Anime / Godannar

"The Ultimate Marriage Between Man, Woman And Machine"

—Show tagline

Godannar ^note also known as Marriage of God and Soul: Godannar is an anime series directed by Yasuchika Nagaoka and animated by AIC and OLM Incorporated. It premiered on AT-X on October 1, 2003, and the series consists of 26 episodes spread across two seasons.

In 2042, Earth was under attack from an alien force called the "Mimetic Beasts". They carry the Insania Virus, which usually targets males and mutates them into monstrosities. The Hero, Goh Saruwatari (Takayuki Kondo), along with his partner Mira Ackerman (Aya Hisakawa), pilots the Humongous Mecha pair Dannar and Okusaer and led the final battle against the Hive Queen of the Mimetic Beasts, driving it away at the cost of Mira's life, but in the same time, Goh saved a young girl named Anna Aoi (Mai Nakahara), the daughter of his superior Kiriko Aoi (Takako Honda). Attempting to get over Mira's death (whom he actually loved), Goh decided to move on and...proposed to Anna, despite the age gap (Anna's still a high school girl, Goh is...well, someone that would be of a tenured salaryman).

Flash forward 20 Minutes into the Future.

Five years later, all's set for Goh and Anna to get married. Anna already confirms her vow, but right before Goh can declare his...he gets an urgent call that the Mimetic Beasts are back and he needs to go pilot the Dannar and quell them again, thus forcing him to delay stating the vow to Anna. Frustrated, she tries to follow Goh, only to find the Neo Okusaer, sealed after Mira's death. Anna goes on to pilot it (since she's somehow a master of a similar riding game) and helps Goh, and thus their life as a newlywed couple and Humongous Mecha pilot commence. Their two mechs can even combine into the mighty Godannar, complete with a final attack that requires both of them working in tandem to pull off.

This show is notorious for the amount of fanservice presented, especially of the bouncing breast variety. At the same time, it's unique in that it combines over-the-top super robot action with, of all things, a nice dose of Character Development: more exactly, an examination of marriage, as Goh and Anna face difficulties both on the battlefield and in their relationship.

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This series provides examples of:

• Accidental Adultery: Mira Ackerman, who was in a relationship with Goh, has been presumed dead for 5 years, but in reality has been in a coma. By the time Goh finds out, he has already been married to Anna.
• Achilles in His Tent: Anna, after learning that Goh still has some feelings for Mira.
• Adventure Rebuff: Token Mini-Moe Lou Roux is never let into battle due to the dangers. She rebels on her own eventually.
• Affectionate Parody: Godannar is a love letter to old-school Super Robot shows and to the Ultra Series tokusatsu, and it's an absolute treat to any fan of either genre. The Super Robot side is well represented: from it's catchy theme songs (the first one sung by Akira Kushida, the second one's sung by Ichiro Mizuki and Mitsuko Horie) and music by Chūmei Watanabe, to its wholehearted embrace of cliches (Calling Your Attacks, robots "hulking out" into more powerful forms, Combining Mecha) and similar; the Ultra side has its monster designs, and behaviors call back to the old school Toku. That the monsters all explode when hit with the heroes' finisher just adds to the feel. As a result, this show is just one huge ball of awesome.
• Age-Gap Romance: Goh is a 29-year-old Salary Man, Anna is a 17-year-old schoolgirl. Subverted later, when Go is put into stasis and wakes up years later... and he and Anna are close to the same age, physically speaking.

