere from episodes of GI Joe and Transformers to whatever super robots were hiding on discount public-domain VHS. This animation is as 80s as any Pac-Man video game or Duran Duran LP or Members Only jacket. Maybe we shouldn’t be nostalgic for a bad rack zoom or an inept walk cycle, but we are. Deal with it.

things get more animated in the last episode

Just to change things up, Albegas’s final episode features some fun, nicely animated first-person sequences as our heroes zoom through extradimensional space to confront the Great Deran. Yes, the evil aliens and their plot to take over the Earth is defeated, in case you were wondering. These climactic sequences bring to mind 80s first-person shooter video games. Well, by a strange coincidence, Albegas was in fact the basis for a Sega laserdisc video game, titled “Albegas” in Japan and “Cybernaut” in the United States, if it ever made it to the United States, that is. Details are sketchy.

Albegas did appear in the US as “Voltron II The Deluxe Gladiator Set” from Matchbox, which seems to be a repack of Popy’s GC-04 DX Albegas, a toy I wish I’d bought when it was on clearance at K-Mart. With my employee discount it probably would have set me back a whole eight dollars. The DX combination process gives us an Albegas with three sets of arms, an altogether more interesting look than what we got on the TV.

Early in the Albegas series our heroes each have personal commuter-type jet planes that are used to dock with their Alpha, Beta, and Gamma robots. Episode 14 delivers an extremely toyetic upgrade in the form of the New Jet Alpha, Beta and Gamma, each transformable into vaguely robotic forms, and that can combine into the Super Abega and become a Godaikin toy for sale at better toy stores everywhere in the 1980s.

For my part, I first saw Albegas on the shelves as a “Voltron II” in that K-Mart toy department. It would be a few years before I’d first see animated Albegas as one of dozens of anime openings on a tape of anime opening credits, courtesy some fan somewhere with two VCRs, a slew of TV episodes from different shows, and a desire to build a mixtape of OP and ED sequences. That’s where Albegas first hit my eyeballs, Mojo and Korogi ‘73 belting out the catchy theme song that starts off chanting “Gan-gan-gan” before asking us to “get dimension” and “scramble go,” one more colorful high-energy anime OP in among forty or fifty other colorful high-energy robot anime OPs. It’s easy to see where Albegas would be overlooked in a Japanese TV schedule that included Urusei Yatsura, Dr Slump, Tokemeki Tonight, Sasuraiger, Votoms, Dunbine, Orguss, Prowres Sanshiro, Cat’s Eye, and Kinnikuman. American anime fandom in the mid 1980s was too busy drawing Dirty Pair fan artwork and writing extensive Zeta Gundam episode guides to worry about combination robots from two or three seasons ago. But speaking for myself, decades later I’d be throwing down cold hard cash for a Blu-Ray of Albegas, purely on the strength of that opening credit sequence.

Yes, Discotek Media continues their crusade to release the unexpected and brought Albegas to North American home video in a standard-def Blu-Ray disc containing all 45 episodes with English subtitles. You might wonder about video quality with so many episodes stuffed onto one disc, but the show looks fine. In fact higher resolution might not do this show any favors; the show isn’t visually striking or particularly well animated, and seeing it in UHD 4K would only highlight those imperfections. Personally, I’m kind of jazzed that we’re finally getting the full 80s anime experience; not just expensive films and beloved TV series, but also the kind of forgettable programmers that filled time slots and toy store shelves, that caught and held the attention of viewers just long enough to be replaced with next year’s new show. Maybe there’s some version of the world where American kids watched a renamed Daisaku, Tetsuya and Hotaru battle whatever WEP would call the Dellinger in however many episodes survived the standards and practices cuts and were retitled “Gladiator Force Voltron.” But the get dimension we got, where we can enjoy the original and think about what might have been, well, that’s OK too. Now tell Goro to get lost, there’s scramble go lightspeed electroids to combine!

-Dave Merrill

Thanks for reading Let's Anime! If you enjoyed it and want to show your appreciation for what we do here as part of the Mister Kitty Dot Net world, please consider joining our Patreon!

what I learned at the Super Happy Fun Sell

2025 was my last year managing the Super Happy Fun Sell.

