Show us your Karate. And love.
Tōshō Daimos (闘将ダイモス, Tōshō Daimosu, Fighting General Daimos, Hero Fighter Daimos, Great Leader Daimos, or just Daimos) is the third entry of Tadao Nagahama's Robot Romance Trilogy (or often shortened the Nagahama Romance), preceded by Combattler V and Voltes V.
Daimos tells the story of Earth being invaded by a race of Winged Humanoids called the Barmians/Balmians, all due to failed peace negotiations that took a great toll on both sides. The Earth is outmatched, but they have hope in form of the Motion-Capture Mecha Daimos, piloted by the Karate champ Kazuya Ryuuzaki. But problems arise when Kazuya himself meets a mysterious girl named Erika, and falls in love... and later finds out that she is the Princess of the Barmians, and the sister of the head of the invaders, Prince Richter, to boot.
Just like its predecessor Voltes V, Daimos features alien enemies that turn out to be similar, though it still follows the Monster of the Week formula.
In May 2023, there are reports that GMA Network is considering to adapt Daimos to a live-action series, following Voltes V: Legacy.
Has a sequel manga.
Please move all character-related tropes to characters page.
Daimos provides examples of:
- The '90s: According to
Word of God, Daimos takes place in 1999. - Adaptational Location Change: In the Starbirds dub, the setting of the show was changed from Japan to California. The character's names are also changed to sound more traditionally Western-sounding.
- Action Bomb: Episode ten featured a Mecha Soldier designed to latch on Daimos and detonate the nuke built in its body.
- Aerith and Bob: Seen in the Starbirds adaptation because of some of the choices made. Some of the characters kept their original names (Erika and Nana). Some of them, human and alien, had them changed to Western names (Richter becomes Roderick, Kyoushiro becomes Duncan). And Kazuya, not that weird a name, becomes Kelly Hunter.
- All Love Is Unrequited:
- Sayuri goes from despising Kazuya to falling for him because of his kindness, before acknowledging that his heart belongs to another woman.
- Nana also had a crush in Kazuya growing up and her A Day in the Limelight episode has her acknowledge his feelings for Erika and accept that she can't change his mind.
- Reiko has a crush on Kyoshiro, but her Upper-Class Twit attitude is so grating to him that he's actually scared of her. He is relieved when, after being forced to rescue her from the Baam-seijin, Reiko declares that she no longer loves him.
- Raiza has a crush on Richter. However, Richter nonchalantly slaps and hits her, calls her useless and tries to have her replaced with more competent generals. Nevertheless, Raiza keeps trying to wiggle into his good graces, only to be met with further abuse each time.
- Alternative Foreign Theme Song: Has a Hong Kong Cantonese-language one
. - All There in the Manual: The Roman Robo Anime Climax Selection and Tadao Nagahama: Robot Romance Animation Chronicle Infobook have many behind-the-scenes information and meta elements regarding the show.
- Award-Bait Song: The closing theme "Erika No Ballad". It sums up the Star-Crossed Lovers plotline right off the bat.
- Big Applesauce: The first episode opens with Barmians blowing up New York, complete with the newly constructed World Trade Center twin towers.
- Bittersweet Ending:
- Earth and Barm make peace, Kazuya and Erika reunite, but Richter
died in a Heroic Sacrificecommitted suicide. - Not to mention the lives of so many Humans and Barmians were needlessly lost in a war neither side wanted.
- Earth and Barm make peace, Kazuya and Erika reunite, but Richter
- The Blade Always Lands Pointy End In: Often, when someone lost his sword, it landed point-first on the ground. It happened to enemies but also to Kyoshiro.
- Compilation Movie:
- One titled Starbirds: The Movie was produced by 3-B Productions, the same people who did Tranzor Z. It features a whole new round of Dub Name Changes ("Kazuya" becomes "Kelly", "Kyoshiro" becomes "Duncan") and Dub Induced Plot Holes (natural when cutting a 44 episode series down to a 72 minute movie), but is overall fairly coherent. It's actually speculated to be in the Public Domain, as it has popped up as a dollar store DVD release more than once.
- In Italy, when Daimos was released, dubbing studio Alsennote produced a Compilation Movie called Daimos - Il figlio di Goldrake (Daimos, the son of Grendizer) where it connected the universes of Daimos and Grendizer by stating that Kazuya was Daisuke's son, and he had inherited his robot from him. Completely contradicting the source material, it mish-mashed clips of both series and produced an alternate ending. Italians who watched both series were very confused about the sudden change in canon. You can watch a breakdown of the film here.
- Cherry Blossoms: When Kazuya and Erika have a Meet Cute in the garden, we see them surrounded by beautiful pink blossom petals.
- Cut Short: Daimos was originally supposed to have 50 episodes, but the studio that aired it wanted to produce the sentai series Battle Fever J instead and forced the crew to scrap the original plot in favour of the messy Bittersweet Ending it has. Tadao Nagahama expressed his disappointment of this in the Roman Robo Anime Climax Selection, giving more details on what could have been had Daimos finished its run.
