Super Robot Profiles: Dancouga(r)

Super Beast Machine God Dancouga(r), also known as Dancouga(r)-Super Beast Machine God and "God bless the Dancouga" (I kid you not), is basically a Voltron-type super robot series.



What I mean by this is that the series features a squad of similar vehicles which all combine into one huge ultimate weapon robot. (What distinguishes the "Voltron-type" series from a "Getter-type" series is that the individual Getter craft don't actually do much of anything; Voltron-type series often have fighting sequences involving the individual vehicles or ships. I know that Voltron was not the first series to do this, but it's a term that's simple for me to use and which most people will recognize.)



Unlike many of those, Dancouga(r) didn't actually combine until the sixteenth episode, nearly halfway through the series.

Beyond that, Dancouga(r) obviously paid much more attention to its individual components than most previous series, and in keeping with that, each of the component robots was actually in and of itself a triple changer-i.e., a transforming robot with three modes (in this case, a basic vehicle mode, an animal fighting mode, and a humanoid robot fighting mode). And like the Voltron Lions, each of the Dancouga(r) components was capable of defending itself and even taking the fight to the enemy pretty well. And in and of itself, Dancouga(r) had a much more sophisticated and complex design than Voltron, without losing much if any of the charm.

Also, Dancouga(r) was animated in the mid-'80s, which means its animation style is the kind I love-not too stylized and tons of shadow.

So pretty much, you could say that it's Voltron for people who like pretty things.

-Signing off.