Now you may be asking, what the heck is a "Super Happy Fun Sell" and what does it have to do with this blog, or with classic Japanese animation? Well, I'll explain, if you get your cotton-pickin' hands off me, you barbarian. The Super Happy Fun Sell, sometimes described as the “Super Happy Fun Sale,” or SHFS for short, is Anime Weekend Atlanta's garage sale, yard sale, flea market event strictly for fans to sell their previously loved anime and manga merchandise to other fans. By definition, the SHFS is full of older merchandise from older shows, and frequently is the only place at the convention to find out of print manga, old VHS tapes and DVDs, and the occasional LP, LD, Beta tape or animation cel.


The SHFS has been a Thursday fixture at AWA for so many years that honestly I can't remember when it started. But it happened this way. Like many anime conventions, AWA began as a Friday-Saturday-Sunday show, with a lot of setup happening Thursday night and a lot of attendees showing up Thursday to pick up their badges early and avoid the Friday lines. Naturally, the convention had thought about getting some events going Thursday afternoon and evening, not only to encourage that Thursday badge pickup and entertain the early bird fans, but also to help relieve the pressure on a weekend schedule that was filling up with programming. I’d been doing some Thursday evening panels already and was always on the lookout for new Thursday things.


 

Some of the other shows were already hosting swap-meet events. The idea was out there in the world, I know we weren't the first. It's my recollection that one of AWA’s founders, the inestimable Lloyd Carter, was the person that said “let’s make this happen here,” and I believe he also came up with the "Super Happy Fun Sell" name, which is a reference to the SNL fake toy commercial about Happy Fun Ball, Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Ball.

 

My immediate reaction was, "this is a great idea, I wanna run it." So there I was, on a Thursday night in September of 2008 in the Kennesaw room of the Waverly, watching it transform into something that usually happens on suburban Saturday mornings - a yard sale. At least I think it was 2008. Details are sketchy. As a Thursday night event, it was difficult to squeeze the SHFS into a program book that was firmly and deeply committed to Friday-Saturday-Sunday scheduling. Years would pass before the event achieved full AWA print recognition, which only helped to secure SHFS’s reputation as some sort of clandestine in-crowd night-market rendezvous, and incidentally, helped to shield the event from criticism by vendors in the vendors hall, understandably wary of any competition for attendee dollars. Relax guys, everything sold at the SHFS you probably already sold at least once already.


 

the only known photo of the first SHFS

That first year, things were casual. First come first served, pay at the door and take whatever table you want, sell whatever you got, whatever. The event went like gangbusters, but immediately I realized that we were going to have to formalize things a little, if only to keep the event an actual used-goods event and not let it be over-run by arts and crafts, self-published fantasy novel authors, and wannabe vendors who missed out vending in AWA’s vendors hall. I spent a lot of time explaining the event over and over again to people wandering in the door thinking it was registration or the dealers room, or that they could just stand in a corner and hold things and sell them that way. Don’t do that.

Every year we learned from the previous year and we'd find something else we needed to make a rule for. We added rules against bootleg videotapes or DVDs, outlawing "mystery bags" and blind boxes, and preventing the sale of home-made candles, embroidery, and jewelry. The idea of “yard sale” seems pretty simple, but a lot of people seemed unfamiliar with the concept; we are providing the space for you to sell used items in, and that’s it. No, we can't make change, we don't have any carts or hand trucks, no, we can't provide wi-fi.

 

Super Happy Fun Sell, AWA 2011

After a few iterations of the SHFS and a move to a larger ballroom space in the Waverly, the event had evolved somewhat. AWA added an online registration system built into AWA's web page, we wrote a FAQ and a list of do’s and don’ts, and we found ourselves with a devoted audience of both sellers and buyers, ready and waiting for Thursday. Myself included! I love yard sales, thrift stores, antique malls, used bookstores, anywhere there's a random factor skewing retail choices towards the offbeat and unknown. I also love Japanese cartoons and Japanese cartoon-related merchandise. Creating an event where all these items come to me, rather than me having to hunt them down one by one, well, that’s not the main reason we have the SHFS, but it’s close.


 

some of my SHFS finds from over the years

Also, and this is the important part, the SHFS is an event people absolutely love. I’m talking “lines down the hall and around the corner waiting for the doors to open” love. People love the feeding-frenzy vibe, people love bargains, people love cleaning out their closets and making a little scratch, and that love is infectious. There’s something unique or fascinating or nostalgia-inducing on every table and everyone is happy to be there, smiling at even the possibility of finding treasure and taking it home. Putting smiles on faces is the best thing; in fact, that’s really why we started AWA in the first place, and who can deny we all couldn’t use a few more things that make people happy?


