Space Runaway Ideon

A merry robot action anime about protecting the peace of the world and your neighborhood. —Yoshiyuki Tomino explains the show to his sponsors, Gundam Sousei.

Space Runaway Ideon (aka Densetsu Kyojin Ideon, Legendary Giant God Ideon) was the project that Yoshiyuki Tomino worked on directly after Mobile Suit Gundam, airing on Japanese TV in 1980-1981. As with its sister series it had its run cut short, it was planned for 43 episodes but, due to dropping ratings and poor merchandise sales, got pulled after 39 (unlike most of Tomino's other work at the time, it aired on TV Tokyo, or Tokyo 12 Channel as it was then known, rather than TV Asahi). The TV series was re-edited into a 90-minute movie, A Contact, in 1982, followed by a second movie, Be Invoked, which is essentially the last four unmade TV episodes. Due to its angsty and bizarre ending, it is often cited as close inspiration for Neon Genesis Evangelion. Heck, it's probably best known today as the absolute heavyweight champion of the Kill'Em All trope. (Although Tomino has claimed that was the sponsors' idea.)

So, for those of you who seek a comprehensive plot summary of the series, here is one. A group of Terran colonists on a remote planet find a Cool Starship and three bulky starfighters that combine into a Super Robot. The ship and the robot contain the so-called Ide, a source of infinite energy, which a militaristic alien-but-actually-human civilization of Buff Clan is after. This results in a rather monotonous Strategy Of The Week as Buff Clan (unsuccessfully) employs increasingly more devastating technologies and renowned military commanders to bring down the Solo ship and get their hands on Ideon. Along the way, many folks die and the Solo ship screws up their relationships with other Terran colonies and the Earth itself, all of whom now want Ide for themselves. Towards the end of the series, every known army in the universe gangs up against the Solo crew. It also becomes apparent that Ideon has a will of its own and that it is displeased with the humans' wars and infighting. Enough so to completely wipe all of them out. That's where the series abruptly cuts. In The Movie, Buff Clan stages the final assault on the Solo ship and Ideon, this time with a planet-destroying Wave Motion Gun. And succeeds. Ideon explodes and destroys what's left of Buff Clan army, since even before that, it generates a swarm of meteors that wreck Earth and Buff Clan homeplanet (destruction of other Terran colonies is Handwaved), so all sentient beings on both planets are destroyed. Cue the Mind Screwing scene with the characters' spirits being somehow reborn on a higher plane of existence.

Compared to its immediate spiritual predecessor, Mobile Suit Gundam, Ideon is a step back from Real Robot to Super Robot (the trend was discontinued with Zeta Gundam in the 80s) and as a result, features rather formulaic combat engagements. These usually follow the pattern of Buff Clan (later, Earth, too) presenting their newest strategy/technology/commander, engaging Ideon (which may or may not be in combined form at the time), and getting their asses handed to them in every single episode. The grand scale of the battles commonly seen in various Gundams is unattainable with a single robot and a Cool Starship, so don't look for it here. Another notable feature is the shameless Plot Armor of major antagonists, as it is not uncommon to see them escape with ease while Ideon takes out their Redshirt Army. To be fair, however, the show isn't that bad, just a little monotonous and difficult to sit through. Be Invoked, on the other hand, is a must for every anime fan out there. Otherwise, you miss out big time on how Kill'Em All was done back in the days...

Yoshiyuki Tomino apparently wants to make a remake of it. Complete with the death scenes.

Likely due to its themes, the series was the epitome of No Export for You for years, finally broken when Maiden Japan released all 39 TV episodes and two movies on Blu-Ray in the U.S. in 2019 - almost 40 years after it originally aired.

Tropes used in Space Runaway Ideon include:

