Gear Fighter Dendoh
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| GEAR Fighter Dendoh | |
|---|---|
| GEAR戦士電童 (GEAR Senshi Dendoh) |
|
| Genre | Mecha, Science Fiction, Action, Drama |
| TV anime | |
| Directed by | Mitsuo Fukuda |
| Studio | Sunrise |
| Network |  TV Tokyo, RAI, RaiDue |
| Original run | October 4, 2000 – June 27, 2001 |
| No. of episodes | 38 |
Gear Fighter Dendoh (GEAR戦士電童 Gear Senshi Dendō?) is an anime series that aired in Japan. It ran for 38 episodes, from October 4, 2000 to June 27, 2001, on the TV Tokyo network and its affiliates.
Contents |
[edit] Overview
Gear Fighter Dendoh tells the story of two Japanese schoolboys -- short-tempered Ginga Izumo and level-headed Hokuto Kusanagi -- who meet one day in the midst of an attack on the Earth by Gulfer, a race of sentient machines determined to wipe out all life in the universe. The two are chosen by Dendoh, a machine built to battle Gulfer, to be its pilots during this attack. They also become members of the Guard Earth and Advanced Reconnaissance (GEAR) organization designated with the protection of Earth from the Gulfer advance. The two pilots find themselves in a race to obtain the powerful and animal-like Data Weapons before Gulfer can get their hands on them.
The show is directed and plotted by Mitsuo Fukuda and his wife, Chiaki Morosawa, the duo who went on to create Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and its sequel Mobile Suit Gundam SEED DESTINY. Notably, Morosawa was not sole head scriptwriter for Dendoh, instead sharing the duty with another female writer who went on to be the head writer for Toei's Kamen Rider Ryuuki.
[edit] Cast and Crew
[edit] Cast
- Altair the Black Knight - Kazuhiro Nakata
- Eris Williamette - Kyoko Tsuruno
- Hokuto Kusanagi - Naomi Shindou
- Ginga Izumo - Youko Matsuoka
- Gurumet, Keisuke Kusanagi, Meteor - Kazuya Ichijou
- Otome Izumo - Michiko Neya
- Shibuya - Tomomichi Nishimura
- Subaru - Kenichi Suzumura
- Susumu Kirakuni, Abzolute - Kenji Nojima
- Vega, Story Narrator, Orie Kusanagi - Kotono Mitsuishi
- Witter - Yasuhiro Takato
- Zero, Gulfer Emperor, Gen'ichi Izumo - Sho Hayami
[edit] Crew
- Director - Mitsuo Fukuda
- Scenario - Chiaki Morosawa
- Screenplay - Sukehiro Tomita (ep 1-2); Masaharu Amiya (ep 3, 7, 9, 25, 28); Hiroyuki Yoshino (ep 4, 8, 10, 14, 18, 19, 26, 30, 31, 37); Yasuko Kobayashi (ep 5, 6, 11, 16, 21, 27); Chiaki Morosawa (ep 12, 13, 23, 38); Shoji Tonoike (ep 15, 17, 22, 24, 29, 33); Tomoya Asano (ep 32, 35); Noboru Kimura (ep 34, 36)
- Character Designs - Hirokazu Hisayuki
- Music - Toshihiko Sahashi
[edit] Opening and Closing Themes
Opening:
- W-Infinity by Hitomi Mieno and Hironobu Kageyama
Closings:
- COUNT DOWN by Little Voice (ep 1-19, 22-38)
- Brand New Mermaid by C-DRiVE (ep 20 and 21)
Insert Song:
- Over the Rainbow by Little Voice
[edit] Trivia
- In one part of the series, GEAR outfits Dendoh with a variety of weapons that don't rely on its Hyper Battery system. Not coincidentally, all of them are inspired by weapons from other Sunrise giant robot anime -- The missile pod used by machines in Sentou Mecha Xabungle, Yuusha Reideen's Gogun bow, and others.
- The idea of battery-powered mecha and support vehicles was later revisited in Fukuda's next anime, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, where the mobile suits -- not counting Freedom, Justice, and Providence -- were powered by rechargeable batteries, and OMNI Enforcer developed a support plane for Strike Gundam, the Skygrasper, which had many stock animation sequences that resembled those of the Cell Fighter.
- In an homage to Dendoh, Fukuda later named the mobile suit used by Andrew Waltfeld in SEED after Ragou, a cerberus-like beast which appears in this series.
- In another homage to Dendoh, Fukuda used the surnames of Dendoh's main pilots as names for battleships in SEED (Ginga's surname Izumo became the name of a certain class of ship emplyed by the Orb Union, while Hokuto's surname of Kusanagi was the given name to a particular Izumo-class battleship that featured prominently in the series).
- Sara Gallagher, a minor character from Fukuda's earlier series, Cyber Formula, makes brief cameos as one of Eris's friends (though with a slightly redesigned look). A more mature-looking Sara later plays a more important role in Sunrise's Mai-Otome.
[edit] Video Game
Gear Fighter Dendoh has spawned one platform title for the Sony PlayStation. It was released in 2001.
Dendoh was also featured in the Super Robot Wars series of Japanese simulation games. It first appeared in 2002's Super Robot Wars R for the Nintendo Game Boy Advance and Super Robot Wars MX for the Sony PlayStation 2.