 

AWA 2016 SHFS

So, if I love it so much, why am I stepping away? Well, first off, the SHFS involves arranging and coordinating and organizing. Not an untenable amount of work, but it’s work that is easier and more convenient if done by people in the area, which I am not. In addition to advance promotion, table layout, and the answering of myriad questions, the SHFS has to be integrated with the convention and all that convention’s moving parts like schedules, locations, and staff. That integration happens when staffers get together and talk this stuff out. And me, well, I haven’t been to an AWA staff meeting in twenty six years. In fact they aren’t even called “staff meetings” any more.

promo slide for AWA 2021's SHFS

There’s even more to do when the event actually happens. The seller’s tables need to be set out properly, and if they aren’t, they need fixing. Someone has to work line control, or at least find someone to work line control. We have to find the event signage and that involves someone who knows where all that signage is stored, and that someone definitely isn’t me. Someone’s got to move all the tech equipment out of the room because there's usually tech equipment sitting around in the room waiting to be moved. Often a guest or a panelist or someone on staff or someone staff-related has been promised a SHFS table by somebody else on staff, and that information never gets to me until the day of the show, because, again, the not-being-in-Atlanta thing, just one more last minute curveball hurled on the Thursday of an anime con, a day already filled with curveballs.

The key to dealing with these last minute switcheroos is being flexible, that’s the key to everything about events like this. Like the old saying goes, no plan survives contact with the enemy. Treat your carefully crafted plans as if they were merely casual suggestions and adapt as needed. And let everyone else know your plans have changed, because it’s teamwork that makes the dream, or the anime con, work.

 

AWA 2017 SHFS

And that’s my advice to the AWA team that’s taking over the SHFS. To be honest, that’s my advice for the staffers who run any event like this – and to the sellers who are schlepping their merchandise through the maze of the convention center and setting up their tables. Be flexible and adjust to the situation, have your goals in mind and let those guide your actions, instead of the process. And get one or two of those collapsible wagons, or at least a hand truck!

So I’m no longer running the SHFS. But am I through with the SHFS? No sir. You will see me there next time, prowling the aisles, looking for offbeat old anime stuff, chatting with friends, and marveling at all the stuff.
 

AWA 2019 SHFS

AWA isn’t the only anime con to throw a swap meet or a yard sale, of course. Anime Boston’s swap meet is strictly barter. No money changes hands, it’s strictly for the free exchange of goods from one fan to another. Anime North’s Nominoichi fills an exhibit hall with tables piled high with merchandise and that event absolutely swarms with customers. I’m told Colossalcon holds Otaku Flea Markets twice a show, and last I heard Fanime was still holding swap meets. Even without conventions, fandom swap meets and flea markets are popping up all over the place. There’s one happening in Toronto this weekend! My advice is to keep your eyes open for a happy fun sale near you – and remember to show up early, carry along a few shopping bags, don't be afraid to bargain, and bring cash!

-Dave Merrill

Thanks for reading Let's Anime! If you enjoyed it and want to show your appreciation for what we do here as part of the Mister Kitty Dot Net world, please consider joining our Patreon!
 

Anime Weekend Atlanta 2025

It seems like just yesterday that a bunch of us anime nerds were sitting in some parents' basement somewhere in the Atlanta metro area, saying to ourselves, by golly, if we don't start an anime convention in Atlanta soon, then somebody else is going to, and that anime con we don't run will invariably suck. So we'd better get to work. It wasn't just yesterday, in fact it was more than three decades ago. Three decades where we went from VHS to DVD to Blu-Ray to streaming, three decades of moving from small hotel to larger hotel to larger hotel to small convention center to larger convention center to the largest convention center we could find, three decades of arranging flights and finding hotel rooms and programming panels, three decades of assembling audio and video equipment and wrangling vendors and cosplayers and entertainers and voice actors and cartoonists. 

