Daimos

Toushou Daimos (or just Daimos) is the third entry of Tadao Nagahama's Romantic Trilogy (or often shortened the Nagahama Romance), preceded by Voltes V, which is in turn preceded by Combattler V.

Daimos tells the story of Earth being invaded by a race of Winged Humanoids called the Brahmins/Balmians, all due to failed peace negotations 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 Brahmins, 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 Not So Different, though it still follows the Monster Of The Week formula.

Daimos is also one of the series often included in Super Robot Wars, and should there be any chance that it is together with G Gundam... expect Kazuya to have some rivalry with Domon Kasshu.

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Tropes used in Daimos include:

• Action Girl (Nana is The Gunslinger. Erika gets upgraded to this in the manga Victory Five.)
• Afro Asskicker (Kyoushirou is LITERALLY an Afro Samurai)
• Alien Invasion: The Brahmins had no intention of invading Earth and wanted negotiating a peaceful settlement. However, the death by poisoning of their Emperor and the belief of Terrans had assassinated him changed that.
• Aliens Are Bastards: Averted. Although someone will be not mentioned -coughMiwacough- was convinced of it, Brahmins are not different than humans and most of them are decent people.
• Aloof Big Brother (Richter)
• Anti-Villain (All of the Brahmin antagonists except for Olban and his lackey, Georiya.)
• Award Bait Song (The closing theme "Erika No Ballad". It sums up the Star-Crossed Lovers plotline right off the bat.)
• Beard of Evil (Olban has a nice, thick one.)
• Berserk Button: Kazuya is a good, nice, peaceful boy, but... Threatening his beloved Erika? Bad idea. Killing children in front of him? VERY bad idea. Getting people executed for no reason other than you are a racist nutjob? Ashtoundingly BAD idea. Miwa found out about that the hard -and very painful- way.
• Beware the Nice Ones (Kazuya is a rather nice guy when not fighting. But if he's pissed off... he'll go majorly batshit. You're warned, Miwa)
• Bittersweet Ending (Earth and Brahmin make peace, Kazuya and Erika reunite, but Richter died in a Heroic Sacrifice committed suicide. Some Super Robot Wars games take it even further with Miwa surviving, meaning that some other corrupt force may pull him out of jail to cause more trouble to Kazuya in the future.)
  • Not to mention the lives of so many Humans and Brahmins were needlessly lost in a war neither side wanted.
• 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.
• Blond Guys Are Evil (Richter, though to be fair he wasn't all that evil, just really hot-headed and consumed with vengeance over the murder of his father.)
• Break the Cutie (Erika)
• Calling Your Attacks
• Cannot Spit It Out (Erika is in constant fear of telling Kazuya that she played a part in killing his father, while in truth, a lackey of Olban did it, and he makes it look like Richter and Erika did it)
• Chest Blaster ("DOUBLE/FIRE BLIZZAAAAAAARRRDDD!!!")
• Compilation Movie (One titled Starbirds: The Movie was produced by 3-B Productions (the 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.)
• Cool Car (Kazuya's Tryper 75S, which boards a Cool Tranzer which in turn transforms into a Cool Mecha.)
• Diagonal Cut: Daimos does this to a enemy mecha in episode 8. And he did not it with a bladed weapon but with its hand.
• Dub Name Change: Kazuya to Kelly in Starbirds, and Richard in the Philippine dub.
• Everything's Better with Princesses (Erika is the princess of her people)
• Everything Sounds Sexier in French (One episode deals with Kyoshiro dealing with his ex-girlfriend from France)
• Evil Laugh (Olban. In the English dub, he laughs at Daimos for being unable to penetrate his space station's shields.)
• The Evil Prince (Richter)
• Expository Theme Tune: "Beat them, beat them, as long as you have strength. Show them your karate." And the closing credits tune narrates Star-Crossed Lovers Erika and Kazuya love story.
• Fantastic Racism
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture (Brahmins have Western names, Ancient Egyptian (or is it Greco-Roman?) culture and their religion looks strangely Christian.)
• First Contact: The Emperor initiated it, hoping it led to a peaceful collaboration and understanding among both peoples. Unfortunately, not all shared his ideals.
• General Ripper (General Miwa. Also The Neidermeyer and Butt Monkey, sometimes)
• Gonk (Balbas, one of Richter's lackeys)
• Good Wings, Evil Wings: The Baam-Seijin had functional, angel-like, white wings sprouting from their backs. Their wings don't represent their alignment at all, though, they were not portrayed like being inherently good or evil, but like Not So Different than humans (Exclusively Evil was completely averted).
• The Gunslinger (To some degree, Nana)
• Heroic Sacrifice: Halleck in episode 9.
• Home Base (The Space Daimobic, which has multiple functions of The Battlestar, Space Base and Mission Control).
• Hotblooded Sideburns (Kazuya)
• Incurable Cough of Death (Aizam, Richter's buddy. It didn't kill him, though)
• Infant Immortality: This trope is averted as soon as 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 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 arms.
• Interspecies Romance: Kazuya and Erika.
• Launcher Move (Double Blizzard sends an enemy flying up, and on the way down it is jump kicked into oblivion, Impaled with Extreme Prejudice by Daimos' fist or Clean Cut down the middle by a karate chop. It gets upgraded later in the series into Fire Blizzard, which follows a Freezer Blast, thanks to the enemy upgrading their robots' armor.)
• Luke, I Am Your Father ( Erika's mother).
• Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter (Erika. Or better said, she's The Evil Prince's Beautiful Little Sister)
