Forgotten anime: Dragon’s Heaven (1988)
Just a Girl & Her AI Battle Robot
Here’s an OVA you’re not likely to find outside of youtube or a streaming site: Dragon’s Heaven. (It took me a while to find it, because I’d heard the title as “Dragon Seven” :p
It’s the story of an AI mech, created to work with a human pilot to fight a war against rebellious AI robots. After his pilot died and the war ended, he was left behind and put himself into standby mode…
… for a thousand years. Enter Ikuru, a young woman with an interest in engineering and a desire to protect her city from the Empire of Brazil.
Eventually the prime rebel AI arrives with the invading Brazilian air armada and battle is joined!
It’s a simple story, with some humorous touches, but what steals the show is the artwork, heavily influenced by Jean Giraud (Mœbius), an influential French comic artist (also known for his designs in the Alien movie franchise).
Here are a couple Moebius images, for comparison:
Here’s where I found it on youtube. It starts with live footage of people making a large model of the robot. Let me know what you think of it!
3/5 – Awesome, but rather short and flat considering the 18/42 minutes of real-life 3D models.
The effort put into the model doesn’t make sense- I wonder if it was one of the crew’s obsessive hobby-project. The way the story plays out isn’t very tight from a modern perspective either, but fit with what you might have found in the Heavy Metal/Métal Hurlant magazine.
In Japan, what moe is now, giant robots were in the 1980s. The art of this movie was also inspired by Mœbius, one of the founders of the original Heavy Metal magazine.