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Space Runaway Ideon

Entry updated 2 February 2026. Tagged: TV.

Japanese animated tv series (1980-1981; vt The Ideon); original title Densetsu Kyojin Ideon ["Legendary Giant Ideon"]. Produced by Sunrise. Directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino. Written by Arata Koga, Hiroyasu Yamaura, Kenichi Matsuzaki, Sukehiro Tomita and Yuuji Watanabe. Voice cast includes Yoku Shioya, Hideyuki Tanaka and Keiko Toda. Mechanical design by Yuichi Higuchi; character design by Tomonori Kogawa; music by Koichi Sugiyama. 39 episodes of 25 minutes. Colour.

Set in the year 2300, the Space Opera narrative begins on the remote human colony world Solo, where archaeologists uncover the remnants of an extinct civilization: a colossal Spaceship (the Solo Ship) and three vehicles that combine to form the giant Mecha, the Ideon. This discovery coincides with humanity's First Contact with the Buff Clan, who arrive seeking the legendary energy source known as the Ide. Though described as Aliens hailing from their own homeworld, the Buff Clan look like humans, down to having human blood types and being able to have children together, something the show unfortunately never rationalizes. The difference is more pronounced in the spaceship and mecha design: those of humans tend to be more mundane (with Ideon itself being a classic example of Japanese giant Robot trope), whereas Buff Clan machines look more like visions of alien machinery, more common at that time in Western sf art than Japanese, leading some critics to read one dimension of the conflict as a clash between Japanese and Western civilizations.

The contact becomes a Disaster, triggered when the Buff Clan noblewoman Karala Ajiba (Toda) ventures among the colonists and is mistakenly believed to have been captured. The resulting spiral of violence leads to the destruction of the colony and the flight of the human survivors (as well as Karala) aboard the Solo Ship. Pursued across space by Buff Clan forces, the refugees, including hot-headed teenage protagonist Cosmo Yuki (Shioya) and stoic soldier Bes Jordan (Tanaka) – who becomes the ship's captain – are drawn into an escalating interstellar War in which the Ideon repeatedly manifests overwhelming, barely controllable power.

As the series progresses, the Ide is revealed to be an effectively infinite, possibly sentient energy responding to intense emotional states, especially fear and the instinct to survive; its activation appears amplified in the presence of children aboard the ship; an indication, perhaps, that the future of both races literally lies with the next generation. Each confrontation amplifies the Ideon's capabilities, culminating in the development of superweapons weaponizing Black Holes, capable of annihilating entire planets. Neither side in the conflict achieves genuine understanding, and every attempt at negotiation collapses into renewed violence. The series thus explores the futility of war, presenting Communication failure as fatal rather than remediable.

Although structured episodically, with early episodes following the formulaic "monster-of-the-week" pattern, Ideon develops an increasingly oppressive cumulative arc. Internal tensions among the human crew – particularly suspicion toward Karala as an alien "other" – parallel the larger interspecies conflict, with both the humans and the Buff Clan suffering from internal divisions. The show's bleak trajectory has two alternative but reasonably similar endings, an abbreviated one seen in the television show and another in the theatrical film The Ideon: Be Invoked (1982), which delivers Tomino's intended finale. In both cases, once humans and the Buff Clan prove themselves incapable of coexistence, the Ide reveals itself as a cosmic judgment mechanism, exterminating both humanity and the Buff Clan, and perhaps even destroying the entire universe (see End of the World). In a final metaphysical gesture, the souls of the dead, including children and a newborn messianic figure (the child of Karala and Bes), are translated into a new cosmos, implying rebirth through annihilation (see Reincarnation). This ending positions the Ide as a force comparable to Gods and Demons: a godlike machine activated by trauma and fear rather than heroism; impersonal, inscrutable, and absolute.

Thematically, Space Runaway Ideon pushes Military SF pessimism to an extreme. The series' minimal comic relief, frequent character deaths (including civilians and children), and bleak outlook set it apart from conventional robot hero shows, aligning it more with a post-apocalyptic tragedy or an epic cautionary tale. Where Tomino's earlier Mobile Suit Gundam (1979-1980) offered realistic military drama while retaining a belief in enlightened political learning, moral agency, and the possibility of a compromise, Ideon is much more bleak, suggesting that coexistence between intelligent species will be hard, and failure at it, devastating. Tomino's recurrent interest in mass death and civilian suffering – already visible in Invincible Super Man Zambot 3 (1977), where most characters perish – here expands to civilizational extinction, contributing to his fan sobriquet "Kill 'Em All Tomino".

The franchise consists of the television series, a compilation film The Ideon: A Contact (1982), and the conclusion The Ideon: Be Invoked (1982). It was also retold in a novel format (3 volumes, 1981-1982) and minor Manga instalments (including a crossover with the Gundam universe published in 1990); the titular robot also appeared in several instalments of the crossover video game Super Robot Wars. The television series won the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize for the second half of 1980

Commercially unsuccessful on first broadcast and curtailed before its planned conclusion (the television series was planned for a 43-episode run), Ideon nevertheless acquired cult status and exerted disproportionate influence, becoming notorious for its relentless pessimism, apocalyptic climax, and radical rethinking of the super-robot format. Less popular than the more enduring Gundam sequence, which eventually grew into a massive franchise, it represents a darker and more metaphysical response to that series' attempt to rationalize robot warfare. Despite having little international exposure for decades – there was no official English release until 2017 – within the Anime industry, the series earned an outsized reputation and its bold storytelling, unflinching violence, and philosophical depth profoundly influenced later creators. Pioneering the idea that a Mecha series could tackle profound philosophical and spiritual questions, it paved the way for the "psychological mecha" subgenre, best known for Shinseiki Evangelion (1995-1996), which reworks many of its elements – sentient Mecha, traumatized pilots, Metaphysical questions, escalating catastrophe, and soul-merging apocalypse. Unlike most action-oriented robot series, Ideon refuses catharsis through victory, instead enacting a totally nihilistic narrative negation. Its combination of Space Opera scale, metaphysical speculation, and extreme pessimism marks it as a crucial transitional work, demonstrating that animated sf television (created to sell Toy robots) could sustain genuinely tragic, cosmological narratives as long ago as the early 1980s. [PKo]

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