• Made of Explodium: Some Robeasts exploded even if Kazuya only had punched through them or sliced in two pieces with a karate chop or sweeping kick. It was justified in the episode 9, though, when he fought a mecha had a nuke inside.
• Manly Tears: And Kazuya is not ashamed of shedding them!
• The Medic (Erika's job)
• McNinja (Brahmin assassins)
• Motion Capture Mecha (One of the first in animation history. There was at least one before; the South Korean cartoon Robot Taekwon V (so named because its pilot was a Tae Kwon Do champ who used martial arts to fight the Monster of the Week) which, apart from this gimmick started out as a cheap knockoff of Mazinger Z.)
• My God, What Have I Done? ==> Driven to Suicide (Richter had the realization of the former in the last episode and drove him to the latter, but not before saving the lives of everybody in the Brahmins' space station first. However, Richter's death gets re-written as a Heroic Sacrifice in Super Robot Wars Advance.)
• 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", Georiya is pronounced either "Gero" or "Guerroyer" and Balbas is "Valbas".
• Name's the Same (Kazuya may be an astronaut and knows karate. But he can't turn into a Kamen Rider, nor did he sell his soul to a devil)
  • Also, he doesn't have a long lost sister who got sucked into another world and became a Magic Knight.
• Names to Know in Anime (Akira Kamiya, Kazuya's seiyuu, also a very prominent seiyuu in voicing Super Robot heroes during the classic era. The OP was sung by Isao Sasaki, and his ex-wife Miyuki Ueda voices Erika, she also voiced every Nagahama heroines thus far (Chizuru of Combattler V, Megumi of Voltes V))
  • Also including Shozo Iizuka as Balbas (slightly Playing Against Type because he's quite the Noble Demon Anti-Villain in the end) and Ryusei Nakao as Georiya (more in-type, but he used a REALLY deeper tone of voice, making him quite unrecognizable)
• 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.)
  • Which is the reason Daimos was installed with Freezer Blast and the Double Blizzard upgraded into the Fire Blizzard. Practically New Upgrades as the Enemy Armor demands, which tallied with it's literal Mid-Season Upgrade.
• Not So Different (There are bad humans and good humans, as well as bad Brahmins and good Brahmins)
• Obviously Evil: One look at Georiya (Grovil in the Filipino dub) and you just knew he had something to do with the death of the previous Brahmin emperor and Kazuya's father.
• Please Spare Her My Liege!(Margaret did this to save Erika from Richter's wrath when he found out she was in love with Kazuya.)
• The Power of Love (Other than Daimos, THIS is Kazuya's forte)
  • He even develops a combo attack with Erika based on love in the Victory Five manga!
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Halleck Gurney.
• Ramming Always Works: Ramming its fist -or itself- through the enemy is one of the actual attacks from Daimos, and often Kazuya uses it like a Finishing Move.
• Rapunzel Hair (You've got to wonder how Richter could fly around without getting his hair stuck into something mid-flight. Even the girls' hair lengths are more manageable in comparison.)
• Redemption Equals Death for several bad guys
• Revenge Before Reason: Richter. Or maybe we should say revenge INSTEAD OF reason. He was so full of fury and hatred all he could think of was taking revenge, refusing to heed the advice of whoever tried talking him into making peace with the Earthians.
• Robeast: Mecha Soldiers.
• Samurai (Kazuya's buddy Kyoshiro... an afro Samurai)
• Say My Name ("ERIKAAAAA!!!", also followed by "KAZUYAAAAA!!!!")
• Shorttank (Nana, nicnkamed "Candy Candy with a gun" by fans)
• Shoryuken: "Hissatsu! Reppu! Seikenzukiii!"
• Spanner in the Works (Olban's plan for world domination started to unravel when Maradon, a gardener, found out he was responsible for the previous Emperor's assassination.)
• Spell My Name with an "S" (Brahmin... or Balm?)
• Star-Crossed Lovers (Kazuya and Erika)
• Super Robot
• Super Robot Wars (occasionally appears, though not as frequent as the other Choudenji series. On the bright side, it's the only Nagahama representative in MX and Compact)
  • In Super Robot Wars Alpha 3, Miwa is basically The Dragon of Gundam SEED's Murata Azrael, which actually makes a LOT of sense.
    • And here Daimos does the finishing blow when teamed up with Combattler V and Voltes V!
• Tall, Dark and Bishoujo (Erika)
• Telescoping Robot: The ornament on his chest were in reality two daggers, and they covered a hatch opened up to reveal its Chest Blaster. Its feet were armed with retractable spikes...
• To the Batpole (Kazuya's boarding/transformation sequence clocks in at over two minutes long.)
• Training from Hell (Kazuya, in terms of how he got back to shape from rehabilitation)
• Transformation Name Announcement
• Transforming Mecha: One of the first Anime examples. Daimos had two forms: spaceship and battle robot.
  • The transformation also takes forever, with multiple cockpit switches.
• The Three Faces of Eve (Nana=The Child, Erika=The Wife, Raiza=The Seductress)
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Subverted. Sometimes Kyoshiro throws his katana like if it was a spear, but sometimes he misses.
• Tricked-Out Shoes: Daimos had rockets on its feet AND retractable spikes to simultaneously kick and stab Robeasts with.
  • Armed Legs
• Underwater Base: Brahmins Home Base on Earth was located on the bottom of the ocean.
• Unlucky Childhood Friend: Nana
• Unstoppable Rage (Miwa managed to invoke Kazuya's rage and PAID for it)
• Variable-Length Chain
• Villainous Breakdown (Richter did not take Erika being in love with Kazuya well.)
• Winged Humanoid (The whole Brahmin race)
• Worthy Opponent: Richter, full stop. No finer man ever wore a skirt than Richter. Halleck also considered Kazuya being his.
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Several Brahmin have blusih or greenish hair.