Kikou Senki Dragonar

With the success of Mobile Suit Gundam, Zeta Gundam and to some extent, ZZ Gundam, Sunrise decided to create a new mecha series since they felt that Gundam was getting too old and thus created Dragonar, a potential sucessor to Gundam and a reintroduction of mecha anime to potential new fans. Even though it was a fairly popular when it aired in 1987, it is a fairly obscure mecha anime that only few fans will hear about and is main reason why no proper subs exist for it.

Being a "remake" of Gundam 0079, the plot bears a lot of similarities to it. Dragonar ... takes place in 2087 where Earth is engaged in a war with the Giganos Empire who seeks to dominate the planet and establish a "rebirth" of mankind. Three teenagers stumble upon three prototype mecha called the Dragonars and are thus forced into the conflict. Due to the fact that Dragonar was also made right after ZZ Gundam, it is less serious than the show it was based off on and has a more comedic and lighthearted tone similar to ZZ. The characters in Dragonar also share many similarities with their 0079 counterparts with Kaine being a goofier version of Amuro Ray, Rose Pattenton being a direct reference to Fraw Bow, Linda Plato a homage to Sayla Mass and Meio Plato resembling Char Aznable completely (with the only difference being that his signature color as an ace is blue, not red).

Even with these similarities to Gundam, Dragonar still manages to be a rather entertaining (if not a bit generic) mecha anime. Its starts up fairly similar and ends fairly similar to 0079, but the main difference between the two series is that Dragonar's main focus is not the mecha battles (even though there are a ton), but rather the romance that develops between Kaine and Linda, along with how Kaine and his two friends, Light and Tap becoming increasingly more important to the Earth Federation. The story picks up and becomes more engaging once the cast leaves space and enters Earth, but the introduction of Gon Jem and his lackeys around the mid way mark of the show results to a somewhat weaker second half. Gon Jem's resemblance to a goat man on steroids,who is supposed to be a feared commander, is simply hard to take seriously as a antagonist. His subordinates with the exception of Min and Zin are also incredibly annoying, but thankfully most of them are gone by the finale. This arc is also one of the silliest, with examples such as Kaine seeking out a one armed martial artist in China in order to learn a technique that can help him beat Gon Jem. Thankfully the last arc of the show is able to turn things around and ends with a satisfying (if not slightly rushed ending), but you will feel that it could have been handled a bit better.

If you're a fan of mecha, Dragonar is worth checking out even though it might not be as good as the anime it was "based" off one. Sadly as mentioned before, there are no completed fansubs for this show and it is thus only viewable with completed HK subs that are often very off in its translation and or in Chinese fansubs. But if you can look over this subtitling issue due to its obscurity, Dragonar is an anime that is worth your time.

I wanted to give it average results, I love the Gundam series but felt this series tried to copy too much of that formula to make it a success. However there were some original ideas in it that it could stand on it's own, however it's pretty much unheard of in the west. It would now be called dated even though it's animation was pretty much the standard for the time it was made, however being made after the success of Gundam took off it benefits from a better animation than the original Gundam. So it would be more fair to compare it to such ... series as Zeta Gundam and Fang of the Sun Dougram.

Extremely plain 80s mech anime that struggles to justify its episode length. It starts off as pretty good "sister-series" to Gundam ZZ, light hearted and enjoyable. But commits the cardinal sin of "being boring", as it starts to ignore the group dynamic of the main trio and focus either Kaine, or later in the show, a goofy Mad Max inspired enemy squad. This part was especially disheartening, as they had already introduced interesting foils in the dutybound Char Aznable-clone Meio Plato and his group of loyal subordinates. These characters, as well as ongoings of the evil Giganos Empire, too is sidelined to make way ... for the meaningless shenanigans with this squad.

The show from the beginning had a lot of Gundam ideas copied over, but in the last couple episodes hits the viewer over the head with a lot of Zeon imagery while tension is low since the narration in plain terms tells the viewer that things are going well. Oh yeah, and the suit designs are overall middling. Hard to recommend unless you just really like robots.