Grendizer

UFO Robot Grendizer
DVD Cover art
ＵＦＯロボ グレンダイザー(Yūfō Robo Gurendaizā)
Genre	Mecha
Manga
Written by	Go Nagai
Published by	Kodansha
Magazine	TV Magazine
Demographic	Shōnen
Original run	October 1975 – May 1976
Volumes	2
Manga
Written by	Go Nagai
Illustrated by	Gosaku Ota
Published by	Akita Shoten
Magazine	Boken Oh
Demographic	Shōnen
Original run	October 1975 – March 1977
Volumes	5
Manga
Written by	Go Nagai
Illustrated by	Eiji Imamichi
Published by	Tokuma Shoten
Magazine	TV Land
Demographic	Children
Original run	October 1975 – March 1977
Volumes	1
Anime television series
Directed by	Tomoharu Katsumata
Written by	Go Nagai
Music by	Shunsuke Kikuchi
Studio	Toei Animation
Original network	Fuji TV
Original run	October 5, 1975 – February 27, 1977
Episodes	74
Anime film
Directed by	Yoichi Kominato
Produced by	Masahisa Saeki
Written by	Shozo Uehara
Music by	Shunsuke Kikuchi
Studio	Toei Animation
Released	December 20, 1975
Runtime	24 minutes
Manga
Written by	Go Nagai
Illustrated by	Yu Okazaki
Published by	Kodansha
Magazine	TV Magazine
Demographic	Shōnen
Original run	June 1976 – March 1977
Anime film
UFO Robot Grendizer: Akai Yuuhi no Taiketsu
Directed by	Tokiji Kaburaki
Produced by	Chiaki Imada
Written by	Tatsuo Tamura
Music by	Shunsuke Kikuchi
Studio	Toei Animation
Released	December 19, 1976
Runtime	24 minutes
Anime and manga portal

UFO Robot Grendizer (ＵＦＯロボ グレンダイザー, Yūfō Robo Gurendaizā), also known as Force Five: Grandizer in the United States, is a Japanese Super Robot anime television series and manga created by manga artist Go Nagai. It is the third entry in the Mazinger trilogy. The anime television series was produced by Toei Doga and Dynamic Planning and broadcast on Fuji TV from October 5, 1975, to February 27, 1977, and lasted 74 episodes.^[1][2] The robot's first appearance in the United States was as a part of the Shogun Warriors line of super robot toys imported in the late 1970s by Mattel, then in Jim Terry's Force Five series, both under the title Grandizer. It was widely popular in the Middle East, France, French-speaking Canada and Italy.

Plot[edit]

The Vega homeworld has become unstable due to the exploiting of Vegatron, a powerful radioactive ore. Seeking to expand his militaristic empire and find a substitute planet to settle upon, the ruthless King Vega unleashes his armies—composed of flying saucers and giant robotic monsters—and turns first against neighbors such as Fleed, a highly advanced but peaceful world. The once verdant, idyllic Fleed is turned into a radioactive wasteland. Too late, the only known survivor of the royal family, the Crown Prince Duke Fleed, manages to steal the Grendizer, the robotic embodiment of the Fleedian God of War, from the Vegan invaders who plan to use it to spearhead their invasion fleet. Grendizer is a giant monster robot that interfaces with Spacer (Spaizer), a flying saucer that enables the robot to fly.

Fleeing Vegan space by flying at faster than light speed, the Duke enters our solar system and switches course to Earth, making a rough landing in Japan, on the slopes of Mount Fuji. He is befriended by Doctor Umon, a noted scientist who oversees a research laboratory called the Space Science Lab near a small ranch. The kindly Umon takes in the young humanoid alien as his son, under the assumed name of Daisuke, and assists him in hiding Grendizer. Taking the name Daisuke Umon, Duke Fleed works at the ranch run by Danbei Makiba (based on Abashiri Daemon of Go Nagai's manga Abashiri Ikka).

Roughly two years later, Koji Kabuto, after studying abroad, returns to Japan in a flying saucer he personally designed and built, called the TFO. He heads to the Space Science Lab after hearing of multiple sightings of "flying saucers". He plans to contact the aliens if possible and make peace with them. Daisuke, however, scoffs at the notion and fears that these aliens, the Vegans, led by generals Blaki and Gandal, are preparing to attack Earth. Koji ignores his warnings and flies out to meet the incoming saucers, only to discover the horrible truth. In order to save Koji and protect his adoptive homeworld from destruction, Daisuke is forced to return to his true identity as Duke Fleed. He unearths Grendizer from its hiding place under the lab and sets off to fight his enemies.