Costume Contest at the first AWA

  

That convention, of course, was and is Anime Weekend Atlanta, the premier (not "premiere", thank you) Japanese animation festival in the Southeast of the United States. Since 1995 a crew of anime fans has been working hard to make this three and now four day gathering a unique and lively weekend celebrating Japanese cartoons, Asian culture, the art of animation, and all the accompanying cultural artifacts and practices that have grown up around the fandom. AWA has survived pandemics, 9/11s, staff changes, location challenges, date relocations, and has constantly dealt with the changing tastes of an ever-evolving pool of attendees, a rotating cast ranging in age from five to seventy-five, interested in everything from karate to Kinikuman, from Demon Slayers to Devilmen, and as always engaged in a bitter struggle over whether or not the abbreviated name of the convention is pronounced "ei-wah" or "ei-doubleyou-ei." 

This year AWA is happening December 18-21 at the Georgia World Congress Center in downtown Atlanta, and I will, as I have been for the past thirty years, be presenting a wide, wild variety of panels and entertainments for the attendees. Will you be one of them? I hope so, and if so please take a minute and say hello! So, what exactly am I up to?

Thursday afternoon at 4 we'll jam a room full of preloved anime and manga merchandise and let capitalism run rampant. This is your chance to peek inside the crawl spaces and attics and closets and storage units of some of the Atlanta area's most notorious nerd merch hoarders, desperate to make space for more stuff. Let the bargains commence! 

Friday at 11am, Neil "I Translated Chargeman Ken" Nadelman and myself will be taking a tour through the wacky world of Knack, the studio that Ninja'd our Wonder Boys and Sued our Cats while Astroing our Gangers. 

 Friday night at 8 Reverend Neil will be once again delivering his popular sermon on the topic of "Totally Lame Anime" and how it affects your daily life. Don't miss it!

Dave Merrill's Anime Hell returns Friday night at 10pm for a guaranteed almost two hours of cartoon madness, live-action kookery, commercial ineptitude, and the sort of amateur animation buffoonery that is neither sanctioned nor supported by any official organization.

Ryan Gavigan's Midnight Madness returns at exactly 12:02am to pummel you senseless with a barrage of anime parody dubs produced by anime fans just like you, only funnier and with more free time and some technical equipment you may or may not have access to. 

What was anime like exactly forty, fifty, and sixty years ago? What influences are still with us today and what has vanished in the mists of time? And why does everything have a robot in it? The answers to these and more questions will be fiercely debated in this event Saturday at 10:45am. 

Sunday at 10am, some of the surviving founders of Anime Weekend Atlanta will assemble to dredge up old memories, rekindle old feuds, and generally talk about what things were like before everybody had their damn phone in their damn face all the time. If you have memories of the first AWA, you should definitely attend this panel, and you should also schedule a colonoscopy. 

Sunday at 3:30, Neil and Dave will put on their radiation suits, take their iodine pills, and lead us all into the coming End Of The World as seen in various Japanese films from the 1960s and 1970s and 80s. Space vampires, earthquakes, deadly diseases and nuclear war all struggle to see who can kill us off first - and no matter who wins, we all lose! It's a great way to send everyone home from the 30th anniversary of Anime Weekend Atlanta. 

Around the South and across the world people are getting ready for AWA. I'm putting these panels together right now even as you read this! So, don't be left out, make your plans now to be in Atlanta for AWA 2025! 

-Dave M

Thanks for reading Let's Anime! If you enjoyed it and want to show your appreciation for what we do here as part of the Mister Kitty Dot Net world, please consider joining our Patreon!

Mecha-May and Mew-Bot and SPT Layzner

We live in an amazing age of technology, when computers and robots can accomplish the most outstanding feats. One such outstanding feat is available now for you to enjoy, as Mecha-May the robot anime fan and her long-suffering producer Mew-Bot Five Thousand explore the 1985 Nippon Sunrise mecha series SPT Layzner, thereby obviating the need for me to write about the series! Truly we live in an age of wonders. Now enjoy the video! 

1975: Anime Goes Around The World

 
A little while ago we looked at 1965 - now we're going to skip forward ten years and look back thirty years at a selection of 1975's outstanding achievements in the field of Japanese animation. And there's no better place to start than with a cartoon about a bee.
 

