GoShogun

Original story

The story is set in the early 21st century, in which a covert evil organization, Dokuga, led by lord NeoNeros, holds near total political, economic, and military control of the world. Dokuga agents try to forcibly recruit a brilliant physicist, Professor Sanada, who sets off a suicide bomb rather than let Dokuga acquire his secret research. His son Kenta becomes Dokuga's next target, but is saved by his father’s colleague and taken on board a teleporting fortress, Good Thunder. Teleportation is enabled by a mysterious form of energy, called Beamler, which was discovered by Sanada. The same energy also powers a giant battle robot, GoShogun, which is operated by three pilots. The crew of Good Thunder travels the world, repeatedly fighting off NeoNeros's forces with GoShogun and often hampering Dokuga's influence on the local level, whether by destroying their bases and businesses, assisting popular rebellions, or by averting environmental disasters. On at least one occasion GoShogun pilots must team up with Dokuga's three chief officers against a common enemy to prevent the destruction of them all. This sets the stage for an eleventh-hour reversal, in which the three Dokuga generals side definitively against NeoNeros with the GoShogun team.

Over the course of the series it is revealed that Beamler energy originates from a meteorite fragment found on the site of the Tunguska impact. It was sent to Earth by a supernatural power and was activated when humans attained the technological capacity for space exploration, in order to test whether humans are worthy of engaging with civilizations from other planets. Beamler's development is closely connected to Kenta, who in the end becomes the incarnate form of the energy and the representative of the earth's collective soul, including not only living things, but also newly sentient robots and machines. NeoNeros turns out to be a negative, evil form of the same energy. After defeating him, Kenta takes GoShogun into space.

North America

In 1985, Saban Entertainment combined footage from GoShogun and Akū Dai Sakusen Srungle (Great Military Operation in Subspace Srungle or Mission Outer Space Srungle), a similar show produced by Kokusai Eiga-sha, to form Macron 1. Taking two (or more) unrelated series and re-editing them to appear as one storyline was common practice in adapting anime series to American television, as the number of episodes in a typical anime frequently fell short of the minimum number required for five-days-a-week syndication in the US market (65). Aside from Macron 1, Voltron: Defender of the Universe, Robotech, and Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years were also stitched together in this manner. The combined series Macron 1 was produced and released in the United States, using the same voice cast as Carl Macek's Robotech adaptation.

In the US version, test pilot David Chance is accidentally transported into a parallel universe controlled by a tyrannical organization called GRIP, led by Dark Star. This allows GRIP to send their forces to Earth, leaving Dark Star's cyborg henchman Orn as deputy in the alternate universe. Fighting against GRIP are two teams comprising "Macron 1": the first (from the GoShogun footage) battles against Dark Star's legions on Earth; Beta Command (from the Srungle footage) is working to overthrow Orn. The main focus is on the Macron team on Earth, with Beta Command appearing sporadically.

The Macron 1 adaptation made use of the so-called "Miami Vice formula" introduced a year earlier by the eponymous primetime series, incorporating contemporary pop music into the action scenes. Notable musical adaptations included "Beat It," "Shout," "Safety Dance," and "The Heat is On."

Discotek Media will release the series on subtitled-only DVD in 2017. Central Park Media had licensed the Time Étranger film and released the film twice on DVD. Discotek has also licensed the film and will release it on DVD and Blu-ray in June 2017.

Europe

Around the same time as the US adaptation, in 1985, Saban released another version of the series in several European countries, also under the title Macron 1. This version, however, did not incorporate any footage from Srungle or the parallel-universe angle, making the international Macron 1 a more straightforward adaptation of GoShogun, though still heavily edited. In Italy the series was broadcast as Gotriniton-Goshogun, il dio della guerra, and was a direct translation of the Japanese original, without recutting. In France the first few episodes of GoShogun were released under the title Fulgutor.

Good Thunder Team

Dokuga Crime Syndicate

Movie Special

The GoShogun Movie, released in 1982, is a combination of episodes 20 and 17 (in that order) from the original series. It includes a summary of key events, snippets from the daily lives and background stories of the characters, and advertisements for fictional products. The closing credits show images of the main characters as children. The last of these, young Remy, would later make an appearance in The Time Étranger.

The Time Étranger

A surrealistic follow-up film, known as The Time Étranger or Time Stranger (1985), is set forty years after the events of the GoShogun TV series. The team has long since disbanded, and most of them have lost touch, but when Remy is rendered comatose in a car crash, her old friends and former enemies gather at her bedside to try to lend her their strength. Meanwhile, in Remy's dream, she and her five friends are in the prime of their lives, and are trapped in a mysterious desert city inhabited by hostile fanatics, who worship a god of fate. All six team members receive anonymous letters that ordain for each of them a brutal death within several days, with Remy set to die first. As they fight back against the forces of fate, Remy is haunted by increasingly disturbing visions of her foretold demise, as well as by flashbacks to her lonely and troubled childhood, designed to drive her to despair. It is notable that the feature-length sequel of a "giant robot" series barely makes any reference to the giant robot, except for a brief shot of a GoShogun-shaped charm on the rearview mirror of Remy's car and a museum devoted to the former exploits of the GoShogun crew. All the fighting in the dream sequence is done with cold weapons and common firearms, such as Remy's trusty revolver.

Video games