Super Robot - Super Robots Outside of Japan

Super Robots Outside of Japan

Apart from Gigantor's cult-classic status in the United States, the only true impact Super Robot shows made in the States before the 1980s was in the form of the Force Five series, which was a compilation of different Japanese giant robot shows, and with the Mattel Shogun Warriors toyline. Super Robots are much more likely to be known in the United States by way of Voltron: Defender of the Universe (1984), a translated and edited compendium of two earlier Japanese series, King of the Beasts, GoLion (1981) and Kikou Kantai Dairugger XV (1982), which became the top-rated children's show on U.S. television and a 1980s pop-culture icon in America.

Largely due to Mazinger Z and redubbed versions of other Super Robot series, the Super Robot genre garnered much more visibility in other parts of the world, particularly in Europe, Latin America, and the Arab world. Mazinger Z also had a short-lived U.S. TV broadcast in the mid-1980s under the title TranZor Z, but was regarded by many viewers as a rip-off of Voltron, despite the fact that Mazinger preceded the first Voltron series, Golion, on television in Japan by almost a decade. However, the series proved much more popular abroad, especially in the Spanish-dubbed version in Mexico and other Latin American countries.

Another Super Robot show which was shown in America but had a more significant impact in Europe and the Middle East was another Go Nagai creation, UFO Robo Grendizer. In the United States, this series was part of the Force Five package. However, in France, Grendizer, retitled Goldorak, became a major hit in its initial broadcast there in 1978, three years after its Japanese premiere, and paved the way for other successful European dubs of the series (such as Goldrake in Italy); in fact, in 2005, Toei Animation and Go Nagai's Dynamic Planning won a substantial judgment against a French company selling pirated Goldorak DVDs. One European country where the Super Robot genre has been particularly successful is Italy, where a number of Super Robot series not shown in any other territory outside Japan (such as Zambot 3) have been screened on TV especially from the late 70s to the mid 80s giving rise to phrases like "The invasion of the animated Japanese robots". Grendizer has also gained a wide fanbase in the Arabic part of the Middle East during the 1980s and 1990s and still airs on several Arabic networks to this very day, where it is considered one of the anime titles responsible for the creating the Anime Invasion in that part of the world especially mecha anime and is considered one of the most popular Arabic dubbed cartoons of all time. Unlike the Italian and French dub, it kept the original Japanese names of the characters. In the Philippines, Voltes V was shown locally in the 1970s and again in 1990s, and remains immensely popular among Filipinos.