Ideon: Be Invoked (yes, title is all in Roman)

Director: Tomino Yoshiyuki

Production: Sunrise

Run Time: 1 hr 38 min

Premiere: July 1982

Premise: The human refugees of Planet Solo have nowhere left in the universe to turn, the Buff Clan is determined to destroy the fearsome Ideon before it can be used against their home planet, and the giant robot itself is preparing to set into motion its final plan for the universe.

Why It's So Damn Important: This movie properly concludes Space Runaway Ideon where the original show suddenly left off. Ideon took all the ingredients of a run-of-the-mill mecha anime, and subverted them into a brooding story about militarism, prejudice, fear of "the enemy", and superweapons arms races. It arguably remains the darkest and most violent series Tomino has produced. And that's just the TV show. The movie is something else in its own right. It's unremitting and brutal, even without much actual blood. Some character deaths in particular are completely unexpected and rather shocking, especially given how old this film is. The mood is one of fatalistic suicide and futility, and the final message is that humanity, with all its petty hatreds and evils, has failed the universe and failed itself for the last time. There is redemption and reconciliation, but only after the end of everything.

The animation is certainly old, but actually pretty sharp and bright for its time, and the Sugiyama Kouichi symphonic soundtrack has some truly great moments.

This movie deserves a lot of credit for bringing anime out of the 70s with a vengeance. Bigger, deeper, darker, this was animation for a new kind of audience, one that in 1982 had never quite seen something like this put to cels before. It never became more than a "cult classic", but it left quite an impression on a sizeable number of people in the anime industry, influencing the tone and themes of shows that came afterwards. Anno Hideaki called Ideon one of the greatest influences on the creation of Evangelion, and one can see in Tomino Yoshiyuki's 1980s career something of a "kindred spirit."

Basically, this is one of the great masterpieces of older anime, but you have to be prepared for it.

Similar Shows:

Mobile Suit Gundam

Space Runaway Ideon

Aura Battler Dunbine

Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam

Gundam: Char's Counterattack

Mobile Suit Victory Gundam

Neon Genesis Evangelion