Medarot Damashii

Medarot Damashii (knows as "season 3", Medabot Spirits and Medabots Spirits in English) is an anime series and the sequel to the original Medarot anime. The series was produced by Trans Arts with assistance from Production I.G and started airing on TV Tokyo on July 7, 2000. As with the original series, it was licensed by Nelvana for its western localization and aired as a third season of the anime outside Japan.

The series brings in elements from Medarot 3 and Medarot 4, such as the concepts of Medachange and some of the Medarot designs from these installments. The story has Ikki and Metabee (in a new body) taking a stand against Kokuryuu Kamizake, who wants to replace every Medarots with emotionless Death Medarots.

Due to its writing, loose continuity with its predecessor, subject matter, and animation, the series is highly controversial with fans of its predecessor and the Medarot franchise at large.

"Does the soul of a Medarotter burn within you?" - Tagline
--Official Japanese website

Sypnosis

Sometimes after the events of the previous series, Ikki meets Nae, a kind and skilled Medarot mechanic who gifts him a new Medarotch model and upgraded Saikachis parts for Metabee. Ikki's world is upended when is he targeted by Ginkai, a sadistic and cheating Medarotter who uses Death Medarots. The Death medarots are a new type of medarot who lack emotions and individual personalities due to their generic medals, and who obey orders without questions, including those that ignore the rules of Robattle. The distribution of the Death Medarots is spearheaded by one Kokuryuu Kamizake, a calous young boy.

Due to their reputation, Kokuryuu hatchs various plots to discredit Ikki and Metabee and destroy Metabee. Further complicating this situations is the arrival of the Mysterious Medarotter, a skilled individual who is on a quest to destroy all Death Medarots, but whose ruthless methods makes him little better than the Death Medarots he claims to despise.

As the series progresses, various twists and turns upend the conflict. After repeatedly antagonizing Ikki and Metabee, Ginkai renews with his long-buried sense of honor and changes side, dedicating himself to becoming an exemplary Medarotter with his medarot partner Arcbeetle-Dash. The Mysterious Medarotter is revealed to be Ikki's new classmate and son of the Death Medarot's inventor Yuzuru, who blames the Death Medarots for his strained relationship with his father.

Intrigued by Metabee's power, Kokuryuu designs a new Death Medarot named Blackbeetle. Unlike other of her kinds, Blackbeetle is equipped with an experimental Medal that gives her a personality and emotions, though Kokuryuu treats her as just as disposable as his other creations. Eventually, he puts her medal into the extremely powerful and experimental model Grain, whose power requirements are far too much for her medal to handle. Ikki, Ginkai, Yuzuru and their medarots go to the Death Medarot Company HQ to rescue Blackbeetle and a fight ensues, which causes a destructive fire. The Medarots and Blackbeetle team up to rescue a trapped Kokuryuu. Touched by their actions, Kokuryuu renounces his ways and finally accepts Blackbeetle as his friend.

Production

Medarot Damashii was produced by a different studio than the first series and saw a near-complete turnover in staff beside the voice actors and the director of the ending credits animation.

The show is initially animated with traditional cel-based techniques before switching to digital ink and paint starting with episode 16.

Continuity

"A work that carries on the title and characters should not ignore its predecessor!" - Trans Arts producer "Sato"
--Message on Trans Art's official website

Though a sequel to the previous series. Medarot Damashii contradicts or ignores various aspects of the setting established by its predecessor. No justification is given for these changes. A possible reason is that Damashii having a different crew and had its production overlap with that of the original series (being ready to air one week after the end of its predecessor), Medarot Damashii's production staff may have not been informed of story decisions made on the previous series while writing their own show.

• Various major characters from the previous series, most prominently Kouji, Karin and Mr. Uruchi do not appear outside of brief cameos in the Japanese ending animation. Their absence is not explained or noticed in any way.
• The Medaforce is explained as being ineffective against Death Medarots due to it targetting a Medarot's emotional component. This is despite the original series depicting the Medaforce inflicting very real damage to objects and human targets.
• The Medaforce is also portrayed as something that can be done on-command rather than something that happens as a result of a strong emotional buildup in a Medarot, though Arcbeetle-Dash's Medaforce awakening in Episode 31 is portrayed similarly to how it happens in the original series.
• The previous series ended with Kouji's Smilodonad using the Medaforce despite having a regular mass-manufactured medal. Damashii ignores this development and sticks with the idea of only Rare Medals and the new concept of First Medals being able to use the Medaforce.
• The Select Corps does not appear to exist: Ikki's father is shown working as a regular salary man and when Blossomail rampages through town, conventional police forces are shown responding.
• The show inconsistently portrays the relationships between a Medarot's body and its medal. While many episodes accurately portray the medal as holding the medarot's personality and memories, Episode 16 has Ikki acting as if Metabee is dead after his body is seemingly destroyed, despite holding his medal in his hands. Characters are also shown to be disproportionately agitated when an inert medarot body is attacked or pounced on after its medal has safely ejected.
• While the original series showed Medarots being used by adults and Medarots having non-combat utilities, Damashii portrays them as near-exclusively used by children beside Nae's assistant medarot Honey. Part of Episode 23's plot hinges on a man being viewed as creepy and suspicious for robattling children as an adult, despite this scenario happening multiple times in the original series with no apparent stigma.
• The Death Medarots Excise and Unitris are clearly derivative of Smilodonad and Warbonnet, iconic medarots in the previous series. The ressemblance is not commented on in-universe nor is it explained how the Death Medarot Company is able to market designs clearly derivate of its competitor's products.
• The practice of giving one of the loser's part to the winner of a Robattle is never shown.

English dub

As with the original Medarot, the series was licensed by Nelvana and aired as a third season of Medabotss, continuing the episode numbering. Unlike the original series, all of Medabots Spirit's episodes were aired in the same order as they were in Japan.

The English dub continued the translation and editing style of the previous series' dub, though some practices were heightened in the process of translating Damashii:

• The series saw heavier censorship than the original series, with various scenes of more intense violence being cut and various other alterations being done. Episode 23 saw its scripts heavily rewritten from a story about Ikki mistaking Nae to be in an arranged marriage to one about being Ikki upset that Nae is going away on a summer job as a Medabots researcher as, according to dub script writer Rob Tinkler in an interview, the localization staff were concerned about the appearances of a younger woman like Nae seemingly being engaged with an older man.
• Medabots Vital Stats screens are used far more frequently than they were in the original series, seemingly in an effort to pad runtime due to other scenes being cut. Medarots such as Arcbeetle-Dash and Comadog get as much as five such screens throughout the run of the series, even in episodes when they have little screentime and no importance to the plot.
• The final's episode ending credit montage is cut and replaced with a scene of Nae narrating over stock footage of the series main characters.

Reception

When it first aired in Japan, Medarot Damashii saw an extremely negative reaction from older fans of the previous anime with complaints centering around its continuity issues, the quality of the animation of the writing, and the perceived unflaterring and out-of-character portrayal of characters carried over from the previous series. The backlash saw a Trans Art producer (signing under the name "Sato") post an impassioned letter on the company's official website acknowledging the negative reception and the show's lack of ties to the previous series.

Not all impressions were negative and in the years following its airing, some viewers have praised Damashii as having a significant uptick in storytelling quality in its later half. This reappraisal is far from universal, however, and as such Damashii remains a contentious chapter of the Medarot franchise.

External links

• Official japanese website (archive)