YMMV / Metal Armor Dragonar

• Awesome Music:
  • Yume-Iro Chaser. A truly fantastic fast paced synth-pop theme that's been called not just one of the best mecha openings, but one of the best anime openings from the 80s period. It's also helped by the fact that the accompanying visuals are exceptional as well.
  • Starlight Serenade. Probably nowhere as famous as "Yume Iro Chaser" is (it's really hard to beat ↑←↑ after all) but still a really neat pop ballad.
• Awesome Art:
  • The first opening is a perfect combination of the gloriously detailed Masami Obari animation (who's said to have done it all in a single month, and without using any character models!) and the rocking soundtrack, which especially comes to show in the timing of the gear shift scene (known by the fans affectionately as "up left up") to the zooming synths.
• Complete Monster: General Dorchenov is a high-ranking, brutal member of the Giganos Empire who pushes his leader Marshall Guiltorre to worse deeds, including advocating for a group of Earthling demonstrators to be massacred. When he pushes for using his super weapon, the Mass Driver, to cause mass casualties on Earth a disgusted Guiltorre rebukes him resulting in Dorchenov murdering him. Dorchenov then framing the heroic Giganos pilot Meio Plato of the crime and seizing control of the Giganos empire. He proceeds to brutalize the Earth, ordering as much death be brought to he planet as possible. When he loses the advantage, he orders his own men to initiate suicidal tactics and takes advantage of an attempted cease-fire to kill even more of Earth's forces, taking the hero Kaine's mother hostage to gain a greater advantage, admitting he cares nothing for the cause of Giganos as long as he can win in the end.
• Cult Classic: In the mecha fandom thanks to the beautifully animated opening by Masami Obari accompanied by the equally awesome Yume Iro Chaser. The completion of legible subs by /m/subs certainly helped things as well.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Due to a "Blind Idiot" Translation in a Chinese bootleg: I'LL SEND YOU TO THE NETHERLANDS!^Explanation In the Sinosphere the word "Netherlands" is normally used as a homophone for "hell" in most of those countries, and this is the main reason why those countries prefer to use their local spelling for "Holland" instead (荷兰/Hélán in Chinese, オランダ/Oranda in Japanese, using Spanish as proxy, and nước Hà Lan in Vietnamese. Oddly enough, Korean is one of the few East Asian languages trying to spell the name as intended, as 네덜란드/Nedeollandeu, from Dutch itself, rather than using a proxy language.
  • From the opening, there's "↑←↑" (referring to the shot of Kaine moving the gear shift in that pattern, in sync with the music). In the case a forum doesn't support arrows (4chan is a known case of this) then "up left up" is an acceptable substitute.
    • Surprisingly, even the opening's animator (Masami Obari) has got in on the joke whenever the show gets brought up on his twitter.
• Fan Subs: By /m/subs, and these are getting a further upgrade thanks to the new 2022 35th anniversary blu-rays which are by themselves leaps and bounds over the tatty 2005 DVD masters.
• Retroactive Recognition: The show itself. According to Super Robot Wars director Terada, most Japanese people had forgotten that the show even existed as it was just another Sunrise show that fell into obscurity, and it was the show being featured in his games that made fans remember it.
• Spiritual Successor: Mobile Suit Gundam SEED shares a lot of it's DNA with Dragonar, such as the initial theft of several Super Prototype mecha (but by the opposing side rather than the protagonists), their blocky designs and reliance on expansion backpacks for the mecha as a gimmick.
• That One Boss: In every Super Robot Wars game that Dragonar has been in, the Stark Squadron is a right pain to deal with. In MX, it is noted as the only difficult part in the game by some!