Taiyou no Kiba Dagram

I like Taiyou no Kiba Dagram a lot, but it is a hard show to recommend. Never before have I seen an anime that is both so brilliant yet flawed. It is easily among the best anime about revolution and war. While the anime started out as the classic "boy fall into mech cockpit and fight for what he believe in", it is NOT the kind of simplistic Star Wars-like rebellion tales. The show is amazingly detailed and realistic.

The anime explore every aspect of a guerilla war for independent: troops and officers recruitment, propaganda, supply lines, politics,.... Of course, some of the elements weren't ... as detailed as it is in real life, and any history and military nerds can pick it apart, but every thing still hold together as a very believable epic war story. This is also one of the few mecha anime in which combined arm tactics is important. The main mecha is just a cog in a machine, not the win button.

Realism aside, what is truly important for fiction is still story and characters, and this anime has it. The show has some of the best villains of all time. None of them are simple "I want to destroy the world" assholes. They are real people with complex motivations and desires. Once again, this anime got on my good side for having actually competent military commanders on both sides. All of the main cast are likable, although kind of bland.The story is slow moving, but became very engaging later on, as question like: "Is the sacrifice worth it?", "what is a true victory?", "how much power human have in the course of history?" were asked. Despite looking silly, this anime is very intelligent.

Unfortunately, the Dagram has some serious flaws that caused it to be forgotten. First of all, production value is bad, even by 80s standard. It look worse than Gundam 0079, which is 2 years older. The music is decent, but very repetitive. The story, as I said above, is good, but the build up is too long. In the age where most anime is only one cour long, this old anime took 3 cours to truly get going. Plenty of modern audiences will likely be very bored by this series. There are lots of 80s silliness and immersion breaking moments as well. Sadly, Taiyou no Kiba Dagram didn't age very well.

To sum up, this anime's one of my favorite, but it might not appeal to many. Because of that, I will list the pros and cons and let reader decide for themselves:

Pros:
-Intelligent story
-No over-powered mecha
-No annoying characters
-Great villains

Cons:
-Slow pacing
-Very long
-Lots of inappropriate silly moments
-Some plot armor and contrivances
-Poor animation and repetitive music

Dougram is one of the first mecha anime that followed the Gundam craze of the early 80's where the emphasis was less on a titular robot usually comprised of multiple parts piloted by different characters to form a super robot that would engage in monster of the week aliens or robots a la a tokusatsu-like style. Instead it opted for the grounded, more serious narrative that focuses on the characters and worldbuilding to formulate a fairly intricate albeit well-put-together story.

As is the nature of a show that was inspired heavily by Gundam, the plot and the way it executes its themes are quite similar in ... tone. Just like the Spacenoids that wish to secede from the Earth regime in 0079 Dougram's landscape is of a future Earth colony called Deloyer that advocates for total autonomy from Earth's regime. And following the similarities the story largely focuses on a group of kids and young adults who become guerrillas fighting against the Earth federation for that goal. It's a simple premise but the show does a very good job at keeping things interesting without forcing itself to drastically shift gears or focus on unrelated plotlines and the few subplots that exist are quite engaging and often serve well throughout most of the story.

What keeps this story consistently interesting is a memorable cast of characters on both the Deloyer and Earth sides, the villains especially having some surprisingly complex personalities and motivations that are explored a great deal that it never feels that they're acting out of character. Fans tend to state that the villains are far more interesting than the protagonists, and while that's true that doesn't necessarily mean they're bad protagonists. A word would be predictable; archetypal to what you'd expect when you see them. And if anything that serves as a strength to contrast a very pivotal point of war and politics where it establishes how much more intricate a villain's plan can be compared to the hero. The heroes simply want freedom, but the villains have a lot more complicated goals other than simply wanting to maintain the status quo.

And while I compare this show a lot more to Gundam it's actually quite similar to Legend of the Galactic Heroes with how it chooses to focus a lot on political developments and jumping around multiple locations with different characters. Not to say that it was an inspiration, but this show focuses a lot less on the titular robot than even Gundam does which had already significantly toned back on that aspect from super robot shows. Unlike other mecha shows from this era the length is not spent on filler or drawn out arcs as an excuse to extend the air time. Dougram is paced well and while there's a couple of recap episodes there's very little actual content that could be considered filler. Again like LotGH it does its best to make every bit of dialogue feel necessary to listen to to understand the buildup to character actions and motivations as well as being immediately relevant to the episode it takes place in. It might be a little wordy for some people but it's the type of show where if you're following along then you shouldn't ever be getting lost.

Now it's no mystery to anyone but 75 episodes is not short. This show visually has not aged well at all. Dougram had the unfortunate fate of being produced while the Gundam movies were being released, all the way up until Xabungle, Ideon's movies and Dunbine. Naturally, they'll prioritise the works of Tomino over a newcomer director which leads to its visuals taking a serious hit. Granted there is worse from this period and the storyboards are mostly fine so everything is conveyed in a very clear way. But the art direction leaves a lot to be desired as well as its character designs. While not awful they lack originality and feel like a pale imitation of Yoshikazu Yasuhiko's style with a more rough and unappealing look. One detail I never quite got was how some characters can have tiny cheekbones that make them almost look sickly and I can't tell if that's an intentional design or not. With that said characters and mecha designs are rarely off model, it just has very unimpressive art and especially animation. Despite coming out 2 years after 0079, the animation manages to be noticeably sloppier than it is in that show.

