Densetsu Kyojin Ideon

Mankind has traveled to the stars and come across various alien civilizations, now long dead. Upon discovering the archaeological remains of such a civilization on the planet Solo, humanity finally has its first encounter with a living alien species: the Buff Clan. When Karala Ajiba, the daughter of the Buff Clan's military leader, sets foot on the surface of Solo, the Buff Clan launches a brutal assault on the colony to retrieve her.

In order to escape, Cosmo Yuki, Kasha Imhof, and Bes Jordan climb aboard three trucks, which soon transform into the giant humanoid robot Ideon. When the settlement on Solo is destroyed, the survivors board a recently discovered spaceship—the Solo Ship—and flee, endeavoring to get away from the aliens and finally find peace. The relentless Buff Clan, however, is still in hot pursuit and will not give up so easily.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Jordan, Bes Main

Tanaka, Hideyuki Japanese

Yuuki, Cosmo Main

Shioya, Yoku Japanese

Ajiba, Karala Main

Toda, Keiko Japanese

Imhof, Kasha Main

Shiraishi, Fuyumi Japanese

Formossa, Sheryl Main

Inoue, You Japanese

Zaral, Gije Supporting

Hayashi, Kazuo Japanese

Piper, Lou Supporting

Inoue, You Japanese

Fatomu, Moera Supporting

Sasaki, Hideki Japanese

Narrator Supporting

Shiozawa, Kaneto Japanese

Afta, Deck Supporting

Matsuda, Tatsuya Japanese

Tomino, Yoshiyuki Director, Storyboard, Theme Song Lyrics

Urakami, Yasuo Sound Director

Takizawa, Toshifumi Episode Director

Ishizaki, Susumu Episode Director

Reviews

Sep 2, 2024

McGamez

Recommended

Space Runaway Ideon appears like a standard mecha show, yet underneath it's surface, it shows a bleak perspective on the fate of mankind. In pursuit of power, justice, and survival, the main cast of characters see many conflicts and losses in the span of 39 episodes. Now, how well does the 50+ years old anime hold up today?

Story: 8
Tomino managed to balance the philosophical ideas he presented with enough action and character focused scenes to help create a somewhat realistic vibe to a show about a very fictional, godlike robot. As a result, the show feels applicable in its views on society ... despite its age.

Some parts of the show did feel redundant and the first 15-20 episodes do get quite repetitive in their 'battle of the week' feel.

Visuals: 4
The visuals are quite dated and are very clearly from the early 80s. Many shots and scenes are reused (similar to Mobile Suit Gundam), and at times the mechs and ships are animated poorly during battles scenes.

However, not all of the visuals are bad, and I found that a lot of the designs of the characters and objects were well done.

Characters: 6
Most of the characters start off as incredibly unlikeable, with many flaws in each and every one of them. By the end though, several characters do develop, but it did feel undeserved at times.

Also, some characters reflect the beliefs and norms of society in 1980, including the questionable ones.

Entertainment: 10
Ideon entertained me, even with the first act of the show. Seeing the Solo Ship be on the run with nonstop attacks was intriguing and left me wanting to stay all the way till the conclusion to see their fate as well as an answer behind the Ideon.

Aftertaste: 5
The ending left a lot to be desired, due to the show's production being cut. It clearly wasn't intended to end the way it did. Thankfully, the second movie does provide for the abrupt end of the show.

Sound: +1 (Bonus)
The music is immaculate in Ideon. The OP and ED are great, but the show's background music was especially amazing.

Overall: 6.8/10
Ideon is an aged, yet still entertaining anime about how destructive mankind can be to itself and others. It's worth a watch if you don't mind its age.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Jul 19, 2018

ggultra2764

Mixed Feelings

Following his work on the famous Mobile Suit Gundam, director Yoshiyuki Tomino moved on to direct what is yet another one of his famous works in the mecha genre with Ideon, an entry in the super robot genre focused on humanity's clash with the alien Buff Clan by utilizing the titular mecha of the series.