The Vegans establish a base on the far side of the Moon and start to attack Earth from there. Koji discovers Duke Fleed's true identity and their bitter rivalry soon turns to friendship. The daughter of Danbei Makiba, Hikaru, also discovers Daisuke's secret and becomes a pilot in order to assist him despite his objections. Later on, it is revealed that there were two more survivors from planet Fleed: Duke's younger sister Maria Grace Fleed and a man who had rescued her and fled to Earth, raising her under the guise of her grandfather. Caught in a crossfire between Grendizer and a Vegan beast, he reveals to Maria that she is the last survivor of the royal family of Fleed (under the belief that Duke was killed) before dying from his wounds. Maria swears revenge on Grendizer and its pilot. She tries to ambush Duke, Koji and Hikaru at the Space Science Lab, but the fight is short. Maria's attacks bring Duke's necklace (which is the same as the one she wore) into view and the truth is revealed. The lost siblings are reunited at last and Maria becomes the last addition to the team.

As the conflict nears its end, it is shown that Duke Fleed was engaged to King Vega's daughter, Princess Rubina, prior to the attack on Fleed. When Rubina discovers that planet Fleed is no longer polluted with Vegatron radiation and that her fiancé is alive and well, she rushes to Earth to bring him the good news. Unfortunately, one of King Vega's generals uses this opportunity to ambush Duke Fleed, and Rubina is killed when she takes a shot aimed at Duke. This makes Duke even more determined to wipe out the Vegan menace once and for all.

King Vega decides to gather his remaining forces and make an all-out attack on Earth, destroying the Moon Base to coax his troops into fighting to the end and finally succeed in invading Earth and taking it as their new home planet. Duke and company go out to intercept them in Grendizer and the newly designed space combat Spazers. After a fierce battle, they finally manage to destroy the Vegan mother ship along with King Vega himself. Soon afterwards, Duke and Maria bid a tearful farewell to Earth and their friends and return to help reconstruct planet Fleed.

Production[edit]

UFO Robo Grendizer's origins dates back to Uchu Enban Daisenso (宇宙円盤大戦争, Uchū Enban Daisensō), translated and also known as Battlefield of The Space Saucers and The Great Battle of the Flying Saucers, a 1975 animated short film created by Go Nagai and produced by Toei Doga. It is also known as Space Disk War and was also released in Italy under the name UFO Robot Gattaiger-La grande battaglia dei dischi spaziali. It was originally shown along with the short film Great Mazinger tai Getter Robot G: Kuchu Daigekitotsu, also from Toei and Nagai.

Nagai and Dynamic Productions created Grendizer using some of the elements and characters from Daiseno including Duke, the Makiba family, and even Blaki. Some changes were made to make it more original. The most obvious are the changes in design and the addition of characters such as Koji Kabuto and Maria Fleed.

UFO Robot Grendizer was developed to be a sequel to Great Mazinger after the initial concepts of a sequel were rejected by Toei. With the appearance of Uchu Enban Daisenso at the March 1975 Toei Manga Festival a remake was pitched using elements from Mazinger. To breathe new light into the series, the villains of the series were decided to be aliens, a trend that followed in other Toei mecha series while also making Duke a more Blue Blood character with his suit being based on a knight including more romantic elements with its characters and sense of adventure.

Go Nagai however stated in an interview that the anime series was considered a fun side project and does not consider Grendizer to be part of the series timeline. This is mainly because he had a lot of disagreements with Toei and Shingo Araki. However, Nagai and Dynamic Pros include Grendizer in their Mazinger Bible, a 2002 behind the scenes books about the Mazinger franchise released for the 30th anniversary of the first Mazinger series.^[3]

Episodes[edit]

Home Media[edit]

The licensed dubbed version for some French-speaking countries was officially announced in 2006. In 2005, a major crisis led Toei to take legal actions against DVD customers, all French megastores, and two major French anime publishers in France, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland and Luxembourg. The crisis started with the official release of unlicensed Goldorak DVD by Manga Distribution and Déclic Image websites and on eBay. By November 28, 2005 the Manga Distribution and Déclic Images publishers were sentenced to pay €7,200,000 to Toei and Dynamic Planning for selling unlicensed DVD boxes.