• All There in the Manual: Lou's surname is never mentioned or shown during the series. Likewise, you'd never guess the Valentine siblings aren't blood- related without Word of God informing you otherwise.
• Back from the Dead:
  • Mira Ackerman, killed while fighting Mimetic Beasts during the backstory, mysteriously reappears at the end of the first episode.
  • Shizuru Fujimura, killed at the end of the first season, gets resurrected by Mira's kiss.
• Bait-and-Switch Credits: Specifically, the ending, which gives the impression that Anna's going to die, as are lots of other people, and doom and despair will ensue. The "Lake of Blood" doesn't help things, either, or the fact the song's called Trench Coffin!
• Battle Couple: Damn near all the characters.
• BFS: Ken's "Gainer" wields one. Its partner, "Celeblader", transforms into an even bigger sword for Ken to use
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Mira, Shizuru, Anna, the three female pilots at Dannar Base
• Body Horror: The Insania Virus.
• Book Ends: The series begins with Goh and Anna's wedding day and ends with their second wedding after they are reunited following a seven year Time Skip. Just like the first time, it is interrupted by a Mimetic Beast attack (which has the decency to wait until they've both said their vows this time).
• Bridge Bunnies: Konami Sasagure and Momoko "Momochi" Momozono.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Knight Valentine and little sister Ellis...almost.
• Calling Your Attacks: HEAAAARRTT BREAKEEERRR!!! SOULLLL BREAKERRRRR!!!!.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Damn near every tech in the Dannar Base.
• Can't Catch Up: Subverted; the Godannar may be the most powerful robot on the good guys' side, but it doesn't have to do everything. Its component units, Dannar and Neo Okusaer, are more than capable of winning the day without combining, and the other robots in the series can more than hold their own as well (even Lou's teeny-tiny "Cosmo Diver"). Also, some units specialize in environments in which the Godannar's actually useless, like underwater/in space (Cosmo Diver) and aerial fighting ("Dragliner").
• Catchphrase: In the dub, Shizuru gave us "Who the hell do you think I am?", way before Kamina)
• Combination Attack: GODANNAR TRIPLE DRIVE!!!.
• Combining Mecha: Every country's Super Robot has to be formed by combining two units. The only notable example is Dragliner, as it's precombined most of the time, because it's more transportable and usually stronger as a bomber.
• Diabolus ex Nihilo: They never explain where and why the Mimetic Beasts come to Earth...
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • Both the Dannar and Neo Okusaer are launched by being dragged through the launching strip by a mechanical arm. Said arm pulls them by their crotch.
  • When Shizuru is doing her farewell speech, she says women aren't what they seem; they may be tough on the surface, but they're nice and soft on the inside. Cue a shot of the inside of the monster's mouth, which is meaty and wet and... let's just say a drill wouldn't look out of place inside it. She also destroys said mouth by shooting it with a nice, long, phallic cannon.
  • The official DVD promo points out the freudian implications of a husband and wife "combining".
• Ecchi: Nothing too explicit, but the series is famous for its naughty humor.
• The Engineer: The maintenance crew, obviously.
• Fanservice: Overloaded, to a point where the staff made a doujinshi to fund the production of the second season. But to roughly summarize:
  • A robot using a whip? Check!
  • A brother and sister who love each other a little TOO much? Check!
  • Lesbians? Check!
  • Massively megalogigantic ultrabouncing mammaries, even on the robots? Check!
    • And the hips and booty to back it up? Check!
  • An intelligent woman who keeps her co-pilot as a submissive slave? Check!
  • Phallic symbols out the wazoo? Check!
  • A big, muscled, manly man and a teeny tiny girl who adores him and follows him around? Check!
  • Clothes getting ripped to shreds? Check!
  • Slimed up girls? Check!
  • Hot looking guys? Check!
  • Transformations(actually done by the robots) where people are seen naked? Check!
  • A girl in a Japanese school PE uniform? Check!
  • Sexy brainy people? Check!
  • A spectacle wearing, delicious older lady? Check!
  • All possible forms of cleavage? Check!
  • Completely random hot springs on a tropical island? Double check!
• Giant Robot Hands Save Lives: Ingeniously subverted: the Dannar has airbags that deploy specifically for this purpose.
• Going Commando: When wearing the pilot suits. Also, it seems that none of the female characters wear bras.

• Heroic BSoD: Goh gets sorta traumatized at one point in the show to the point he can't pilot, and he REALLY goes on screen saver when Shizuru dies.

• Hot-Blooded: A massive subversion for mecha: the more hotblooded a guy is, especially a pilot, the more they're likely to succumb to the Insania Virus and enter "Rabid Syndrome". The only exception are perverted or submissive men...or Tetsuya Kouji.

• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Goh is nearly two feet taller than Anna, and also that much larger across the shoulders.

