Daicon Opening Animations

Daicon III Opening Animation
An unnamed girl watches as the Science Patrol lands their aircraft. A masked individual exits the ship and approaches the girl, entrusting her with a cup of water and a simple task: to water a radish. The girl enthusiastically accepts her mission but is obstructed by a multitude of foes. Faced with waves of unrelenting monsters, mechas, and starfighters, can the young heroine protect the cup of water and make it to the radish unharmed?

Daicon IV Opening Animation
Clad in a Playboy Bunny suit, an older version of the same girl takes on new and notable adversaries from around the galaxy. From dueling with lightsabers to surfing the magical sword Stormbringer, there is no shortage of action!

Set to Electric Light Orchestra's "Twilight," the Daicon IV Opening Animation is a grand tribute to science fiction culture, showcasing hundreds of familiar characters in one spectacular bout.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

DAICON Girl Main

Yamaga, Hiroyuki Director, Episode Director

Electric Light Orchestra Theme Song Performance

Anno, Hideaki Key Animation, Animation Director

Sadamoto, Yoshiyuki Key Animation

Reviews

Aug 6, 2024

CaptainSalty

Recommended

Simply incredible for the time. Holding up and surpassing things today with the sheer amount of talent, passion, and experimentation that makes Diacon III and IV a historical legend that jumpstarted Studio Gainax. All for a convention to get their names out, they blow everything out of the water with stellar visuals and a wonderful background track of Electric Light Orchestra's "Twilight" to create a visual masterpiece. Many shots would go on to change the anime industry forever and its so breathtaking to see all of these things in the span of a few minutes. Amazing work, another reason for Gainax's legendary status as the ... best (and my favorite) studio.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Dec 29, 2021

The_Cmoose

Recommended

This was a guerilla team of otaku's tribute to everything they geeked out over. Made with a fast and loose approach to copyright laws, and using Electric Light Orchestra's music without permission these opening animations are a hallmark of GAINAX's love of big cool nonsense.

Star Wars, Ultraman, Kamen Rider, other old sentai properties, bunny girls, booba, huge explosions animated by Hideaki Anno himself, these shorts have everything befitting a science fiction convention in the late 80's.

Massive copyright infringement, fair use in limbo, and made for free in their spare time these projects are an essential part of understanding Gainax and all of their ... subsequent works.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Aug 30, 2015

YoungVagabond

Mixed Feelings

I came across this anime in an unusual manner. Recently, I lost some files on my computer, including a number of music albums.

That included ELO's (Electric Light Orchestra) phenomenal 1981 concept album "Time", which I consider one of the finest of the decade. Luckily, there was a complete playlist on Youtube. Out of curiosity, I decided to check out the comments and noticed a number mentioning "Daicon IV". "The fuck is that?", I wondered.

Turns out that it was a series of specially made intro videos to several anime conventions during the 1980s (who knew they even existed ... back then?!), also notable for being the first output by Studio Gainax.

Essentially, it's a specially-made 80's AMV featuring a girl, small and innocent during Daicon III, and then an adult in a Playboy bunny costume in Daicon IV (who didn't see that coming?) having a number of fantastic adventures, including flying on a sword, throwing around giant mechas, and fighting an array of monsters and villains.

Watching it as a jaded 28 year-old in the year 2015, I still found it relatively fun and energetic. Of course, a lot of the credit for that goes to a song by ELO that I absolutely adore.

The animation is hit and miss. Some of it is interesting and unique, especially the more science fiction-inspired creatures. Other parts remind me of generic, cheap, and bland 80's fare, both in terms of detail and subject.

Overall, I liked the Daicon Opening Animations, and feel they served their purpose. However, neither are they anything special.

With such an amazing song, I can easily imagine Gainax creating something more interesting, particularly if they had pushed a stronger science fiction theme, and taken out some of the random, silly aspects of the video. (The Western superhero cameos, random anime characters making goofy faces, etc.)

Certainly, I have seen promotional anime music videos that were much better despite far inferior songs.

Nevertheless, this deserves credit for being one of the first.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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	Poll: Daicon Opening Animations Episode 2 Discussion Iri - Aug 24, 2008	32 replies	by NeandertalKnight »» Apr 18, 6:32 PM
	Why haven't you seen this masterpiece yet? Say-My-Name - Aug 13, 2022	4 replies	by PossumCore »» Aug 14, 2022 1:14 AM
	Poll: Daicon Opening Animations Episode 1 Discussion RafaelDeJongh - Mar 13, 2013	12 replies	by Kristiwazhere »» May 13, 2020 6:51 PM
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