Otakuism

Tekkaman Blade is an old anime from many ages ago. Ok, so actually it was 1992, but in anime years that’s like three centuries ago. My interest in TB is pretty simple; I saw an image of it on /m/ and thought it looked pretty awesome. Went to rightstuf and saw the first sixteen episodes on dvd for seventeen bucks. No way in hell could I not buy it at that price. Two months later and here I am after finishing it. Yes, I watch things slowly.

So what is Tekkaman Blade? Technically Tekkaman Blade is a remake of a really campy series called Tekkaman made in 1975, but best we forget that since TB is completely different. TB was also dubbed for American release on the first UPN channel and was called Teknoman, so some people may remember it from there. In United Earth Global year 193, just after completion of the massive orbital space ring, the earth is attacked by the Rahdam, insectoid aliens that quickly conquer the space ring and begin raining down death on earth. Their purpose is completely unknown, and they seem bent on wiping out humanity and covering the earth in mysterious spore trees. The battle against the Rahdam is useless, as the humans have no means to fight the laser attacks from the orbital ring, any attempts at flying being destroyed by the Rahdam.

The series starts with the amnesiac D-Boy falling to earth from outer space and being found by Aki and Noal, two members of the space agency. D-Boy — the name is given to him by Noal to signify Dangerous Boy — quickly awakens and demands to go back into space, even fighting his way to the only useable spacecraft. D-Boy manages to get into space along with Aki and Noal and transforms into Tekkaman Blade, a powerful machine form of himself that can fight and destroy the Rahdam. After witnessing D-Boy’s success in battle a special unit is formed around him, the Space Knights, who fight the Rahdam while also dealing with power plays and corruption in the earth military and government.

As Blade fights the Rahdam several new characters are introduced. There’s Tekkaman Dagger and Tekkaman Evil, beings like Blade that fight for the Rahdam, with Evil even being Blade’s own brother. The war reporter/military spy Balzac who joins the Knights and looks like he just stepped out of Vietnam. There’s the common grunt O’Toole, an awesome soldier who takes out Rahdam with nothing but a machine gun. Midway sees the introduction of Pegas, an AI robot created to help D-Boy transform into Blade after his tek-setter crystal is destroyed by Dagger and who also fights in battle. Blade uses his blade to destroy Rahdam, obviously, but can also use Voltekka, a massive energy attack from cannons hidden in his shoulders.

Of course for being a fifty episode series the first episodes of TB are rather episodic. However, there is a nice sense of continuity to things. Blade destroying a Rahdam nest in one episode will lead to a military strike on another area now that it’s clear, and so on. Plotlines introduced early on resurface later with dire consequences, and once Tekkaman Evil is introduced things really get rolling. None of the characters are really annoying to me. D-Boy has a nice “tortured soldier” thing going on, being brooding one minute and hot-blooded the next. Noal is the hotshot rival in the beginning but becomes more the reluctant friend later on. O’Toole is probably the most awesome character, being a normal soldier that takes on Rahdam and defeats them while singing Danny Boy. The episode focusing on him was really good, providing a realistic look at how normal people battle the Rahdam.

TB’s animation is par the course for an early nineties series. Not exactly bad, but you can definitely notice when bad animation is used. The animation style was a lot different then; everything’s a bit more realistic without any moe aesthetics or bishounen good looks. Men were men and women were women basically (except for the one character who is actually a man that talks like a woman). Still suffers from bad eighties fashion in the design area, though. The mecha designs are all cool in their own ways. I really like the idea of the power armors that the Tekkaman use. Right now the first DVD set is selling for seventeen dollars on rightstuf, so a real steal for anyone even slightly interested. So far it’s a good mecha show from the golden days of the genre (or twilight days of the genre depending on who your talking to). I really need to buy the second set soon. And now the first OP, because it’s actually a pretty awesome OP: