Dragonar reception

[Mafty]

So in the Seed Freedom thread Fukuda's work on Dragonar was discussed. So in a bigger sense, how exactly was Metal Armor Dragonar recivied in Japan in the 80's? It appears to have completed it's full run, though it never got sequels. So how were the ratings? Did the merchandise sell?

[Seto Kaiba]

So in the Seed Freedom thread Fukuda's work on Dragonar was discussed. So in a bigger sense, how exactly was Metal Armor Dragonar recivied in Japan in the 80's?

In a word? "Poorly."

If I had to point to one primary cause for Metal Armor Dragonar's unenthusiastic reception, I'd point to Dragonar's creators having done very little to give the series a distinct identity among Sunrise's catalog of robot anime or among the genre as a whole. Mecha anime had a lot of copycat shows after the one-two punch that was Gundam and Macross. Sunrise's own Gundam had largely set the tone for the genre and so it ended up walking into a trap of its own making. The team working on Dragonar were concerned about how to make the series feel distinct and different from Gundam, which was in decline, and they were right to be concerned because they themselves struggled to write an original story outside of the Gundam box. The end result was a pretty mediocre series that felt like a bootleg Gundam title. It wasn't bad enough for the audience to be reaching for the remote the minute it came on, but it wasn't good enough for audiences to tune in for it.

In short, Dragonar is a victim of Gundam's success. Gundam was so huge that its tropes became the default, and Sunrise itself forgot how to write without them.

It appears to have completed it's full run, though it never got sequels. So how were the ratings?

Never better than mediocre. It was an unremarkable middle-of-the-pack performer, which probably owes a lot to the glutted market and its similarity to Gundam at a time when audiences were feeling a little burned out on Gundam after Zeta and ZZ.

Did the merchandise sell?

Oh my, no. No it did not. Arguably, another product of the show having little to distinguish it from Gundam.

Poor sales, combined with the show's slowly slipping ratings, was what led to a major retooling of the series partway into production with several switchups in staffing like bringing in Toyoo Ashida and Kentaro Haneda and saw it succumb to a bit of genre drift... which just made both problems worse in the long run.

Merchandise sales and ratings were so poor by the end that the studio apparently decided against trying to release the series on home video after its broadcast ended. It was over a decade later that Sunrise finally tried to release the series on laserdisc... just in time for DVDs to make laserdisc sales collapse. Dragonar was eventually rescued from the rubbish heap of history by references and cameos in Super Robot Wars and Another Century's Episode, and finally got its first modestly successful home video release in 2005.

[Mafty]

Thanks , it's always neat finding the background on the anime.

Seto Kaiba wrote "In short, Dragonar is a victim of Gundam's success. Gundam was so huge that its tropes became the default, and Sunrise itself forgot how to write without them.

Makes sense , as discussed on the Code Geass Roze forum many Sunrise real robot shows turn into Gundam at some point (the most obvious being Buddy Complex which is a bunch of Gundam Cliches mixed with time travel), A big exception would probably be the works of Ryosuke Takahashi; which while clealry following in the Real Robot Genre from Gundam, had quite a bit of their own distict story (VOTOMS even launched its own franchise due to this).

It's also worth noting that several 1980s Sunrise mech were actually a bit different from just following Gundam tropes ( Vifam(with the alien war), Votoms(having more of a Dune influence), Dougram(focusing even more on background politics than Gundam did), Galient(having more European fairy tale knight elements), Dunbine(very Fantasy knight orient with more focus on mystisim),Layzner(focusing on alien invasion and cold war issues), L-Gaim(more science fantasy with interplanatary conflict), Patlabor(being a robot ploice procedural/comedy), Dragonar seemed to be the most directly dervitive of Gundam, which may have been the issue.

Seto KaibaWrote No it did not. Arguably, another product of the show having little to distinguish it from Gundam.

It's a shame the merch didn't sell better. While the Federation units are kind of unique , Giganos mechs are actually pretty creative , with many looking quite different from Zeon designs.

[Seto Kaiba]

It's also worth noting that several 1980s Sunrise mech were actually a bit different from just following Gundam tropes ( Vifam(with the alien war), Votoms(having more of a Dune influence), Dougram(focusing even more on background politics than Gundam did), Galient(having more European fairy tale knight elements), Dunbine(very Fantasy knight orient with more focus on mystisim),Layzner(focusing on alien invasion and cold war issues), L-Gaim(more science fantasy with interplanatary conflict), Patlabor(being a robot ploice procedural/comedy), Dragonar seemed to be the most directly dervitive of Gundam, which may have been the issue.

Different, maybe... but often not different enough to be distinctive.

Remember, anime is a visual medium. It's not enough to just emphasize different aspects of the same basic story formula or apply different thematic inspirations. You have to make your story visually distinctive. I don't think it's a coincidence that the Sunrise-made non-Gundam mecha titles that most resemble Gundam visually (like Vifam, Dragonar, and Dougram) were typically the ones that did the worst in the long run while the ones with their own distinct visual "flavor" (like VOTOMS, Dunbine, and Patlabor) are the ones that made the most impression on the audience and achieved more long-term success even if their ratings weren't so hot initially.

It's a shame the merch didn't sell better. While the Federation units are kind of unique , Giganos mechs are actually pretty creative , with many looking quite different from Zeon designs.

As a rule, it's usually the hero mecha that get people to open their wallets when it comes to toy/model sales.