• Action Girlfriend: Kasha.
• Alliterative Name: Kitty Kitten.
• Afro Asskicker: Cosmo Yuki.
• All There Is to Know About "The Crying Game": There are plenty that have heard about it's Kill'Em All ending despite knowing nothing else about it.
• Apocalypse How
• Ascended Fanboy: Gije. Becoming, obsessed with the Ideon, he defects to the Solo Ship so that he can witness 'a manifestation of the Ide'. He ends up becoming one of its pilots.
• Blood-Splattered Innocents: So... so... many... *sob*.
• Boldly Coming
• Break the Haughty: Sheryl.
• Cain and Abel: Karala is the Abel and Harulu is the Cain.
• Capulet Counterpart: Karala and Bes.
• Combining Mecha
• Compressed Hair: How on Earth Planet Solo does Cosmo manage to make his Funny Afro fit inside his helmet?
• Cool Ship
• Cosmic Horror Story: One interpretation of the Ide is that it had decided to wipe out all life in the Universe at the start. Therefore it was deliberately manipulating the emotions of the crew of the Solo Ship to the point they hit the Despair Event Horizon during the movie.
• Cosmic Plaything: The crew of the Solo Ship feel this is what they are in the hands of the Ide.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: "Cantata Orbis", the closing music from Be Invoked.
• Creator Cameo: Mr. Tomino is briefly seen as a crew member of the Solo Ship in Be Invoked. This most likely means even Tomino won't escape death in a Tomino Kill'Em All story.
• Culture Clash: When Terrans meet the Buff Clan, they raise a white flag of truce. Unfortunately, in the symbolism of the Buff Clan, the white flag means "we're gonna fight to the death."
  • Goes right into Fridge Logic territory when you realize that almost all Buff Clan characters (the only exception being members of Daram Zuba's private military) wear white clothes and spacesuits. This might be understandable for the army, but the Buff Clan group that started it all is explicitly stated to be an archeological expedition.
• Cunning Linguist: Sheryl is a linguistic scholar.
• Dead Little Sister: Sheryl's younger sister, Lin
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Sheryl, again. Brutally prevented by Gije dying first.
• Despair Event Horizon: Sheryl finds herself past it after all the crap already mentioned.
• Downer Ending: It gets better... I think.
  • If you believe a certain one-shot manga penned by Tomino, implying that the Universal Century of Gundam is the Universe that replaced Ideon's, and that Judau, hero of Gundam ZZ, is actually Cosmo reincarnated, then yes, things get a lot better.
    • The fact that the world of UC Gundam, which is torn apart by horrendously distructive giant robot wars every couple of years could reasonably be said to be a significant improvement really says something about Ideon...
    • And yet it's true. Even the crapsackiest parts of the UC timeline were petty disputes compared to the Crapsack World that was Ideon.
    • It got better in Super Robot Wars Alpha 3 too if you made the right choice in the later stages. Picking the other option though put you on one hell of a downer end, even more so when you realize that they drew EVERY single STMC(Gunbuster) to their location after they blew up Buster Machine 3. Good guys were screwed no matter what they did even if Ideon didn't explode.
• Earthshattering Kaboom: Frequently.
• Empathic Weapon: The Ideon itself, sorta.
• The End of the World as We Know It
• Failure Knight: Cosmo's guilt upon not being able to keep Kitty Kitten alive. In Be Invoked, when their souls are reunited, he apologizes to her, but she smiles and tells him to ease up
• Fatal Family Hologram
• Faster-Than-Light Travel: DS drive.
• First Church of Mecha: This mech is the wrathful kind of god.
• Foreshadowing: In the opening theme we are outright told that the titular mecha's power can rip apart the galaxy.
• Funny Afro: Subverted: Cosmo has a HUGE afro, but in-story, no one thinks anything of it. The fandom, on the other hand...
• Gone Horribly Right: The Buff Clan's last ditch effort to destroy Ideon does succeed.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: The Ideon is rather fond of hand-to-hand combat, either by choice or when the Ideon Gauge 'is low'.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Bes and Karala's child.
• Happy Ending: Yes, everyone's dead, but ...there's an afterlife! And the children are singing! And dead lovers are re-united! And everyone finally learns to shed hatred and violence and exist together! It's actually very uplifting (the biggest clue of of all is in the triumphant closing music).
• Hey, It's That Voice!: A lot of the Mobile Suit Gundam cast appear in Ideon. See the Names to Know In Anime entry below.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Mechas called the Dogg Mack and 'Take off every Zigg Mack'.
• Hime Cut: Karala.
• Hot-Blooded Action Girl: Kasha, more so than the other Ideon pilots.
• Hyperspace Is a Scary Place
• Incredibly Obvious Bug
• Infant Immortality: Nastily subverted in the movie All of the kids die, some very gruesomely.
• Interspecies Romance: Repeatedly.
• Kill'Em All: By the man himself.
  • Also Real Life Writes the Plot: Many characters were killed off because the production team wanted to reduce costs by not having to pay the voice actors. Even the narrator wasn't spared - he gets killed in mid-sentence.
  • Tomino has said it was the show's sponsors, and not he, who insisted on this, but added that he was proud of coming up with the aforementioned Happy Ending to soften the blow somewhat.
