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I've recently taken an intrest in the Genesis of Aquarion series, just by looking at the robots, really, which it how I get interested in a lot of anime series. This anime, not only the mecha but the story as well, was done by one of my favorite Japanese dudes, Shoji Kawamori. He is famous for his work in writing the Macross Series, including Macross Plus, Macross Zero, and Macross 7. He also wrote Escaflowne and as I said, Aquarion. He also did all of the mecha designs for those series, and others, such as Future GPX, Eureka Seven, the Armored Core series, Omega Boost, and served as an assistant mechanical designer for Patlabor: The Movie. He also did some other notable projects, such as the Transformers
THS 02 G1 Convoy and the
Masterpiece Starscream.
Anyhow, back to Aquarion, it's a science fiction series set in the future of Earth. Some great disaster happened that killed off most of the human race. It's okay, because they aren't needed for this show anyhow. Earth is being threatened by beings called Shadow Angels, and our only defense is the giant robot Aquarion, made up of three fighters called Vectors. They are pretty sweet robots. I got on
TFW 2005 and had some guys help me find some pictures of the Chogokin figure that Bandai came out with a few months back. Found some
Here and
Here. Apparently, in the show, there is also a second version of the Aquarion, which Bandai also made figures of. At first I thought it was just a repaint, then I looked into it and found that they were actually extensive remolds. Most of the workings of the figure is the same as the regular version, but much of the outer panels, including the heads and weaponry, is new. Pretty kickin', I say. There's also a couple galleries for this version too,
Here, and
Here. Anyhow, this stuff looks pretty worthwhile to look into. Apparently this series is one of the definitive super robot series, right up there with Evangelion and RahXephon.