In addition to that I'm really not a fan of the combat armour designs. Understandably this is always going to be a lot more subjective than other points but Dougram and the many other designs derivative of it throughout the show are ugly. They almost look like monster trucks with legs instead of wheels except there's no visual creativity to reinterpret that concept. It really feels like a truck was copy pasted onto a pair of mecha legs, given some arms and called it a day. This show unlike Gundam does have a lot less supernatural elements so designs that are more comparable to real life designs makes sense but there was very little attempt at making them visually appealing, at least to me. In the end though I'm sure there's still some guy out there that owns every Dougram model kit that's ever been released.

Speaking on related topics, the soundtrack is also not particularly great. That's not because it's bad because it isn't, but more due to the lack of diversity and track number. I'm not exaggerating when I say you will hear like half of the entire soundtrack in a single episode on average. A lot of episodes start with the same minimalist percussive track and ends with the same dramatic motif at the climax of a battle. Even if it were mismanagement of using and placing the tracks in the right moments it's still got roughly 30 tracks to spread across 75 episodes which nowadays is the bare minimum for a 24 episode show. And to rectify the earlier point of it not being bad - It's good, there are some absolutely fantastic tracks sprinkled throughout. The main theme in particular is one of the best opening themes I've heard from an 80's anime which is saying a lot. But it suffers from repeating the motifs in many tracks. It feels like there's even less than 30 odd tracks as a result.

One more piece of criticism I can grant to the story is its lack of theming. The message of this story isn't a large part of its writing which can lead to it feel directionless at times. Not that it loses its footing and has bad pacing but that it doesn't play with any central ideas that drives the narrative and characters other than putting an end to war for the sake of independency. Gundam for instance while being about a war still offers the idea of finding where you belong in a world that you feel alone in and that war can be overcome if humans learn to understand one another even if ultimately it's something that may never happen. A simple premise but these themes drive a lot of the character dynamics further into the story that make for some extremely memorable character arc and story conclusions. And while Dougram does try to do this late into the story it feels like there was a lot more room for this discourse from the beginning. This isn't necessarily inferring to a story without meaning, there are messages and takeaways within the episodes of the hopelessness and harshness of war but it rarely goes beyond that.

All in all this show is still good. It's old and before Sunrise hit their stride as a massive studio so of course it's going to have its production problems and be longer than it should be but the narrative is extremely tight, has great characters and it has some fantastic buildup. Even if it came before Votoms and far before 08th MS Team this is still a Ryou Takanashi and Kanda directed anime who are highly respected in the mecha community. I know that I compared this show a lot to Gundam but it's a comparison worth making as it's one of the first mecha shows that was inspired by its grittier premise, themes on war and serves as a good indication of where the genre could be taken with guidance outside of Tomino's lenses; an indication that the genre isn't doomed to poorly copy Gundam. The length and visual quality may deter you from giving this show a try but if you're a fan of the original Gundam that would prefer a more gritty depiction as in other Takanashi shows like Votoms then this may be for you. Don't get distracted by its removal from the annals of history, Dougram is well worth changing the channel to. And with the advent of a recent manga headed by Yasuo Ohtagaki and supervised by the man himself Takanashi who knows. Sunrise never hates the opportunity to shill a new toy line and their fanbase is always chomping at the bit for a new mecha anime series done by them no matter how niche it ends up being. Not to say that it's even remotely likely but it's always up in the air as long as there's proof it hasn't been completely forgotten.

I would recommend this show if you are a fan of war drama/politics in general. If you like UC Gundam, you might like this. The war/politics between two worlds is surprisingly good, but don't watch this if you want exciting Mecha battles as this is the show's main flaw. Though the action does get pretty decent in the last arc.

One can easily make comparisons to Gundam First, but they are totally different in regards to focus and execution. The action in Dougram is interesting as each battle is a little different with a clear objective in mind. It can be ... as simple as crossing a bridge or taking out an artillery battery. These scenarios keep things fresh. The problem is the execution. The battles feel rather wonky up until the last arc.

The show excels in drawing you into the conflict between two worlds. It feels like a real conflict with real people on both sides. The game of politics is surprising good and adds to conflict between worlds. The main characters aren't terrible, but do feel a little lacking in character development. The real stars of the show are the leaders of the conflict. They all have their own goals in mind and are either plagued with ideology, pride, ambition, ect which makes for a surprisingly good watch.

If you are more a fan of the war/politics side of UC Gundam than the action, then this is a must watch as this show definitely has more meat. Also, no newtype magic crap is present in this show. Some would consider this a plus.

Cheers.