As of 2013, following an agreement with Toei, an official, "fully remastered and uncensored" DVD release of the complete series is available on the French market. The series has also aired on Mangas TV.^[4]

The entire Arabic dub is available on Istikana, a paid streaming service that has On-Demand Arab movies and TV shows.^[5]

Production information and staff[edit]

• Episodes: 74
• Timeslot: Sundays, 19:00–19:30
• Network: Fuji TV
• Production Company: Toei Doga
• Original Story: Go Nagai, Dynamic Planning
• Serialized in: TV Magazine, Tanoshii Youchien, Otomodachi- Published by: Kodansha, TV Land- Published by: Tokuma Shoten, Boken Oh- Published by: Akita Shoten
• Producer: Masahisa Saeki
• Planning: Azuma Kasuga, Toshio Katsuda, Koji Bessho
• Chief Director: Tomoharu Katsumata
• Episode Directors: Tomoharu Katsumata, Yoichi Kominato, Yasuo Yamayoshi, Tsunekiyo Otani, Hidenori Yamaguchi, Kazukiyo Shigeno, Yoshikatsu Kasai, Takenori Kawada, Masamune Ochiai, Hiroshi Shidara, Kazuya Miyazaki, Johei Matsuura, Osamu Kasai, Tokiji Kaburaki, Kozo Morishita, Masayuki Akehi, Kazumi Fukushima, Takeshi Tamiya
• Screenplay: Keisuke Fujikawa, Mitsuru Majima, Shozo Uehara, Tatsuo Tamura, Toyohiro Ando
• Animation Directors: Joji Kikuchi, Kazuo Komatsubara, Keisuke Morishita, Kenzo Koizumi, Shingo Araki, Takeshi Shirato, Tetsuhiro Wakabayashi, Tomeko Horikawa, Toshio Mori, Yoshinobu Aohachi
• Character Design: Kazuo Komatsubara, Shingo Araki
• Art Directors: Tadanao Tsuji, Iwamitsu Ito
• Music: Shunsuke Kikuchi
• Lyrics: Kogo Hotomi
• Vocalist: Isao Sasaki
• Opening Theme: "Tobe! Grendizer" (とべ!グレンダイザー, Tobe! Gurendaizā, translated as "Fly! Grendizer") by Isao Sasaki, Columbia Yurikago-kai and Ko'orogi '73
• Ending Theme: "Uchuu no Yuusha Grendizer" (宇宙の勇者グレンダイザー, Uchū no Yūsha Gurendaizā, translated as "Grendizer, Hero of Space") by Isao Sasaki
• Cast: Kei Tomiyama (Daisuke Umon / Duke Fleed), Hiroya Ishimaru (Koji Kabuto), Kosei Tomita (Danbei Makiba), Joji Yanami (Dr. Genzo Umon / Emperor Vega), Kazuko Sawada (Goro Makiba), Chiyoko Kawashima (Hikaru Makiba), Kenichi Ogata (Banta Arano / Blacky), Rihoko Yoshida (Maria Grace Fleed), Kazuko Sawada (Lady Gandal), Kazuko Sugiyama (Naida), Noriko Ohara (Rubina), Ryoichi Tanaka (Zuril Jr), Keiichi Noda (Captain Gorman), Nobuyo Tsuda (Hara Arano), Hiroshi Otake (Boss)

Source(s)^{[1][2][6][7][8]}

Reception and Influence[edit]

Grendizer was the second longest running animated Mazinger series in Japan, having 74 episodes. Several people however complained about its connection to the other Mazinger series in the franchise, especially with Koji's status as a mere sidekick and giving him a different romantic interest who wasn't Sayaka as well as the lack of the other Mazinger mechs.

This created the popular assumption that the anime wasn't a success in Japan especially since the merchandise based on the anime didn't sell as well as the merchandise for both Mazinger Z and Great Mazinger. However Go Nagai disputes this, saying the anime was actually quite successful in Japan; “It was actually a hit in Japan. Maybe some people thought it was not as popular as Mazinger Z, because Mazinger was super popular.”^[9] The average viewership metrics for UFO Robot Grendizer's original Japanese broadcast was around 20.9% audience share across its 74 episodes with a peak share of 27.6% for Episode 21.^[10]

Regardless of its disputed success in Japan, Grendizer was one of the first anime programs to be a major success in both Europe and the Arabic regions of the Middle East and continues to have a strong following in those parts of the world to this day.

In Europe, it was a major success in France and Italy, there known as respectively Goldorak and Goldrake.

The Italian dub was titled Goldrake, it changed all the characters names and created a whole new the soundtrack for the series. It was so popular in Italy that random episodes were compiled into films that was released theatrically in Italy and both the Italian theme songs were among the best-selling singles of 1978 with the first selling over seven hundred thousand copies and the second selling over a million copies. ^[11] It would also get its own comic series titled Atlas UFO Robot Presenta Goldrake (Atlas UFO Robot Presents Goldrake), whose story diverged even further from the source material. This comic ran for 89 issues and spawned several other similar comic adaptations of anime airing on Italian television at that time.^[12]

The French dub titled Goldorak was the first anime series to be telecast in France and legend goes that the series was so popular among French viewers that several episodes scored an 100% TV rating. Like the Italian dub, it changed all of the character's names and insert songs although it did translate the opening and ending themes, however versions of the dub had a completely different theme simply titled "Goldorak", which was sang by Franco-Israeli singer Noam Kaniel. Noam's performance earned him unprecedented celebrity status in France; by the time Goldorak had ended its original run on French TV, its theme song had gold status four times in France.^[13] It was also one of the first anime programs to be a major success in Canada, where the French dub was broadcast in Quebec airing on TVA (Canadian TV network), where it continues to have a strong following to the point of news of the DVD release and returning broadcast getting major coverage in Canada.

