Space Runaway Ideon

• 1. Introduction

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  Space Runaway Ideon came straight out of director Yoshiyuki Tomino's studio after Mobile Suit Gundam, the signature work he had just finished. Sunrise produced it, and Tomino both created and directed it. The story sends ordinary human colonists running from a humanoid alien civilization called the Buff Clan. Both sides are chasing the same mysterious force, known as the Ide. A giant machine built from three armored tanks seems to run on it. So does a vast spaceship that nobody can fully explain. Why would a legend about a savior drive a whole civilization across the universe? What happens when a war has no home for either side to return to? And how did a cartoon with a reputation for relentless pessimism become a collector's item that sold for more than a thousand dollars on disc?

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• 2. Credits And Broadcast

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  In 1980, TV Tokyo began airing the series, and it kept running into 1981. Two feature films followed in 1982. Decades later, the satellite network Animax carried the series in Japan, starting in September 2006.

  Yuichi Higuchi of Studio Submarine drew the mechanical designs, including the Ideon itself. The television series credited only his design studio. For the films, Higuchi received full credit under his own name. Tomonori Kogawa designed the characters, including the afro-wearing hero Cosmo Yuki.

  The show earned recognition while it was still on the air. It won the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize for the second half of 1980. The machines Higuchi drew first appear in the story as dusty relics, dug out of the ground on a distant planet called Solo.

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• 3. Planet Solo

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  The story opens in the year 2300, when humans have spread far enough to colonize other planets. On Solo, in the Andromeda Galaxy, a team of archaeologists finds the remains of three large armored tanks. Nearby lies a big spaceship, later known as the Solo Ship. For six months the team restores the machines, but the tanks refuse to move. Then the Buff Clan arrives.

  Karala, the youngest daughter of the Buff Clan's military commander Doba Ajiba, flies down to the surface against orders. Her assistant Mayaya goes with her. The officer Gije hesitates to follow, partly because he once served as a soldier under her father. Soldiers sent by Gije lose track of her. Assuming the colonists have attacked Karala, the Buff Clan opens fire.

  Cosmo Yuki and his friends Kasha Imhof and Deck Afta climb aboard the three tanks. The machines start on their own and combine into the Ideon, driving off Gije's men. It is only a short respite. Bes Jordan, who leads the small military force on Solo, orders missiles fitted to the tanks. Before that work finishes, Buff Clan soldiers obliterate the cities.

  The survivors flee into the Solo Ship. Bes mistakes Karala and Mayaya for colonists and lets them aboard too. Among the others who scramble in is Sheryl Formosa, a linguist who studies the civilization that once lived on Solo.

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• 4. The Power Of Ide

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  Once the crew discovers that Karala is an alien, Mayaya is killed, but Bes takes a liking to Karala and she is allowed to live. Sheryl and others still distrust her. Karala then tells everyone the Legend of Ide, the story of a savior who rescued the Buff Clan with the power of the Ide. Her people have searched the universe for this legendary existence. The same power drives both the Ideon and the Solo Ship.

  Sheryl and the engineer Joliver Ira travel to the moon to use the Earth military's powerful Gloria computer. There they learn that the power of Ide is infinite. The Ideon's arsenal grows to match that discovery. At the planet Ajian, it fires its Black Hole Cannon. The weapon stops the Buff Clan's missiles from hitting the planet but destroys much of the planet itself.

  Three children, Piper Lou, Ashura Nobaku and Fard Maraka, sneak aboard the Ideon during a battle against a Barume Baram Mobile Weapon. Their fear makes the machine stronger, and a new weapon, the Ideon Sword, appears. Later, escaping from the planet Steckin Star, the Ideon chops the entire planet in half.

  Sheryl draws her own lesson from all this: that the Ide desires to protect children. The second film shows what she does with that belief.

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• 5. Crew Of The Solo Ship

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  Cosmo Yuki starts out as an impulsive teenage colonist living on Solo. As the war escalates, his despair deepens, and he becomes the Ide's most direct human medium. He is the primary pilot of the Ideon in its combined form.

  Bes Jordan begins as a pilot of one of the Ideon's component machines. He gives that role up when it becomes clear that younger pilots synchronize more effectively with the Ide. As captain of the Solo Ship, he steadies a crew that quarrels constantly. His relationship with Karala becomes a central emotional thread of the series.

  Kasha Imhof pilots the Ideo-Buster and has a hot temper. She clashes with authority and at first distrusts Karala because of her Buff Clan origins. Later she turns protective toward Karala and gives up piloting to stay aboard the ship. Moera Fatima flies the Ideo-Nova for much of the series and is romantically involved with the ship's medic, Rapot.

  Joliver Ira, the engineer, begins by distrusting Karala and later admits his feelings for her. Sheryl's search for answers about the Ide turns into obsession and conflict with the crew. After the deaths of her sister Lin and her lover Gije, she suffers a psychological collapse.

  Of the adults who first scramble aboard, most will be dead before the war ends.

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• 6. A Divided Enemy

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  Harulu, Karala's elder sister, sends word from above that the Buff Clan no longer needs to spare Karala. She has shamed the Ajiba family by associating with humans. Soon afterward, the commander Abadidi Gurimade heads out in a Dogg Mack on the planet Crystal Star. He unleashes giant winged creatures called Bajins against the Solo Ship, but they turn on him and kill him.

