Heroic Age
Entry updated 8 December 2025. Tagged: TV.
Japanese animated tv series (2007). Xebec. Directed by Takashi Noto and Toshimasa Suzuki. Produced by Gō Nakanishi, Takatoshi Chino and Takashi Noto. Written by Tow Ubukata. Music by Naoki Satō. Voice cast includes Hiroshi Yazaki and Yui Ishikawa. 26 25-minute episodes. Colour.
In a Far-Future Space Opera setting, the cosmos has been shaped by four "Tribes" summoned by the godlike Golden Tribe: Silver, Bronze, Heroic and Iron. Humanity, last to answer the call, is the underdog Iron Tribe – militarily outclassed by rival Alien species, exiled from Earth and scattered across space. The humanoid Silver Tribe dominate as de facto rulers (see Galactic Empires), combining advanced Technology with Psi Powers, usually enforcing their will through the subservient, insectoid, Hive Minds of the Bronze Tribe, reminiscent of the Arachnids in Starship Troopers (1997). Princess Dhianeila (Ishikawa) of the Iron Tribe, travelling on the starship Argonaut, seeks the last surviving "Nodos", a powerful avatar of the vanished Heroic Tribe foretold to save her people, while the other four known Nodos (members of the Heroic Tribe) serve the Silver Tribe. She finds him as Age (Yazaki), a feral boy raised on a ruined colony world, who transforms into a colossal, near-indestructible Mecha, bound by an ancient contract. His arrival allows humanity to re-emerge as a galactic power and reignites a stellar war over prophecy, survival and the right to inherit the universe. The story's finale sees diplomacy (see Politics) triumph over mindless slaughter, as the Silver Tribe Transcends, following the Golden Tribe, and leaving the Iron Tribe in control of known space (however, the wishes or agency of non-humanoid Bronze and Heroic Tribes are never given much thought).
The series draws on Hesiod's myth of the Five Ages of Man, its very title nodding to the Heroic Age of Greek legend. Many of the characters and plot elements are direct analogues to Greek mythic figures and tales. The protagonist Age is patterned after Heracles (Hercules): like the classical hero, he must complete Twelve Labors (a number of major trials are alluded to throughout the series) and Dhianeila, who becomes his romantic interest, is a variant of Deianeira, who in myth was Heracles' wife. The very structure of the story evokes Jason's Argonauts and Odysseus's odyssey. The show's cosmology also reads like a sci-fi pantheon of Clichés: the transcendent elder Golden Tribe are akin to creator gods, the Silver and Bronze Tribes function as haughty "elves in space" and Monsters, while simultaneously recalling the Starcraft (1998)-like Protoss and Zergs (see also Gods and Demons), and the Iron Tribe's champion (Age) is the mortal hero chosen by prophecy. This notion of "passing the flame" from an elder, godlike species to humanity recalls numerous sf works (see Uplift).
The Nodos fight as quasi-Kaiju/demigod like beings whose duels shatter fleets and planets, while an oracle-like "Labyrinth" and a set of "Labours" (tasks imposed on each Nodos) provide the story's scaffolding. Around these ritualized clashes, the series builds a fairly detailed diplomatic and strategic frame. Military SF dimension is a pleasant Macross-style mix of Legend of the Galactic Heroes and Mobile Suit Gundam: larger battles feature hundreds of specialized spaceships and scores of Mecha. Diplomacy and intrigue abound: human factions argue over how far to trust Age, Silver Tribe clans manoeuvre to contain an "upstart" species, and smaller powers try to survive between them. Space battles tend to be schematic – great armadas exchanging beams while the outcome is decided off to the side by Nodos – but the show repeatedly returns to questions of obligation, contract and free will: whether a being created as a weapon can choose peace, and whether Dhianeila's pacifist ideals can survive when her fleet is effectively hitching a ride on a god of war.
Composer Naoki Satō's powerful orchestral score further elevates the atmosphere, with grandiose choral themes that make the space conflicts feel operatic and fateful. Visually, the series combines stock late-2000s digital compositing with some striking set-pieces: luminous Silver Tribe armadas, crystalline habitats, Stargates, and the massive, fluidly animated Nodos forms. Character designs by Hisashi Hirai are instantly recognizable from his work on various Sunrise titles, with long-limbed figures and sharp-chinned heroes, and with nods to the style of Leiji Matsumoto. Tonally the show sits between high seriousness and oddly gentle character work: Age is an almost childlike hero whose joy in battle is framed as instinct rather than machismo, while Dhianeila is a soft-spoken strategist whose gifts are empathy and long-range foresight rather than command bark. The contrast between the gritty tactical warfare of human soldiers and the almost mystical battles of demigods is striking, if at times tonally dissonant. The mix of mythic destiny and sf rationale – contracts encoded as cosmic law, starfaring species treated as "Tribes" in a galactic epic – makes the series feel at once old-fashioned and slightly off-kilter, echoing both space epics like Space Opera and heroic legend.
The show emerged at a time when original space adventures were seeing a decline in popularity within the Japanese market. The Anime industry had increasingly shifted its focus toward adaptations of existing manga or light novels and gravitated toward more earthbound sci-fi narratives. Its complex mythological overlay may have felt ponderous to viewers expecting a straightforward action romp, and resonated more with more mature viewers who recognized the Classical allusions and could appreciate the narrative on that allegorical level.
Reviewers largely praised its ambitious mythic frame, coherent (if occasionally talky) worldbuilding, and the sheer physicality of the Nodos battles, while criticizing sometimes static fleet action, uneven pacing, and archetypal characters (the pure-hearted princess, the feral hero, the jealous knight, etc.) that lacked a certain relatable spark. Despite these narrative shortcomings, most detractors noted that the combination of the soundtrack and visual design effectively captured the immense scale and wonder of its galactic setting. Heroic Age remains a minor but distinctive entry in twenty-first-century anime Military SF/Space Opera genres, attempting to recapture the sweeping scope of vintage space operas while for grafting Greek heroic myth onto a fairly orthodox interstellar-war template and playing the result unusually straight.
A short Manga adaptation (graph 2007-2008) retells the anime's main story with minor compression and from a different character's perspective. [PKo]
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