Customer Rating:  
Summary: Classic 1980s anime with beautiful girls and tons of mecha
Comment: DANGAIO was a three-part mecha-themed OAV anime series begun in 1987 that tells the tale of four young pilots with amnesia (three beautiful girls, one handsome boy) who have been found and trained by the mysterious Professor Tahsan to pilot a four-sectioned giant fighting robot called Dangaio. Volume 1 introduces the characters and includes flashbacks showing glimpses of the pasts of two of the female pilots, Miya Alice and Pi Thunder, as they slowly recover their memories and realize they're humans with enhanced psychic powers rather than specially built androids as they were programmed to believe. Much of the action takes place on Earth as the four desert their mentor to protect Miya's home planet from an attack by the vicious mercenary, Gil Berg, who works for a group of space pirates.
There's nonstop mecha action, beautiful design and several imaginative touches, including the imposing figures of the space pirates, disembodied heads of old men housed in giant mecha bodies. Fans of 1980s anime should revel in the general look of the piece, with its bold lines, bright colors, complex mecha and fast action. DANGAIO was directed by Toshihiro Hirano and written by Noboru Aikawa, the same team responsible for the OAV series, VAMPIRE PRINCESS MIYU and ICZER-ONE. Among the designers on the crew are some of the future big names of mecha anime--Shoji Kawamori (ESCAFLOWNE), Koichi Ohata (GENOCYBER), Masami Obari (BUBBLEGUM CRISIS), and Hideaki Anno (EVANGELION).
The pretty face of Miya Alice, with its giant pupils, cute features, long hair and prominent bangs, should be familiar to longtime anime fans who've never even seen this series since her image became an iconic representation of 1980s anime thanks to its frequent appearance in ads for DANGAIO back in the days when it was one of the few anime tapes for sale on the U.S. market and its distributor, U.S. Renditions, was one of the very few anime video distributors in the U.S.
There is a DVD from Manga Entertainment called HYPER-COMBAT UNIT DANGAIOH, which cuts this volume down to 11 minutes from 45 and also cuts Volumes 2 & 3 down by 15 min. each and then offers the whole package in an English dub only...a TERRIBLE English dub. You're better off trying to find these rare VHS editions of the original uncut volumes in Japanese with subtitles.
A TV series remake, "Great Dangaioh," premiered in 2001 and is now available on DVD.
Customer Rating:
Summary: It's different, really.
Comment: ...not just different, it's creative. I don't want to spoil anything, it might not float everyone's boat, but for an anime made in the 80's, it was pretty good animation. The characters are less cliche. Fairly original. The best parts about Dangaio were the mecha designs. SA WEET! I'd love to find me a copy. But a word of advice. Don't get the dubbed version. I'm not your typical anti-dub anime fan, that's not why I'm saying it. Some dubs are good, some are bad. The dub for Dangaio was terrible. It sounded like a girl with a brooklyn accent was yelling in three different voices.
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