  On Ruins Star, Karala tries to make peace with Harulu and is humiliated by Harulu's underlings. Banda Lotta, upset by the harm the Buff Clan has caused, then tries to kill Karala but folds under pressure. Karala, willing to die, impresses everyone aboard with her strength.

  Harulu later escapes a destroyed ship and meets Daram Zuba, a former lover from the Ome Foundation. That group is plotting with Doba to overthrow the Buff Clan Emperor. Daram becomes the Solo Ship's main adversary. On the planet Kyaral he shoots Kitty Kitten, who had begged the crew to leave her war-torn world. Cosmo is injured, and only a blood transfusion from Karala saves him.

  Gije, abandoned by Daram, sneaks aboard the Solo Ship and kills Daram in a battle on Earth. Few trust him. Earth's military rejects the crew completely, leaving them with no home to go back to. Their pursuers keep failing, so Doba decides to lead the hunt himself aboard the flagship Bairal Jin.

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• 7. Two Endings

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  Karala and Joliver suddenly find themselves transported aboard the Bairal Jin, where Doba's men catch them. Karala reveals that she is pregnant with the child of an Earthling, Bes, to everyone's shock. Doba declares he will do whatever it takes to kill his own daughter, and that threat makes the Ideon's power invoke.

  The pair slip through the corridors and reach the Heavy Mobile Mecha hangar. Then the Solo Ship bursts out of DS space and rams into the Bairal Jin. Bes and Hatari find Karala and Joliver, and a strange light glows from Karala's abdomen. The two take a small Buff Clan shuttle, which is blown up by a stray blast seconds before the Ideon reaches it. Cosmo curses the Buff Clan, but then a glowing light appears. Karala and Joliver are unharmed, and the Ideon carries them back.

  Doba orders his forces to hunt the Solo Ship to the end of the universe. The encounter between Doba and Karala was humanity's last chance, and both sides rejected it. The Ideon releases its infinite power, using Karala's baby as the trigger, and wipes out both races. It scatters them to the end of the universe to be reborn wise and kindhearted, and to use technology more wisely. The souls of Piper Lou and Karala's baby then travel through space.

  The second film, Be Invoked, changes events drastically. The Buff Clan nears completion of the Gando Rowa, a warship that may be stronger than the Ideon. Harulu sends her top fighters, Tororof and Kilarul, after the Solo Ship in the Zanza Lubu. Drunk and mad with grief, Sheryl carries Piper Lou onto the deck to strengthen the Ideon. The Ideon Gun blows Sheryl off the ship to her death, reuniting her with Gije. Karala saves Piper Lou.

  Karala tells the crew about her pregnancy, and Cosmo and the others call the unborn child a Messiah. Harulu resolves to kill Karala to stop the child's birth. Her ship is destroyed, but she, Kilarul and Tororof reach the Solo Ship. Banda Lotta kills Tororof and is then killed by Kilarul. Harulu shoots Karala in the face. Harulu and Kilarul flee but are annihilated by the Ideon Gun.

  Meteor showers strike Earth, its colonies and the Buff Clan homeworld at once, extinguishing life on their surfaces. Gindoro, afraid of the Ideon, refuses Doba's orders and is killed. Doba keeps attacking the Solo Ship as it nears the Gando Rowa. Kasha dies from shrapnel. Hatari, Rapot and Ashura are killed on the bridge, and Fard is mortally wounded. Bes is shot in the neck but hangs on long enough to return fire.

  Doba's own soldiers kill him, and the Ideon then destroys them. The Gando Rowa fires and destroys the Solo Ship. The Ide is invoked, and the blast wipes out the entire universe. Afterward, the souls of the Buff Clan and the Earthlings ascend through space, at peace at last. Bes and Karala's baby leads them to a planet that closely resembles Earth.

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• 8. Rarity And Reception

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  The first Ideon DVD box was overproduced, and many units went unsold even years after release. The second boxset and the movie boxset were pressed in much smaller numbers and sold out fast. Used copies of the second boxset alone could fetch over 80,000 yen on sites such as Yahoo! Japan auctions or amazon.co.jp. All three boxsets together sold for over 120,000 yen, more than $1,000 USD, for 38 episodes and 2 movies. By comparison, the 153 episode Dragon Ball boxset retailed new for 100,000 yen, or $800 USD.

  Single DVDs arrived in 2006 but went quickly out of print. A Blu-ray box set of the television series came out on the 2nd of February 2013. On the 8th of November 2017, Hidive announced it would stream the series from the next day, though by August 2023 it was gone from the service. In July 2018, Maiden Japan announced its license. Fans complained about the quality of the Hidive stream, so Section23 cancelled a planned 2-disc SDBD set due on the 11th of December 2018. A HD Blu-ray set replaced it on the 5th of February 2019.

  Critics split sharply. The reviewer at THEM Anime Reviews gave it 1 star out of 5, saying the "plot is executed very badly" and that "many of the characters never progress beyond basic stereotypes". The same review conceded that the show "gained a cult following among mecha anime fans". The reviewer at Anime News Network wrote, "While it is far from perfect, I ended up really loving, warts and all". That review called the ending "ambitious and emotionally intense", though mostly realized in the films, and said the show had "built a small but deserved legacy in the fandom's cultural consciousness".

  A science fiction reference work calls the series commercially unsuccessful but influential, even notorious, for its "relentless pessimism, apocalyptic climax, and radical rethinking of the super-robot format". It names the better known anime Neon Genesis Evangelion as the most notable work it influenced.

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