Medarot Damashii
Medarot Damashii (メダロット魂 Medarotto Damashii, known 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.
Unlike its predecessor, the series is much more an original story but brings some 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.
For various reasons, 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 gifted Medarot mechanic who gives 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 callous young boy.
Kokuryuu hatchs various plots to discredit Ikki and Metabee and destroy Metabee in an effort to prove the superiority of Death Medarots. 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 Arc-Dash. The Mysterious Medarotter is revealed to be Ikki's new classmate and son of the Death Medarot's inventor Yuuzuru, 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, Yuuzuru and their medarots go to the Death Medarot Company HQ to rescue Blackbeetle and a fight ensues, which ends in 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.
Characters
Episodes
| Episode Number | Original Title | Translated Title | English Dub Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 爆走！新型メタビー | Explosion! New Metabee | Kilobots Rising |
| 2 | 禁じられた戦い | Forbidden Battle | Fighting Temptation |
| 3 | 謎のドークス使い | Mysterious Dorcus user | Who is the Mystery Medafighter?! |
| 4 | 届けもの大騒動 | Delivery Commotion | Delivery Boy |
| 5 | 激突！ スクープ合戦 | Clash! Scoop Battle | Scoop of the Century |
| 6 | 怪談 夜の理科室 | Ghost Story Night at the Science Room | Robbed Zombies |
| 7 | プールでロボトル | Robottle in the pool | Lights, Camera... Robattle! |
| 8 | 戦士の絆（前編） | Warrior's Bond (Part 1) | Dark Alliance (Part 1) |
| 9 | 戦士の絆（後編） | Warrior's Bond (Part 2) | Dark Alliance (Part 2) |
| 10 | 暴走！ 赤い悪魔 | Runaway! Red Devil | Redrun-Away |
| 11 | アリカの花園 | Arika's Flower Garden | Erika's Secret Garden |
| 12 | 盗まれたメタビー | Stolen Metabee | Metabee's Out of Body Experience |
| 13 | ハニー救出大作戦 | Operation: Rescue Honey | The Bee Rescues the Honey |
| 14 | メダロット墓場 | Medarot Graveyard | A Night in the Medabot Junkyard |
| 15 | 立て！ ギンカイ | Stand Up! Ginkai | Once a Medafighter... (Part 1) |
| 16 | コクリュウの逆襲 | Kokuryu's Counterattack | Once a Medafighter... (Part 2) |
| 17 | 大空の戦い | Battle in The Sky | Title Flight |
| 18 | カンニング大作戦 | Cheating Strategy | The Agony of the Cheat |
| 19 | 守れ！ 男のプライド | Protect! Man's Pride | It's the Medafighter Way! |
| 20 | 仕掛けられた罠 | A Trap Set | Fall from Grace (Part 1) |
| 21 | トリックをあばけ！ | Reveal the Trick! | Fall from Grace (Part 2) |
| 22 | ユウヅルの正体 | Yuzuru's True Identity | Mystery Medafighter Unmasked? |
| 23 | ナエのお見合い | Nae's Arranged Marriage | The Truth About Charlie |
| 24 | ドークスの奇跡 | Dorcus's Miracle | Roks Reborn |
| 25 | ワカバの誘惑 | Wakaba's Temptation | I, Kilobot |
| 26 | 燃えろ！熱き魂 | Burn! Passionate Soul | Thanks for the Memories |
| 27 | 男イワノイ大勝負 | Manly Iwanoi's Big Game | How Spyke Got His Style Back |
| 28 | E激走！ 一直線レース | Rushing! Straight line race | The Medabot Straight Line Marathon |
| 29 | メタビーの大特訓 | Metabee's Special Training | Kung Fu for Thought |
| 30 | アリカ一発逆転！ | Arika Makes a One-Shot Reversal! | Erika to the Rescue |
| 31 | 炎のアークダッシュ | Burning Arc-Dash | Rough on a Hot Tin Cat |
| 32 | 失われた友情 | Lost Friendship | Meda-Forced |
| 33 | ナエさん MY LOVE | Nae-san MY LOVE | Poor Miss Nae |
| 34 | 父への想い | Thoughts on my Father | The Mystery Medafighter... Revealed! |
| 35 | メダロットは友達 | Medarot is my Friend | Winner Take All |
| 36 | たった１人の逃亡者 | Only One Fugitive | Transfusion Confusion |
| 37 | 禁断のデスメダル | Forbidden Death Medal | Gryphon-Doom |
| 38 | コクリュウの過去 | Kokuryu's Past | Final Goodbyes |
| 39 | 輝け！希望の魂 | Shine! Soul of Hope | Into the Fire |
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 17.
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
Despite being a sequel. 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 having a personal assistant in the form of 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 obviously based on 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 derivative 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 from 2003 to 2004, 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. Not all markets that aired the original series aired Medabots Spirit.
The English dub continued the translation and editing style of the previous series' dub, though some practices were heightened in the process of localizing 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. 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.
- Some characters have considerable changes in voice types and speaking patterns:
- Blackbeetle has an heavily-modulated, demonic-sounding voice in the English dub while her voice in Japanese is no different than that of other medarots.
- Kintora has a squeaky, high-pitched voice contrasting with his heavyset appearance, while the English dub gives him a deep, bassy voice.
- Wakaba no longer speaks in the third-person outside of a few lines in Episode 31.
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 and the writing, darker atmosphere, 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 becoming significantly better in its later half. This reappraisal is far from universal, however, and as such Damashii remains a contentious chapter of the Medarot franchise.
Differences with the games
- As mentioned before, Medarot Damashii focuses on an original story, so it doesn't directly follow the events of Medarot 3 or 4. Rather it uses some of their elements like Medachange and some new Medarots.
- As usual, the anime follows the story of Ikki as a protagonist who chose the Kabuto version. Due to this Dorcus appears as the Medarot of a new character.
- However, while Metabee himself received his Saikachis model appearance, the anime's Dorcus is an entirely new character unrelated to Rokusho.
- All new characters, with the exception of Nae, don't exist in the games.
- Most of the changes from the previous anime remain true here. This includes most battles being 1v1 rather than 3v3. However, there are cases like Yuuzuru Oozora who uses two Medarots at the same time and for that he needs two Medarotches (One from each arm). In games this is unnecessary, a single Medarotch is capable of giving commands to three Medarots at the same time.
- Some new Medarots are called Death Medarot in the anime, and are said to have different architecture and medals incompatible with regular Medarots. This doesn't exist in the games and all these models are simply Medarots.
- Unlike the previous anime, the final boss here is the same from the games, Grain from Medarot 4. However, the context of Grain as the final enemy is completely different in the two stories. Particle's existence is omitted in the anime.
- Damashii portrays Medarots as having limited ammo for all of their ranged weapons and not just their head parts as is the case in the games. The Death Medarot's ability to reload mid-fight is explicitely called out as cheating.
- in the games, Medarots are stated to have self-rebuilding nanotechnology and highly resistant armor. While the topic of medarot maintenance is not brought up much in the first anime, Damashii portrays medarots as needing to be repaired and maintained by dedicated mechanics.
External links
- Official japanese website (archive)