• Instant Armor: A borderline use in the Mimetic Beasts, who can rapidly construct bodies for themselves out of whatever materials happen to be handy, including people.
• Jumped at the Call: When Goh ran off to fight the Mimetic Beasts, Anna's first impulse was to jump in a mech and run right after him.
• Killed Off for Real: Poor, poor Moukaku...and he just proposed to Shukuyu in the same episode, too....
  • Also Ken's Heroic Sacrifice
• Lantern Jaw of Justice: Goh.
• Large Ham: Goh "I must scream out my grief louder than everyone else!" Saruwatari.
• Latex Space Suit: All of the pilot suits
  • Also, the crew of Cosmo Base. And the engineers of Dannar Base. And the medical staff. The members of Mission Control put these on as well before the final battle, with the two Bridge Bunnies thinking they'd never have to wear the tight things.
• Little Miss Badass: Lou takes herself more seriously than most of the other characters.
• Love Dodecahedron: Goh has three women going after him: Anna, Shizuru and Mira, though the latter two back down for Anna. Shizuru herself has Kouji and Goh's little brother Shinobu swooning over her.
• Lower-Deck Episode: Episode 17 follows the maintenance crew, showing off their everyday routines, what they go through when there's a Mimetic Beast battle, and some of their romantic drama.
• Male Gaze: Without it, this series would not exist. Period.
  • Oh, Shizuru. Camera focus goes to her lovely butt. Her butt is so big◊ it gets her stuck while entering her mecha.
• Manly Tears: Plenty, given it's a friggin Super Robot show.
• Married to the Job: Protagonist Goh Saruwatari is married to Anna Aoi, daughter of his boss Dr. Kiriko Aoi, who is also now his mother-in-law.
• Meaningful Name: "Okusaer" is taken from the word "okusa", which means "wife" in Japan. "Dannar" is taken from "danna", meaning "husband". "Godannar" is a combination of Project "God" and "Anna".
• Mid-Season Upgrade: In the second season, Anna hands off the Neo-Okusar to Mira and instead pilots its Super Prototype model, the Go-Okusar. That said, the Go-Okusar was mothballed for a reason - thanks to an overpowered drive system that has to be controlled manually, only an expert pilot can effectively use it, something Anna doesn't master until the final battle.
• The Missus and the Ex: Go is caught in the middle after his old flame Mira recovers from her coma, especially when Anna has her move in with them. It gets worse after her amnesia clears up and it takes most of the second season for all three to really become comfortable with each other.
• Mistress and Servant Boy: Ekaterina and Kukrachyov, the pilots of Valspinner, which actually used the combination command "Slave On". It even became a plot point of how submissive and "unmanly" Kukrachyov is when the male pilots one after the other flip out from the virus. Just to drive the point home, Shadow, one of America's lesbian pilots, is the only girl affected by it because she's the "manly" one of the two girls.
• Ms. Fanservice: Nearly any notable female would count, but the trope champion of Godannar is undoubtedly Shizuru. Oh god, Shizuru!
• Multinational Team: Other than Japan, there's Russia, USA, Britain and China.
• Musical Pastiche: Chūmei Watanabe included new renditions of his compositions from Iczer-One, Great Mazinger, Dangaioh, and the Metal Heroes franchise. This is somewhat natural considering this is an Affectionate Parody of super robot shows from The '70s and The '80s in which Watanabe was the composer.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot:
  • Ken's "Blade Gainer". A giant super robot ninja with a cape and earrings and a skyscraper-sized sword, with a giant robot crow perched on its shoulder. Piloted by Ken, whose voice is the same as Colonel Roy Mustang and Rufus Shinra, with shout outs to the Double Blizzard from its blade. Yeah.
• Not Quite Dead: Kouji, shot down near dead many times, but his response is always "I'm not dead...".
• Odd Couple: Goh and Anna: a man at work with a high school girl that hasn't even graduated.
• Out-of-Clothes Experience: Shizuru, after she "dies" at the end of season one. Sadly, it ends up just a Framing Device for a Recap Episode.

• Poor Communication Kills: A lot of problems in the first season wouldn't have happened if, at some point in the five years between Anna meeting Goh and marrying him, someone had thought to tell her that she wasn't Goh's first love and what had happened to his previous lover.
• Popping Buttons: Kiriko Aoi does this◊ in the 5th episode, and her shirt stays that way for the rest of the episode.
• Pun-Based Title: Shinkon Gattai is written as "God and Soul Combination"... but also pronounced as the same as "newlyweds having sex". This dichotomy between the hot blood of super robot-dom and the awkward dealings of a married couple effectively sums up the entire show.

