How I Came to Know and Love
the Show:
Well, back in 1981 I got hooked
on an anime called Star Blazers (Space Battleship Yamato).
However, right before Star Blazers there was a show called Force
Five. It was produced by Jim Terry in 1980 and it was the packaging
of 5 Toei Animation shows in one. Unfortunately, only 26 of Wakusei Robo
Danguard Ace's original 56 episodes made it into the Force Five equation...
Like Danguard, only 26 episodes of each of the Force five series were dubbed
into English and televised in New England (I saw it on WXNE 25 in Boston),
some parts of Canada, and I believe HBO for limited time. A fond memory of
watching Force Five and Star Blazers after school was the commercials for
"Mr. Big Toyland." They were located at 399 Moody St. in Waltham,
MA. This toy store specialized in Japanese import toys from these shows. I
used to bug my mother to bring me so I could blow my allowance there. But
alas, she never took me... Thanks a lot Ma >:p
I saw Danguard Ace for the first
time and I was surprised at the fact that it shared the same character designs
as Star Blazers (especially Dr. Sado). Takuma (Winstar) looked strikingly
like Susumu Kodai (Derek Wildstar), Bunta (Butch Norton)
looked alot like Saito (Sgt. Knox), Lisa looked like Nova
(ironically, Lisa was named "Nova" in the Italian version), etc...
I later found that Japanese manga legend Leiji Matsumoto
created both shows and other greats such as Captain Harlock and
Galaxy Express 999.
The Impression the Show Had On Me:
At
first I wasn't too impressed with the show because the first Force Five
show I ever saw was Grandizer- "Return of the Boss Man"
(heh, my first ever Force Five episode was a Mazinger crossover) and I thought
it was awesome. When Monday rolled around and I saw Danguard (for the 1st
time), it was up in the later episodes when the Jasdam Baseship was in space
on its way to Promete (I had no clue as to the plot of the show). It wasn't
until the episodes cycled back to the 1st episode and I got to see the full
storyline (well, as full as I was gonna get with the Force Five version) that
I got hooked for good.
I was most taken in by the uncanny
similarities in the relationship Winstar (Takuma) had with his father
and the relationship I had with my own father when I was growing up. Winstar
respected him but was always driven hard by his father to make him into a man.
When I saw some of the flashbacks Winstar had of himself and his father mountain
climbing, wrestling, conquering fears (in his case diving off a high cliff
into the ocean); the usual life lessons (heh)... Well, I was flabbergasted
at how similar it was with my father. I had the flashback of my dad trying
to make me into a baseball player at the age of 7. I had no idea how to use
a baseball glove and he threw (not tossed) a real base ball at me. It hit
me in the side of the face so hard I almost never wanted to play again. I
didn't help matters when I got to play in a softball game with the grown-ups
and I took a line drive in the shin... Then I got the "quitter's"
lecture from my Dad. That kind of training made me a great fielder in little
league (even though I couldn't hit a baseball for sh*t).
In Retrospect:
After all this, I realized that
Grandizer may have had the flashiest "super cool"
weapons, the coolest looking bad guys, and that it was sort of a "third"
series to Mazinger Z (the Go Nagai super robot that
started the genre)... But, Danguard had the best story with the more complex
plot twists (even the F5 version) and IMO the better characters than all the
other F5 shows. I recently acquired the original Japanese version of Danguard
Ace on LD (laser disc). It's the biggest trip! Not only to see them in Japanese
and unedited, but to see 30 episodes that I've never seen before (due to only
26 of the original 56 eps. being dubbed into F5). Especially the episodes
of Takuma's father right before the Jasdam Baseship took off. A lot of those
episodes never made it to F5 and recently seeing them for the first time had
me on the edge of my seat!
