Dancougar
By Jeffrey Couto

The Story

Super Bestial Machine God Dancougar is the story of Zyusenkitai (Cyber Beast Force) and their struggle to free planet Earth from the Zorbados Muge alien empire by using the powerful robot, Dancougar, which is powered by their combine mental powers. Dancougar's story was pretty much your standard alien invasion deal that was so prevalent in super robot fare, but thanks to its strong character development and good storytelling it managed to become a classic.

How Good is it?

I have to tell you that I had my doubts after watching the first couple of episodes, but once I got to the 10th episode or so I was hooked, Dancougar turned out to be one of the best super robot shows that I've ever seen! Once the story picks up and you see the Zyusenkitai score their first major victories against the alien forces you can't help wanting to see what happens next, as they push the battle against the Muge empire out of the Earth and into the invaders home base. The character development is also particularly good, with different relationships between the main characters forming and transforming throughout the show. One thing that also struck me was how unique the mechanical design for Dancougar was. At first I was put off by its less than streamlined look, but with time it really grew on me. When you watch this robot in action it's a different experience from watching say.Daimos, Dancougar moves slowly and it feels a lot "heavier", which makes for some interesting battle scenes (meaning that for the most part Dancougar is limited to ground battles). Once the battle goes into outer space the action does get faster though.

How Good is it?

Like any other series Dancougar also suffered from a couple of problems. The major one is the animation, in some episodes you can actually count the number of cels that were used to create an animated sequence, not a good thing. Not every episode suffers from this, but enough do to distract from the proceedings. The other thing that I was surprised by was that this series is made up of only 38 episodes, which go by pretty quickly. I guess that they tried to make up for this with the Requiem for Victims OVA and the two sequels that followed the series.

Jeff