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Anyone ever seen this series? I only recently learned of it. It's a short-lived giant mecha anime series that ran for 26 episodes in 1981. I hadn't seen it before, but I had learned about a 1985 adaptation by Saban Entertainment called Macron 1. They combined the series with another, unrelated series and rewrote the storyline to involve some convoluted alternate universe crap. Another Macron 1 dub (by the same cast) was done for Europe, using only the GoShogun footage. I had gotten a Macron 1 VHS tape at Dollar Tree in the mid-1990s, so I was somewhat familiar with the property through that.
The series is fairly standard and unremarkable. The story is set in the early 21st century (2001, to be exact), in which a covert evil organization, Dokuga, led by lord NeoNeros, holds near total political, economic, and military control of the world. Dokuga agents try to forcibly recruit a brilliant physicist, Professor Sanada, who sets off a suicide bomb rather than let Dokuga acquire his secret research. His son Kenta becomes Dokuga's next target, but is saved by his father’s colleague and taken on board a teleporting fortress, Good Thunder. Teleportation is enabled by a mysterious form of energy, called Beamler, which was discovered by Sanada. The same energy also powers a giant battle robot, GoShogun, which is operated by three pilots. The crew of Good Thunder travels the world, repeatedly fighting off NeoNeros's forces with GoShogun and often hampering Dokuga's influence on the local level, whether by destroying their bases and businesses, assisting popular rebellions, or by averting environmental disasters. On at least one occasion GoShogun pilots must team up with Dokuga's three chief officers against a common enemy to prevent the destruction of them all. This sets the stage for an eleventh-hour reversal, in which the three Dokuga generals side definitively against NeoNeros with the GoShogun team.
After the series ended, there was a compilation movie consisting of two episodes released on April 24, 1982.
Three years later, a movie, The Time Etranger, was released on April 27, 1985. It serves as a coda to the series and focuses almost exclusively on former pilot Remy Shimada, retroactively making her the most important character in the series, even though the TV series didn't give her any more attention than any of the other characters. This movie is the only part of the franchise to receive an English dub. It was dubbed twice, in fact: in 1996 and again in 2003. The entire series and The Time Etranger are available (separately) on Blu-ray in North America.
I streamed The Time Etranger earlier this month, having not seen the original series, but it stands well enough on its own, and you become emotionally invested in the characters, even if you haven't seen the series. I was actually moved to tears by it. It's a very surrealistic film that deals with Remy (and the others) confronted with the possibility of her death. Forty years after the TV series, she gets in a car accident while on her way to a reunion with her fellow former pilots. While on life support, she dreams of two prior moments in her life when she was confronted with her own mortality: once as a child and another time as an adult, seemingly sometime after the events of the series. Since this is all in her mind, we don't know if any of the flashbacks depicted in the film actually ever happened or if she made them up. Even the ending is ambiguous. We don't know if she lives or dies (most fans seem to believe she dies). It's a brutally dramatic film with almost no humor. There is some gore, and there's a brief moment where Remy is topless, but it's not sexy at all; the scene is actually quite disturbing.
So, after watching the movie, I discovered the entire series is on YouTube, so I've started watching it to get some backstory. I've seen the first 9 episodes so far, so I'm a little over a third of the way through the series. While it does have some serious moments, it leans a lot toward humor. It actually pokes fun at some of the giant mecha tropes. Kenta, the kid, is given a large amount of screen time, which I really could have done without. Having already seen The Time Etranger, I'm viewing the series through that lense and paying attention mostly to Remy. She hasn't had much development so far. She seems a bit contradictory, saying the 21st century belongs to women but also wanting to hurry up and get this over with, so she can get married (spoiler: she never does). Neither Kenta nor their boss, Captain Sabarath, appear in The Time Etranger. Only the 3 GoShogun pilots and the 3 Dokuga chief officers do, rendering all of the other characters kinda pointless in the end, despite being huge parts of the series. Honestly, there's a huge disconnect between the TV series and The Time Etranger. They almost seem like two completely separate entities. So far, it seems all of Remy's character development occurred in the movie.
I highly recommend watching The Time Etranger. The series, eh, take it or leave it; it's thoroughly average.