The 1970s were a decade in which Japanese animation cemented its international reputation as a reliable supplier of children's entertainment, and part of that was due to a series of high profile international coproductions, like this one, Maya The Bee. Raised to be a good bee, Maya's adventurous spirit leads her to defy her bee overlords and leave the hive to explore the world, meeting a wide variety of small creatures with which she learns important life lessons. Based on a German children's book from 1912, subsequent adaptations thankfully toned down the nationalist militarism of the original, and the 1975 Zuiyo Eizo / Nippon Animation series went so far as to introduce Willy, Maya's lazy bee boyfriend. This 52 episode series aired around the world in various languages, and in Saban's English dub on YTV and Nickelodeon. Since then Maya has appeared in several new animated adaptations, video games, stage plays, amusement parks, you name it, the world is buzzing for Maya.

 

Gamba no Bouken, or as we call it The Adventures Of Gamba, is one of those anime series that had a big impact in Japan but barely made a ripple in the English language market. Our hero Gamba is an adventurous mouse, and he and his friends defend the island of Yumemishima and defy the white ferret Noroi. The TMS series only ran for 26 episodes, but had enough staying power to inspire a 1984 theatrical release, another film in 1991, and a CG version in 2015 that was dubbed into English and given the mystifying title "Air Bound." The absolutely melodramatic 1975 adventure of Gamba was directed by the master of melodramatic adventure, Osamu Dezaki, and had a tremendous impact on Japanese kids, some of whom would grow up to become anime professionals. In 2006 a poll of Japanese celebrities selected their top 100 anime titles, and the winner, beating out One Piece, Naruto, Dragonball, Evangelion, and Fullmetal Alchemist, was Gamba.

Kum-Kum Wanpaku Omukashi, or "Naughty Ancient Kum Kum," is a show from the studio that would become Nippon Sunrise and is all about misbehaving prehistoric children romping through the dawn of prehistory. The series was created by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, whom you know from Mobile Suit Gundam, and directed by Rintaro, whom you know from Captain Harlock and the Galaxy Express movies. Don't expect scientific accuracy from this show, which has has dinosaurs in it as supporting characters, but the series is a lot of charming fun and the English dub was from Paramount TV and aired on television around the world, including, as I'm reliably informed, Canada.
 

As we saw last time, Tatsunoko Animation started in 1965 with Space Ace and spent the next decade producing world wide hits like Mach Go Go Go and Science Ninja Team Gatchaman. In 1975 the studio would score another SF hit with the comedy Time Bokan, a 61 episode Fuji-TV show which would go on to inspire nine subsequent companion series. The story? Top time scientist Dr. Kieta vanishes after building a time machine, and his lab assistant Tanpei and his granddaughter Junko set off through time and space to rescue him, followed closely by the evil Majo and her henchmen Grocky and Warusa, who were the inspiration for Pokémon's Team Rocket. Another tremendous Japanese hit that was successful everywhere except the US, two Time Bokan compilations were dubbed by Jim Terry (Timefighters In The Land Of Fantasy) and Harmony Gold (Time Patrol).

 

Timefighters In The Land Of Time Patrol

 

Speaking of science fiction and Tatsunoko, Space Knight Tekkaman blasted the muscular hero action of their Gatchaman, Casshan and Hurricane Polymar adventures right into outer space. In the 21st century, Professor Amachi creates the invulnerable "tekka" metal and with it, builds the robot "Pegas," equipped with the "Teksetter" system which transforms space pilot Joji Minami into the powerful Tekkaman to battle the Waldarian space invaders. With character designs by Yoshitaka Amano, Tekkaman would run twenty-six episodes and find a limited American audience via thirteen English-dubbed episodes that were briefly broadcast on UHF television and sold via home video cassette. The 1991 reboot/sequel Tekkaman Blade was a popular show that appeared on UPN as "Teknoman."

 

When Akira shouts "fade in," Raideen emerges to battle the evil Fossil Beasts for the fate of mankind! Nippon Sunrise/Tohokushinsha's super robot anime Brave Raideen was the first transforming giant robot anime TV show, and also the first transforming giant robot TV show to be broadcast on American television, helping to start North American anime fandom as we know it today. Created by a top notch team of anime talent that included Yoshiyuki Tomino, Tadao Nagahama, and Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, Raideen ran for fifty episodes and has never had a proper English release.