• School Idol: The first episode shows that Anna is this at her high school, with half the boys somehow convinced that if they manage to beat her in mech soccer, she'll go out with them. After she thrashes all of them, she states that she's not interested in dating anyone (and then, in her next scene, is prepping for her wedding to Goh).
• Secret Relationship: The only people at Dannar Base who knew that Goh had recovered sufficiently from Mira's death to even return to the dating scene at all before Anna announced her willingness to follow her husband into battle on an open comm line in the middle of a mecha fight were his brother and her mother. And Anna's friends from school are even less in the loop concerning her love life, with the only people who know that she even has one being her brother-in-law and the principal(who is secretly her father).
• Sexy Surfacing Shot: In episode 2, after Anna is done training in the pool, there's a Male Gaze shot of her from the back as when climbs out of the water.
• Shoo the Dog: (How Lou gets separated with her soon-to-be-dead father, the beginning of her Roaring Rampage of Revenge)
• Shout-Out:
  • Tetsuya Kouji's name is taken from the heroes of Mazinger Z and Great Mazinger (Kouji Kabuto and Tetsuya Tsurugi). Also, look at the Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot entry. The show's second theme song is even sung by Ichiro Mizuki, THE singer for anime robot theme songs, including Mazinger, Combattler V, Dangaioh and many other classics.
  • Anna's outfit while doing the Training from Hell is a shout out to Noriko Takaya of GunBuster
  • Tatsuya Aoi, Anna's dad, is voiced by Hiroya Ishimaru, the voice actor for Kouji Kabuto in Mazinger Z. And the first thing he does when he reveals his identity is order the Z MISSILE to be fired. Ye-he-hea! Not to mention that this is how he looks like in his youth.
  • In episode 2, Goh is reading a Newspaper that has the Marriage of Gai and Mikoto (of GaoGaiGar fame) as it's headline. This show is really all about shout outs from homages to attack names, seiyuu and character's names. There would be far too many to list.
  • A musical homage to a tune from Space Sheriff Gavan by Chūmei Watanabe is used during several battle sequences. Specifically, the Laser Blade theme, which has gotten a lot of mileage (also getting an homage in Dan Gai Oh).
• Stay in the Kitchen: Goh has this attitude towards Anna because he lost his previous lover Mira in combat and fears the same for her. He doesn't have a problem with woman pilots (such as Shizuru) in a general sense.
• Stock Footage: Any Dannar/Neo-Okusaer launching sequence or any Combining Mecha sequence.
• Stripperific: All female pilots...even Lou.
• The Tease: Shizuru does this Kouji with glee, which does nothing to squelch his ginormous crush on her. It's implied that since Shinobu like her too, she does this purposely get them to fight over her for the lulz.
• Training from Hell:
  • Right after Anna debuts in piloting, she's subjected to this. Mainly because Goh is hoping that she'll wash out or give up.
  • Lou also goes through one when being trained to pilot by Ken, set to a training montage, to boot.
• Transforming Mecha: The Cosmo Diver has a vehicle mode for underwater and space mobility in addition to a humanoid form. Dragliner first separates its somewhat underwhelming humanoid Real Robot cargo, and the remainder of the bomber goes into Beast Mode.
• Tsundere: Deconstructed. Shizuru was this for Go, but she only managed to push him away from her. When she decided that she did love him... he was with Anna already.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: There's SO much UST in this series, it's probably what fuels the robots. Plasma Drive be damned.
• Vapor Wear: Not one female on the show wears a bra.
• The Virus: Insania Virus.
• Walking the Earth: Lou and Ken are shown doing this. It even looks like it's pulled out of Fist of the North Star; perhaps a Shout-Out?
• Wham Shot:
  • Mira awakening from her Convenient Coma.
  • Max being mutated by the Insania Virus and abducting Mira.
  • Tatsuya revealing his true identity.

• World of Buxom: The only female who isn't ridiculously stacked is Lou. Anna notably was able to carry her kitten in her cleavage in her first scene... at the age of twelve.

• Wrench Wench: All female technicians in the Dannar Base.
• Your Tomcat Is Pregnant: A conversation between Anna and her mother reveals this had taken place off-screen regarding Anna's by this time very visibly pregnant cat. Mew. The phrasing of the conversation is deliberately done to imply that right up until the moment the camera angle changes to show the cat, it sounds like they're saying that Anna is pregnant and starting to show.

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