Gear Fighter Dendoh (GEAR電童) is a Japanese robot anime television series produced by TV Tokyo, Yomiko Advertising and Sunrise. It was directed by Mitsuo Fukuda, with Chiaki Morosawa handling series scripts, Hirokazu Hisayuki designing the characters and monsters, Satoshi Shigeta serving as mechanical animation director and Toshihiko Sahashi composing the music. The series ran for 38 episodes, from October 4, 2000 to June 27, 2001, on the TV Tokyo network and its affiliates. The series features many of the production staff and main cast members that worked on the Future GPX Cyber Formula series that concluded in 2000, including Fukuda, Hisayuki, Morosawa, and Shigeta, and many of them went on to participate in the later Mobile Suit Gundam SEED series as well. The production period of the anime was a transitional period in which the production environment for animated works was shifting from the traditional cel coloring and film compositing to coloring and editing on computers, and the percentage of computer production increased in the latter half of the series. Although 3D computer graphics with cel shading were used, they were limited to a small portion of stock shots due to the limited processing power of computers at the time, lack of technical expertise, and budgetary constraints.

Summary

One day, a shiny object crashed from outer space and burst into flames, from where six colored lights flew away. On the opposite shore, a girl with blue hair staggered along the beach. She had run out of strength and collapsed, but there were two mobile terminals beside her, and a figure came to her aid. 17 years later, the giant fortress "Spiral Castle" of Galfa, a mechanical life form that plans to exterminate the human race, flies to the moon one day. From the fortress, the "mecha-beasts," robots under its command, begin their march toward the earth. Hokuto Kusanagi, a boy who has moved to Hoshimi Town, meets Ginga Izumo, a boy practicing kenpō in the schoolyard of his elementary school. Soon after that, a number of mecha-beasts, which have taken up interceptor satellites, fly in and begin attacking the town. Worried about their families, they hurry home, but on the way they find a lost little girl crying and try to save her. Just as a mecha-beast sets its sights on them and attacks, a giant blue robot breaks through the floor and appears, welcoming the startled pair into its chest cockpit. It is the "Gear Fighter Dendoh," the hope of mankind.

Characters

Gear Machines

Gear Fighter Dendoh (Gear 戦士電童)

Knight Gear Oger (騎士 Gear 凰牙)

Unicorn Drill

Viper Whip

Leo Circle

Bull Horn

Dragon Flare

Gatling Boar

Chojuuoh Kiba

Phoenix Alae

Galfa Empire

Seventeen years before the events of the series, Emperor Galfa was a biological manager program from planet Alktos that sought to destroy human life due to how they can and have easily destroyed nature. In an effort to save the environment from human intervention, he created a vast empire of machines to exterminate human life and named the empire after himself. In the final episode Galfa reveals his true form as a six headed mechanical dragon, possibly a reference to The Beast From The Sea or Orochi. After conquering the planet he created a large moon-sized satellite resembling the Death Star that emits an energy barrier that shields the entire planet and not only houses all of his forces, but also is armed with a gravitational cannon that can destroy planets.

Main Forces

Machine Beasts

Professional Machines

Heavy Machines

Episode list

Video game

Gear Fighter Dendoh has spawned one platform title for the PlayStation. It was released in 2001. Dendoh was also featured in the Super Robot Wars series of Japanese simulation games. It has appeared in 2002's Super Robot Wars R for the Game Boy Advance and Super Robot Wars MX for the PlayStation 2 and its PSP version.

Homage Weapons

In episode 24 of the series Dendoh is forced to fight without the aid of data weapons, forcing it to use an arsenal of weapons that are homages to various early mecha anime. This incarnation has been dubbed as Full Armor Dendoh.