- Death of a Child: In the second episode, a kid spends a short while egging Kazuya and Erika on to kiss. Later, when the enemy attacks, an explosion destroys the greenhouse he had gone into. Kazuya and Erika bolt to the place and find him lying between the rubble. The kid opens his eyes and asks Kazuya if he "got lucky" before dying as Kazuya is holding him in his arms.
- Dub-Induced Plotline Change: Every foreign dub of Daimos removes Nana's crush on Kazuya because he's her brother.
- Everything Sounds Sexier in French: One episode deals with Kyoshiro dealing with Reiko, his former female student whom he taught French, and in order to shut her up for a time, he told her to memorize "Je t'aime"/"I love you". That was the only thing she remembered literally, including mistaking it as a sexy declaration of love, much to Kyoshiro's dismay.
- Expository Theme Tune: "Beat them, beat them, as long as you have strength. Show them your karate." And the closing credits tune narrates Starcrossed Lovers Erika and Kazuya love story.
- First Contact: The Emperor initiated it, hoping it led to a peaceful collaboration and understanding among both peoples. Unfortunately, not all shared his ideals.
- Gratuitous Foreign Language: Gratuitous Croatian - the base is named "Daimovic" after Daimos, and "-ovic" is a common Croatian-style patronym. It also doubles as a pun and Meaningful Name since it was founded by Kazuya's father.
- Hero Ball: The good guys certainly take a lot of time to figure out that Erika is just pretending to be into marrying Olban while secretly planning to murder him. Despite being blackmailed into marrying him in the first place, and her reaction when she realizes she shot Kazuya with an actual bullet. The bad guys, including the future husband himself, are much more suspicious of her new-found loyalty.
- Latex Space Suit: The astronaut banch of Daimovic, including Kazuya and Kyoshiro, all wear these.
- Melodrama: To the surprise of nobody, Daimos, a Tadao Nagahama work, is a melodrama. It's the tale of an Alien Princess who falls for a human boy...while their planets are at war and he leads the main resistance by preventing the alien's attacks with his Super Robot. Both face scrutiny, abuse and humiliation for their romance, are called traitors and even face jail (in his case) and (execution in her case - don't worry, she escapes). However, their love perserveres through it all, and they never stop searching for solutions to the conflict- and even their biggest in-universe detractors are left in shock by the power of their love.
- Militaries Are Useless: Averted, as Earth does have a military. It's just a shame that it's led by a war-hungry, genocidal maniac who's so incompetent he leads his innocent men to their deaths, as well as pissing off the antagonistic alien race who already have a low view of humans.
- My Nayme Is: The Italian dub, as opposed to most others, avoids Dub Name Change, but a lot of names is pronounced differently, if not weirdly: for example, Richter becomes "Richiter", Geroiya is pronounced either "Gero" or "Guerroyer" and Balbas is "Valbas".
- Nigh-Invulnerable: Later in the series, monsters of the week are often equipped with Unobtainium armor which makes attacks bounce off as if from a rubber band. It takes a combination of severe heat and cold to render them brittle.
- Obviously Evil: One look at Georiya and you just knew he had something to do with the death of the previous Baam emperor and Kazuya's father.
- Once per Episode: Every episode, to transform and activate Daimos, Kazuya yelled "Daimos, Battle Turn!", as -pretty uselessly- performing a kata with his arms.
- Personal Space Invader: One of the Baam mechas is loaded with nukes and latches on Daimos to blow it up. Kazuya could not get rid of it, and it took an Gurney committing Heroic Sacrifice to save his life.
- Phenotype Stereotype: The Japanese characters usually have brown hair, alongside pale or peach-coloured skin. Miwa has black hair and tanner skin, while Kyoshiro is dark-skinned with pouffy hair. Sayuri has thin black hair and black eyes, passing for a Yamato Nadeshiko. Nana is aversion, having blonde hair and blue eyes despite being Japanese.
- Race Lift: As the Starbirds dub changes the setting from Japan to California, most of the characters (who were originally Japanese) were changed to white, except Duncannote who's black.
- Say My Name: "ERIKAAAAA!!!", also followed by "KAZUYAAAAA!!!!" or "RICHAAAARD!!!!"
- Not to be confused with his "Souryuu Ken" or the "Double Dragon Blade" from his chest.
- The Three Faces of Eve:
- Erika is the calm, intelligent, reflective, prudent and reluctant to do anything rash wife.
- Liza is the hot and sensual seductress, using her body charms to get what she wants.
- Nana is the young, temperamental, rash child.
- Wouldn't Hurt a Child:
- Do not even think of hurting a child in front of Kazuya Ryuuzaki lest you have your face rearranged.
- In episode 2, a child got killed during the enemy air raid. Kazuya snapped, instantly got in his Humongous Mecha and utterly tore apart the Robeast enemy.