Some videos:
GoShogun opening:
Full opening theme:
GoShogun ending:
Macron 1 U.S. opening:
Macron 1 European opening:
Macron 1 opening theme (no SFX):
Macron 1 had a habit of inserting covers of pop songs into scenes:
The series is fairly standard and unremarkable. The story is set in the early 21st century (2001, to be exact), in which a covert evil organization, Dokuga, led by lord NeoNeros, holds near total political, economic, and military control of the world. Dokuga agents try to forcibly recruit a brilliant physicist, Professor Sanada, who sets off a suicide bomb rather than let Dokuga acquire his secret research. His son Kenta becomes Dokuga's next target, but is saved by his father’s colleague and taken on board a teleporting fortress, Good Thunder. Teleportation is enabled by a mysterious form of energy, called Beamler, which was discovered by Sanada. The same energy also powers a giant battle robot, GoShogun, which is operated by three pilots. The crew of Good Thunder travels the world, repeatedly fighting off NeoNeros's forces with GoShogun and often hampering Dokuga's influence on the local level, whether by destroying their bases and businesses, assisting popular rebellions, or by averting environmental disasters. On at least one occasion GoShogun pilots must team up with Dokuga's three chief officers against a common enemy to prevent the destruction of them all. This sets the stage for an eleventh-hour reversal, in which the three Dokuga generals side definitively against NeoNeros with the GoShogun team.
After the series ended, there was a compilation movie consisting of two episodes released on April 24, 1982.
Three years later, a movie, The Time Etranger, was released on April 27, 1985. It serves as a coda to the series and focuses almost exclusively on former pilot Remy Shimada, retroactively making her the most important character in the series, even though the TV series didn't give her any more attention than any of the other characters. This movie is the only part of the franchise to receive an English dub. It was dubbed twice, in fact: in 1996 and again in 2003. The entire series and The Time Etranger are available (separately) on Blu-ray in North America.
I streamed The Time Etranger earlier this month, having not seen the original series, but it stands well enough on its own, and you become emotionally invested in the characters, even if you haven't seen the series. I was actually moved to tears by it. It's a very surrealistic film that deals with Remy (and the others) confronted with the possibility of her death. Forty years after the TV series, she gets in a car accident while on her way to a reunion with her fellow former pilots. While on life support, she dreams of two prior moments in her life when she was confronted with her own mortality: once as a child and another time as an adult, seemingly sometime after the events of the series. Since this is all in her mind, we don't know if any of the flashbacks depicted in the film actually ever happened or if she made them up. Even the ending is ambiguous. We don't know if she lives or dies (most fans seem to believe she dies). It's a brutally dramatic film with almost no humor. There is some gore, and there's a brief moment where Remy is topless, but it's not sexy at all; the scene is actually quite disturbing.
So, after watching the movie, I discovered the entire series is on YouTube, so I've started watching it to get some backstory. I've seen the first 9 episodes so far, so I'm a little over a third of the way through the series. While it does have some serious moments, it leans a lot toward humor. It actually pokes fun at some of the giant mecha tropes. Kenta, the kid, is given a large amount of screen time, which I really could have done without. Having already seen The Time Etranger, I'm viewing the series through that lense and paying attention mostly to Remy. She hasn't had much development so far. She seems a bit contradictory, saying the 21st century belongs to women but also wanting to hurry up and get this over with, so she can get married (spoiler: she never does). Neither Kenta nor their boss, Captain Sabarath, appear in The Time Etranger. Only the 3 GoShogun pilots and the 3 Dokuga chief officers do, rendering all of the other characters kinda pointless in the end, despite being huge parts of the series. Honestly, there's a huge disconnect between the TV series and The Time Etranger. They almost seem like two completely separate entities. So far, it seems all of Remy's character development occurred in the movie.
I highly recommend watching The Time Etranger. The series, eh, take it or leave it; it's thoroughly average.
Some videos:
GoShogun opening:
Full opening theme:
GoShogun ending:
Macron 1 U.S. opening:
Macron 1 European opening:
Macron 1 opening theme (no SFX):
Macron 1 had a habit of inserting covers of pop songs into scenes: