Japanese anime television series
 is a Japanese Super Robot mecha anime series produced by Toei Animation. For distribution purposes, Toei refers to this television series as Dino Mech Gaiking.
It ran from April 1976 through January 1977 and consisted of 44 episodes of 25 minutes each. "Gaiking" was notable for being one of the few super robot series to take place in real places outside Japan, and for being the first Super Robot series to have a mobile carrier for the chief robots. In the US, "Gaiking" was part of Mattel's popular Shogun Warriors import toy line of the late 1970s and Jim Terry's Force Five anthology series. In 2005, a re-imagining titled "" was produced.
Plot.
The story chronicled the battle between the crew of the semi-transformable carrier Daikū Maryū and the Super Robot Gaiking invented by Dr. Daimonji against an invading race of aliens called the Dark Horror Army. This army hails from the planet Zela whose home planet is facing destruction by their star, Sigma, turning into a black hole as their population starts to become extinct. Notable aspects of the series include the dinosaur-based designs of the Daikū Maryū and its support machines and the use of part of the carrier to form the main robot. The robot Gaiking was piloted by former baseball star named Sanshiro Tsuwabuki who was drafted for the job because his latent psychic powers made him the only one capable of doing so, all other similarly empowered candidates having been assassinated by alien agents with he himself having been injured in an attack that ended his sports career. Gaiking is most easily distinguished from other mecha by its skull-shaped golden torso formed from the head of the Daikū Maryū and its golden horns.
The leader of the Dark Horror Army was a robot scientist named Darius The Great and all of their ships and mecha were fish-shaped, which most likely inspired the Darius series of video games. He uses four giant robotic leaders called the Death Cross Generals composed of Dr. Dankel, General Asimov, General Killer, and General Desmont. These generals used bomber-like spaceships called Grotectors to create artificial black hole vortexes to travel to Earth and back. Throughout the series the Death Cross Generals and Darius note that natives of Zela originally came to Earth for research purposes before slowly colonizing the planet and using it to hide various dark monsters with the rise of humanity, as far back as one million years before the start of the series until the twelfth century AD. For their military natives of Zela were brainwashed and genetically altered into birdmen called the dark avians with elite individuals becoming dark knights.
Mecha.
Gaiking.
A mecha defender robot consisting of three separate components: the Dino-Mecha's head, an arm unit, and a leg unit (the arm and leg units are stored inside the Dino-Mecha and exit from a gateway located below the Dragon's head). These three launch from the Dino-Mecha and combine, while in flight, to form Gaiking. Dino-Mecha's head forms Gaiking's core (i.e., chest and back) and contains Gaiking's own head. Gaiking is operated by baseball star Sanshiro Tsuwabuki.
Daikū Maryū / Dino-Mecha.
A gigantic dragon-shaped robot that defends Earth from invaders from the planet Zela. It possesses numerous weapons and houses the sections of the Gaiking robot. Both Gaiking and the Daiku Maryu are composed of the super alloy Zolmanium Steel which was later reinforced with iron deposits from the Moon.
Nesser.
A small tank-like robot resembling a Plesiosaur, Nesser is used for scouting missions in water. Its weaponry includes lasers emitting from its eyes, a flamethrower emitting from its mouth, and three mortar cannons located on its chest.
Skylar.
A small jet-like robot resembling a Pterodactyl, Skylar is used for scouting missions in the air. Its weaponry includes machine guns and missiles.
Bazolar.
A small, but very fast, tank-like robot resembling a Triceratops, Bazolar is used for scouting missions on land. Its weaponry includes laser canons, a drill, and a mortar cannon.
Production and release notes.
"Gaiking" was Toei Animation's first super robot series not based on an existing manga (the company's previous super robot anime "Mazinger Z", "Getter Robo", etc. were based on manga series by manga artists and writers Go Nagai and Ken Ishikawa respectively).
The program was shown in English internationally as part of Jim Terry's "Force Five" lineup, and was also broadcast in Latin America as "El Gladiador" as part of a 4 anime mecha show called "El Festival de los Robots" (with the other 3 being "Starzinger", "Magne Robo Gakeen" and "Kotetsu Jeeg", known as "El Galactico", "Supermagnetron" and "El Vengador", respectively). The Jim Terry dub was released on video in the UK by Krypton Force under the name "The Protectors", though the first volume of their "Formators" series actually contained "Gaiking" episodes instead of episodes from Jim Terry's "Starvengers". Another dub was produced in the late-70s by M&amp;M Productions in Hawaii, who also dubbed "Mazinger Z" for Toei as a potential test for a US release. Isao Sasaki did the English versions of opening and ending songs for this dub. Of this dub, only the eleventh episode survives.
The first 26 episodes of "Gaiking" were also aired in Italy during the Japanese super robot craze of the late 70s/early 80s, under the name "Gaiking". In the late 1990s the whole series was released in Italy in dubbed DVD boxes. Two episodes from Jim Terry's "Force Five Gaiking" series would be redubbed as an episode of "Robo Formers".
Discotek Media acquired the rights for the entire television series and released it in a complete box set, in Japanese with English subtitles, in June 2016. Reception for the release was mostly positive, but was noted for minor translation issues with the word "Ankoku", most notably renaming the Dark Horror Army and Dark Monsters to Black Horror Army and Black Monsters, respectively.
In 2009, William Winckler Productions produced three all-new English dubbed film versions edited from the original series. William Winckler, known for "Tekkaman the Space Knight", wrote, produced and directed the English films, which are seen on broadband in Japan and released on DVD in North America by Shout! Factory in 2013.
Legal controversy.
Toei Animation credited the show as being based on an original idea by Kunio Nakatani, Akio Sugino and Dan Kobayashi, but in reality the original idea was of Go Nagai. Toei deliberately took Nagai out of the credits in order to avoid the payment of royalties. Because of that, Nagai sued Toei and stopped further collaborations with Toei for a long time. ;ref name="INTERVISTA A: Federico Colpi - (direttore d/visual Incorporated)" ; ;/ref ; The legal battle lasted more than 10 years. Nagai himself confirmed that he was the creator of "Gaiking" at Comicon 2007 in Naples, Italy.
Game appearances.
The original Gaiking first appeared in "Shin Super Robot Wars" for the PlayStation and later in "2nd Super Robot Wars Alpha" and "3rd Super Robot Wars Alpha", both for the PlayStation 2.
References.
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