| Title/Name |
Gaiking/El
Gladiador |
| Country of Origin |
Japan |
| Language |
Japanese/English/Spanish/others?? |
| Style |
Action/Sci-fi/Super
Robots |
| Line-up |
Sanshiro
Suwabaki - Gaiking's Pilot
Dr. Daimoni - creator of the Space Dragon
Sakon - Head engineer
Pete Richardson - Space Dragon's captain/pilot.
Fan Li - Skylar's pilot.
Midori - Space Dragon's communication officer.
Black Darius - Supreme head of the planet Zela. |
| Lable |
Toei
Animation / Yamato Video / Doro Tv Merchandising |
| Releases |
44 Episodes.
[April/1/ 1976-January/27/1977] |
| Credits |
Series
structure Masao Maruyama
Kunio Nakaya (story)
Original Idea Akio Sugino (characters)
Dan Kobayashi (mecha)
Susumu Takahisa
Script Shozo Uehara
Shoji Yoshikawa
Masaru Yamamoto
Takeshi Shirato
Moriyasu Taniguchi
Animation direction Akio Sugino
Yoshinori Kanada
Takuo Noda
Masamune Ochiai
Background music Fumihiro Uchikawa
Background music Shunsuke Kikuchi
Animation Toei Animation Co., Ltd
Information gathered from Yamato's videocassettes |
| Description |
Aliens from Planet
Zela (threatened by a black hole)
send invation forces to Earth, under the command
of Black Darius and his
generals, The Great Fours (Black
Darius was a robot made by the planets'
inhabitants to lead them to safety but Darius in
turn enslaved his builders and created "The
Great Four" to conquer Earth). Earth's only
hope is a super-robot named Gaiking,
piloted by an injured ex-baseball star named Sanshiro
Suwabaki. They're aided by
the Great Space Dragon
(a gargantuan fortress shaped like the mythic
beast) and his crew, leaded by Dr.
Daimoni (creator of Space Dragon). |
| Comments |
This show
was aired in Puerto Rico as "El
Gladiador", in an all-robots
show named "Festival de los
Robots", featuring Steel Jeeg, Starzinger
and Ga-Ken, replacing
Steel Jeeg. Pretty much the same as "Force
Five", with the difference
that the show was aired sat. mornings in a 90
minutes show. The animation is dated (1970's) but
is fairy good and so is the story. Of all the
robots featured in "Festival..", this
and Steel Jeeg are my favorites. Curious thing is
that both, along with Mazinger Z are Go Nagai's creations. By the way, Go
Nagai sued Toei Doga
and stop collaborating with them because the last
one didn't credited him as author (original idea)
of Gaiking :-(. |
| Links |
The
Super Robot Page
Gaiking's
page |