• A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far Far Away
• Last Stand: Of the Solo Ship crew in Be Invoked.
• Latex Space Suit
• Lost Technology
• Love Hurts: Kitty Kitten, as a consequence of the Cartwright Curse.
• Macross Missile Massacre: The Ideon's chief weapon, and decidedly the Ur Example.
• Memetic Mutation: Ideon destroyed the universe!
  • Which is kinda sad because it only destroyed the solar system it was in/that part of the galaxy it was in.
  • Hey, look at the monitor to your left. *Stares at troper*
  • Frequently, Doba's manly-tears-closeup near the end of Be Invoked is a standard imageboard reply to something awe-inspiring.
• Mind Screw: The ending of the movie.
• Names to Know In Anime: Yoku Shioya (Cosmo), Hideyuki Tanaka (Bes), Keiko Toda (Karala), You Inoue (Sheryl), Rumiko Ukai (Kitty - same voice actress as Fraw Bow), Fuyumi Shiraishi (Kasha - same voice actress as Mirai Yashima), Banjo Ginga (Damdo)
  • On the animation production side, besides Tomino himself, some episodes were scripted by Sukehiro Tomita, who would later write for Sailor Moon.
• Off with His Head: How Kitty and later Ashura die in Be Invoked.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: In the very end of the second movie.
• Pieta Plagiarism: In Be Invoked, Daram's soul carries Harulu's around like this.
• Plot Armor: Only up until the ending.
• Pretty Little Headshots: Cruelly subverted with Karala who takes three bullets in the face from her sister Harulu; however, we don't see the results.
  • Also averted - again, in a memorably nasty way - in Be Invoked. One of the Solo Ship's orphan-mascot-type kids is killed brutally via a bazooka shot that just... obliterates the poor little girl's head in an instant. No time for blood or splatter - just *boom* .
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: The Buff Clan don't allow us to forget that they are samurai.
• Readings Are Off the Scale: At one point, the crew uses the most advanced computer humanity has ever created in order to analyze the Ide. It'd be safe to say that infinity would be considered WAY off the scale.))
• Revenge (Lotta tries to shoot Karala once because of this.
• Rivals Team Up: Gije, of all people, becomes the second best pilot of Ideon. Too bad he doesn't live long...
• Roboteching
• R-Rated Opening: Be Invoked opens with the severed head of the main character's love interest flying through the air after a brutal attack. Hope you enjoyed your popcorn.
• Screwed by the Network: While the TV series was never a smash hit, its ratings really tanked after TV Tokyo decided to move it into prime time. That, combined with poor toy sales, sealed its fate regarding early cancelation. With the shift toward Kill 'Em All happening concurrently with this, it's almost like they were trying to kill the show on purpose.
• Shout-Out: Several of Buff Clan's mecha are modeled after the Martians' tripod from War of the Worlds.
  • The Cameo: Plenty of Gundam references too: Haro shows up multiple times, and even Amuro Ray himself cameos in one episode.
• Spiritual Successor: Many people say that this show is the "spiritual predecessor" to Neon Genesis Evangelion. It uses many of the same themes and even has a kill-'em-all ending like Evangelion.
• Stern Chase
• Super Robot Wars: Appears in FF and Alpha 3. Should the player not fulfill certain requirements, Ideon's ending can kick into the story for Alpha 3, resulting in a Downer Ending.
• Team Dad: Bes.
• Team Mom: Kitty Kitten was this for the orphans she gave a home to. Lin and Karala are also this, to a degree.
• Took a Level In Badass: Gije, after he got Put on a Bus, tasked with studying Ide, and came back only to be abandoned by his new superiors.
• Transforming Mecha
• Translation Convention: The Buff Clan aren't actually speaking a human language, but it's hard to notice since there's only one line of dialog in the first episode with Karala turning on some kind of translator in her ear and affects her vocal chords.
• Tripod Terror: Some of the more...conventional Buff Clan mecha designs.
• True Love's Kiss: In Be Invoked, Kitty's soul awakens Cosmo's from a Convenient Coma like this after the Kill'Em All last battle.
• Tsundere: Kasha Imhof.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: Sheryl.
• Troubled Child: Fard. Like most of the other kids, he lost his parents when the Buff Clan attacked the colony on Solo. Spends most of his time, moping, cries easily, is an Extreme Doormat and carries a rag doll with him for most of the series.
• Unfortunate Names: At one point, the Solo Ship crew are ferried in a ship called the Krap. The fansubbers even added a note that this was its actual name.
• Wave Motion Gun: Wave Leader Gun, also called the Ideon Gun.
  • Not to mention the Buff Clan's Gando Rowa, which doubles as a spaceship AND a really, really big WMG!
  • The Ideon Gun itself can be a form of aversion/subversion to the trope, as it doesn't fire the standard beam found within Wave Motion Guns. Rather, it fire what appears to be a tornado with lightning in it.
• What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic: Cosmo and Kasha name Karala's child Messiah.
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair
• You Have Failed Me: Gije fails to defeat the Ideon for the upteenth time and crashes on the Moon; his superiors just don't bother to pick him up anymore. He doesn't die like they expect him to though (yet).
• Zeerust