Personally for me, Ideon felt like a step down with what Gundam contributed in being one of the grandfathers of the "real robot" anime genre, though has some glimmers of potential. Whereas Gundam took the time to explore its world and offered enough fleshing out of both the Federation and Zeon ... factions to show both had their morally grey areas, the same can't really be said for Ideon to a good extent. While a number of the human characters do get some fleshing out like Cosmo and Bes, nearly all members of the Buff Clan remain as two-dimensional characters in conflict with the human crew of the Ideon. Also, the series mostly focuses on the Ideon crew's conflict with the Buff Clan, with the latter continually spawning "mecha of the day" plots to attempt getting the Ideon in their possession and killing its human crew. Not helping matters is that it does take the series nearly a dozen episodes to start picking up steam with offering up some story development.

And said story development does gradually start to deliver if you can survive past Ideon's earlier episodes. Later episodes of the series offer some interesting twists in the anime's story as the Ideon's crew start to learn more about the mecha's mysterious origins and question the very force that empowers it. Some solid character development is offered with the character of Karala, a Buff Clan member who defects from her race to join the human Ideon crew and develops a relationship with Bes. Also, the anime tosses in some twists to the "robot of the day" formula for later episodes when the Ideon crew also have to evade apprehension from human military forces who want to claim Ideon's power for themselves or assume the crew is in league with the Buff Clan. Still, this doesn't stop the formulaic plot setup and largely shallow members of the Buff Clan from rearing their heads throughout Ideon's run and the anime is also left abruptly unresolved during a major point in the anime's plot thanks to the series abruptly being cancelled during the time it aired. However, this issue would be resolved a year later with the release of Ideon's film sequel, Be Invoked.

Visually, Ideon hasn't aged all that well. The character designs are a product of their time with the seemingly disco vibe that many characters sport with their appearance like Cosmo's afro and the Buff Clan's clothing looking like anything you may seen worn in retro sci-fi titles like The Jetsons and Flash Gordon. The animation quality can vary from looking terrible to decent during battle scenes, which are mostly not too spectacular to see for their choreography due to how slow and played out they are.

Overall, I suppose my reception to Ideon is mixed. While touches of Tomino's story direction are on display in later episodes to make the series somewhat engaging, its flaws still stick out like a sore thumb compared to other mecha titles of the time period he directed like Gundam and Aura Battle Dunbine. Still as I hear Be Invoked is what is Ideon's most memorable use of Tomino's "Kill Em All" moniker, I suppose I'll be continuing my viewing of Ideon by checking out the film.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jun 21, 2023

sirap

Not Recommended

The first few episodes of this anime were interesting and showed great promise with interesting ideas being introduced. I felt excited to find out what was going to happen next. Unfortunately, after only a few episodes the anime stopped being interesting because instead of building on the ideas that were introduced at the beginning of the show it became boring and the plot started to barely move forward at all and nothing interesting happened. It became repetitive and each episode was basically just about that single episode on its own without contributing almost anything to the overall plot.

So it became a repetitive anime where each ... episode felt just like the one before it and almost nothing interesting happened. I was about to stop watching this anime but then I read some reviews that said that it gets better after episode 20 so I kept on watching. After around episode 20 some new things were introduced, however, it did not stop being repetitive. The new ideas that were introduced were barely explored and the show just kept on being repetitive and every episode still felt very boring.

The ending was rushed and did not really explain anything. They later made a movie to fix the ending and although the ending in the movie was better, it was not even that good.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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	Poll: Space Runaway Ideon Episode 38 Discussion Beatnik - Aug 30, 2009	16 replies	by Neemesis_2 »» Oct 31, 8:55 AM
	Poll: Space Runaway Ideon Episode 37 Discussion Beatnik - Aug 30, 2009	11 replies	by Neemesis_2 »» Oct 31, 8:01 AM
	Poll: Densetsu Kyojin Ideon Episode 36 Discussion Hannah_Ana - Mar 7, 2014	9 replies	by Neemesis_2 »» Oct 31, 7:29 AM
	Poll: Densetsu Kyojin Ideon Episode 35 Discussion Hannah_Ana - Mar 6, 2014	5 replies	by Neemesis_2 »» Oct 30, 9:22 AM
	Poll: Densetsu Kyojin Ideon Episode 34 Discussion Hannah_Ana - Mar 6, 2014	7 replies	by Neemesis_2 »» Oct 30, 8:48 AM