With news that we are getting an all-new home release of Armored Trooper VOTOMS in the near future, the classic mecha anime series will also be released on the streaming service HIDIVE later this month.
VOTOMS is one of Ryosuke Takahashi’s formative mecha anime series and surprisingly influential with it. Not only in terms of other anime and games in Japan but also in the West with gaming series such as Heavy Gear.
Much of how the mecha in Heavy Gear operated were copied from VOTOMS and it’s nice to think that this classic series will finally become more readily available outside of Japan.
When I interviewed Takahashi a few years ago, he had this to say about the story in VOTOMS.
I had two main choices for the story; one based around someone fighting within a hierarchy like in Mobile Suit Gundam, with the main character part of that system, and the other focused on a totally free man, so not part of any group or faction. I couldn’t really decide on which story to do and so I asked Yoshiyuki Tomino for his advice, on which story should I pick. Tomino thought it should be the free man, so from that I took the story in that direction. Following that I thought how would this free man need to pilot a mecha, so being free and still able to pilot a mecha. I took a hint from the Steve McQueen film, Junior Bonner, as he travels around different towns with his horse as his rodeo partner and makes money by winning the rodeo. That lead into Chirico Cuvie, where his partner is not a horse but a mecha and he fights from town to town in battling arenas to make money. This allowed Chirico to pilot a mecha without the need to being part of any kind of military faction or organization.
The mecha design in VOTOMS was also groundbreaking and like Fang of the Sun Dougram marked the start of the real robot mecha boom in Japan during the 80s.
The mecha design for VOTOMS was also unique and when I talked to Kunio Okawara about it he cited the fact that it was designed that way due to how people of his generation had directly experienced war.
In terms of the design itself, Takahashi doesn’t tend to have too many requirements, so he doesn’t ask me to change this part or that part. He doesn’t do that. Where we both met in terms of ideas was that we understood the idea of heavy armaments for real warfare. Whereas the younger generation nowadays, who haven’t experienced war, would never really understand how something that heavy was so close to our lives. So because they never really experienced war, they could never really come up with something like VOTOMS. For instance, the generation of Yutaka Izubuchi already has a great deal of classic designs surrounding him, so their life is so far away from actual warfare. VOTOMS was a result of people who directly experienced wartime.
While this is not the first time VOTOMS has come Westward, as the series received a limited DVD and VHS release years ago, I am glad to see a series as influential as this receive a global release.
The premiere on HIDIVE for VOTOMS is scheduled for July 28 and will be available in the U.S. and Canada, as well as Australia, New Zealand, U.K. and Ireland.
The plan is to release three episodes every Saturday from this starting date.
What’s not clear is whether this release will be of the remastered high-definition version and if it will include all the OVAs.
However, for now, we have at least what looks to be the TV series for VOTOMS available outside of Japan and that is great to see.
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