これがUFOだ!空飛ぶ円盤 aka "It's A UFO! A Flying Saucer" aka "Get That Flying Saucer" is a real space oddity that could only have come from the 1970s. If you weren't there at the time, well, believe me when I tell you that the 70s were the high water mark for all kinds of far-out fantastic nonsense. Bigfoot, ancient astronauts, ESP, Atlantis, the Loch Ness Monster, and UFOs all appeared in pop culture presented as fiction, as fact, and as something in between. Japan was not immune to paranormal fever and perhaps the purest expression of Japan's singular UFO fascination is this film, a sixteen minute featurette screened in March of 1975 as a concentrated distillation of postwar flying saucer fever.

 

We see anime Kenneth Arnold spot UFOs from his Call Air model A-2, anime Captain Mantell's tragic encounter with an unidentified object, and Toei's versions of Barney and Betty Hill and their famous "missing time" close encounter on the lonely roads of Vermont. Before you ask, no, they don't cover the so-called "Roswell incident" because that was not really part of the mythos before the 80s turned it into a thing. After the testimonials, "It's A UFO" switches gears and ventures into theorizing what the inside of a UFO might look like and why these space aliens might be observing the Earth and what this means for the future of mankind. Heady stuff for a Manga Matsuri short! But it's all in the service of laying the groundwork for their next featurette.

 

Uchuu (space) Enban (saucer) Daisenso (large battle), or The Great Flying Saucer Battle, was included in Toei's July Manga Matsuri festival. Combining the UFO craze with the super robot fad, this film was a Dynamic Pro vehicle that served as a pilot film for October's UFO Robo Grendizer series, and while the characters and vehicles are different, you can see the Grendizer framework clearly, as outer space refugee Duke Fleed arrives on Earth incognito with his saucer-based Gattiger robot in tow, pursued by an evil alien repo-armada who is intent upon recovering said saucer-based Gattiger robot.

I mentioned earlier that the 1970s was the decade where Japanese animation cemented its place in worldwide entertainment. Well, UFO Robo Grendizer, the Go Nagai/Dynamic Pro super robot series from Toei that was given a trial run with Uchuu Enban Daisenso, began airing in 1975. Grendizer ran 74 episodes and was a massive hit in Italy and France and the French-speaking world, cementing Japanese animation as the go-to entertainment for Romance-language speaking children for years to come. The story of Grendizer is a mix of royal intrigue, UFO hysteria, and super robot mecha-violence that begins as the evil Vegans destroy the planet Fleed and all its people save the prince Duke Fleed, who escapes in the super robot flying saucer Grendizer. Arriving on Earth, he goes undercover as a simple farmhand, but when the Vegans threaten, he and Grendizer battle them alongside guest star Koji Kabuto from Mazinger Z.
 

By the end of the series Duke and Koji are joined by Fleed's sister Maria and local horse girl Hikaru who each pilot their own super mecha that combine to make Grendizer even more awesome. Grendizer aired in the US as part of the "Force Five" series, and the 2024 reimagining Grendizer U was partially financed by another nation full of Grendizer fans, Saudi Arabia.

The 1970s in general weren't a big time for anime feature films. Apart from festival shorts, The Little Mermaid was the only theatrical-length anime release in 1975. Toei's adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's fish-girl story is a widescreen film directed by Tomoharu Katsumata that arguably is closer to the original fairy tale than the later Disney version. This release was dubbed into English and made its way to American television and the home video market and was later released on DVD and Blu-Ray by Discotek Media, and also given a comedy commentary track by the former MST3K comedians of Rifftrax. The Little Mermaid remains a fairy tale, but Katsumata frames the film like a widescreen super robot epic, complete with giant monsters.

catch The Little Mermaid Sunday on the Superstation

Economic factors, market forces, changing demographics, flying saucer sightings; they all worked to shape Japanese animation in 1975. With hindsight it's easy to see how the field was shifting towards original properties and international licensing and how the potential for massive toy sales drove anime studios into the arms of various super robots. Speaking for myself, when I look at 1975 I see favorites I grew up watching like Grendizer, I see favorites that became hits among the next generation like Maya The Bee, and favorites that never took off in the West but remain vital cornerstones of anime in Japan, like Gamba and Raideen. The groundwork of 1965 was paying off ten years later, with Japanese animation solidly in place as global entertainment, even if the globe didn't quite realize it yet. Next: 1985!


-Dave Merrill

Thanks for reading Let's Anime! If you enjoyed it and want to show your appreciation for what we do here as part of the Mister Kitty Dot Net world, please consider joining our Patreon!