It was also extremely popular in the Arab World, first airing in Lebanon on Télé Liban in 1979 under the title مغامرات الفضاء: يوفو - غرندايزر (Moughamarat Al Fada: UFO - Grendizer, Adventures In Space: UFO - Grendizer) before being distributed to most Arabic speaking regions. Unlike the Italian and French dubs, the Arabic dub retained the characters names and insert songs from the Japanese version, also unlike most Arabic dubs of anime, it has retained most of its plot details without any altering or censorship (with the exception of some markets like Saudi Arabia and the UAE that censored some scenes). Grendizer was so popular at the time that it spawned several long running Grendizer comics published for the Arabic market, mainly translations of the Italian produced comics, the most well known of these being ما وراء الكون (Ma'Wara El Koun, Beyond The Universe), a Lebanese anthology comic magazine that published Arabic translations of Science Fiction comics ranging from one off short stories to licensed titles like Star Trek and Star Wars before expanding to non-Scifi comic series like Marvel superhero issues like Spider-Man, Spider-Woman and The Incredible Hulk as well as TV licensed comics like Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, Grendizer didn't make its appearance until the fifth issue but was so popular it became the top feature on the title, which ran for over 140 issues.^[14] It later spawned its own comic series titled مغامرات غرندايزر (Moghamarat Grendizer, Grendizer Adventures) that ran for over 70 issues. The series' popularity continues on in the region, as Arab News journalist Hala Tashkandi stated; “Grendizer memorabilia still sell like hot cakes in the region, and its popularity has barely declined.”,^[15] Lebanese popstar Sami Clark who sang the Arabic version of the opening and ending in the Arabic dub continues to sing the songs in his concerts,^[16][17] he would do a duet with the singer of the original Japanese themes, Issao Sasaki at the 2019 Saudi Anime Expo.^[18] There's even a store in Kuwait that mainly started out mainly selling Grendizer merchandise before expanding to selling other Anime merchandise.^[19] In 2016, a Kuwaiti volunteer group made a Grendizer Mural in Kuwait City during Urban Culture Week.^[20] Go Nagai stated in an interview with Arab News that he believes the geopolitical climate in the Arab world played a big role in Grendizer becoming popular in Arab regions.^[21]

Grendizer had limited success in the United States, where it was one of 5 mecha shows included in the 1980 tv anthology Force Five, where it was renamed Grandizer and only had 26 episodes dubbed out of order. Despite the low episode count, it enjoys a small but dedicated cult following among East Coast American viewers who saw the show as children as well as children who grew up with military families as Force Five was frequently aired on the cable tv feed of US Military installations in Europe. This was the version of the show seen in the United Kingdom, and in India as well as in The Philippines (though an earlier local Filipino English dub of the show existed before it was taken off the air by orders of the Ferdinand Marcos regime).

Other Appearances[edit]

UFO Robot Grendizer returns in 2002 in the 6th chapter of "Dynamic Superobot Wars" and in 2004 in Dynamic Heroes (ダイナミックヒーローズ, Dainamikku Hîrôzu)—also known as Nagai Go Manga Gaiden—Dynamic Heroes (永井豪まんが外伝 ダイナミックヒーローズ, Nagai Gô Manga Gaiden Dainamikku Hîrôzu) and as Go Nagai Manga Heroes Crossover Collection—Dynamic Heroes, a Japanese manga based in several works of Go Nagai, including most of his most famous robots, such as Mazinger Z, Getter Robot and Great Mazinger. It was originally published as a monthly manga magazine e-manga from Kodansha, from June 2004 to July 2007.

Characters from the series also appeared in several installments of Banpresto's (now Bandai Namco Entertainment) popular crossover video game series Super Robot Wars, making its debut in the second installment of the franchise, 2nd Super Robot Wars. In recent years however, Grendizer has made far less appearances in the mainline games but has recently been making a comeback starting with Super Robot Wars MX.

See also[edit]

• UFO Robot Grendizer vs. Great Mazinger
• Grendizer, Getter Robot G, Great Mazinger: Kessen! Daikaijuu

References[edit]