SPACE RUNAWAY IDEON BLU RAY SERIES

This is not an anime for everyone though and while it isn’t a gory show, it can be quite brutal and violent in places.

SPACE RUNAWAY IDEON BLU RAY SERIES

Overall, Ideon is an anime I never thought that would ever be released outside of Japan, so to have the remastered Blu-ray release with not only the series and movies is genuinely fantastic. This release also lacks an English dub but the original Japanese audio is accompanied with some solid English subtitles. You also have a collection of promos included. This set includes the entire series as well as the movies Contact and the finale Be Invoked. That means, even though this is an anime from the early 80s, it looks and sounds pristine.Īdmittedly the animation is quite dated but the scope of this anime is such, that you don’t notice that when planets are being cut in half.

So to have Ideon in its entirety on Blu-ray is something I think that is entirely necessary at this point and I definitely appreciate the fact we now have it more widely available outside of Japan, if only to understand its cultural impact.Īs for this Blu-ray, it is taken from the recently remastered version that was released in Japan a while back. This was a noteworthy manga, not least because of the fact it was penned by Yuichi Hasegawa who would later go on to write Crossbone Gundam a few years later. Then there is the Gundam manga crossover, Counterattack of Gigantis, where Amuro, Char and Judau try to stop a newly awakened Ideon from destroying everything yet again. Wiping out entire maps with the Ideon Gun was oddly gratifying but doing that too often resulted in the bad ending, where everyone dies horribly. With the Super Robot Wars series, Ideon as a unit was a terrifying prospect in Super Robot Wars F Final but it was in Super Robot Wars Alpha 3 that captured the bittersweet aspect to its horrifying power. However, when it comes to games, Ideon’s impact is far-reaching. What’s more, Koichi Sugiyama of Dragon Quest fame also composed the music in Ideon and his score, like in the Dragon Quest games, underpins the immensity of what is happening and also the awful tragedy of the various events that unfold.Īs for Ideon’s influence across anime and games, where do you begin really? It’s well known that Hideaki Anno was partly inspired by Ideon when it came to the creation of Neon Genesis Evangelion but its impact didn’t stop there, as many other Gainax anime were influenced by Ideon as well. For me anyway, the Ideon still looks like the God of GMs and in a way, that seems fitting. Though, the Buff Clan ships and mecha are fascinatingly alien and actually juxtapose the Ideon quite nicely. However, the mecha designs definitely counter-balance this maturity with Yuichi Higuchi of Studio Submarine having penned the suitably chunky Ideon. The entirety of ‘Space Runaway Ideon’ is now available on Blu-ray. Kogawa’s styling gives a sense of maturity to the characters that definitely fits very well with the bleak tone of the series. Like with Tomino’s later series Aura Battler Dunbine, Ideon also utilized the wondrous talent of Tomonori Kogawa for the characters and who also ended up directing the animation for a large chunk of the series. This is what makes Ideon as an anime so fascinating and compelling, it really is unlike anything else before or since and it’s status amongst anime fans, at least in Japan, is somewhat legendary as a result. Showing that absolutely power corrupts absolutely and, in this instance, results in an enormous amount of death and suffering. In many ways, Ideon was the series that in part earned Tomino his “kill em all” nickname, as the body count is as excessive as the Ideon’s limitless power. Once the Ideon unleashes its potency, either with the terrifying Ideon Gun or the planet cutting Ideon Sword, you really begin to understand that this can only end in one truly tragic and brutal way, which it entirely does. The power of the Ide is behind this potency and what activates it is often mysterious. This is because it is hugely, in fact infinitely powerful. You see, the Ideon is not your typical mecha. With the humans constantly trying to flee the Buff Clan with the Ideon and their Solo Ship, the carnage that ensues claims the lives of many and a fair few planets along the way. From this point on, the conflict between the Buff Clan and the humans with Ideon escalates to a terrifying degree.

Space runaway ideon blu ray