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Have any of you watched this 1980s anime series? Many of you are probably familiar with Gundam, and the guy who wrote and directed it, Yoshiyuki Tomino, did Ideon immediately after. Like Gundam, it wasn't terribly popular during its TV run and was cancelled early. Eventually he was able to produce two follow-up films, A Contact, and Be Invoked. A Contact pretty much sums up the 39 episodes in one film, and A Contact is essentially the conclusion of the story.
And what a conclusion it is.
Tomino is famous for killing off a lot of his characters, and Ideon is no exception. As a matter of fact, no one survives. He literally kills off everyone by the end of Be Invoked, which some pretty shocking deaths (a pregnant woman being shot in the head, a young girl getting decapitated). With the goofy robots and character designs (which feel more 70s than 80s), you initially may not feel its something to take serious, but its got a pretty interesting story where on one side the humans have this massive, ancient robot they don't understand, and an alien race which believes their survival is dependent on destroying it, leading up to a fast-paced ending where everyone loses. Of course, lots of drama and back-stabbing along the way. Even a moment when the Ideon cuts an entire planet in half.
I love cool looking robots, but I also love weird ones, and Ideon has plenty of those. Designers really tested the waters on all sorts of crazy designs back then, and while I wasn't a fan of them when I was younger, I appreciate their character today. I have all the model kits.
Its had a great deal of influence on modern anime. There would be no Evangelion without it. And as much as I would love to see them re-boot it and modernize the designs and so forth like they have done with Yamato 2199 and Gundam the Origin, I just can't see that happening. So it kind of makes this old series and especially Be Invoked somewhat of a legend.
So if you have some time on your hands, I def recommend checking this out. All the episodes and movie are on youtube and even subtitled. If anything, just check out A Contact and Be Invoked and then go back and check out the episodes if you have further interest in the more developed stories.
For the model kits, your best bet is eBay. You want the 1/600 scale kits. There were two different lines of kits released, the 1/600 which are bigger of the two, but the other smaller ones are hit and miss and their scales are all over the place.
