Space Warrior Baldios

Space Warrior Baldios (宇宙戦士 バルディオス) is a super robot anime series produced by Ashi Productions, with its full length feature film produced by Toei Animation in 1981, which has a strong environmental theme. Many of the pivotal episodes were joined and released as a "movie" in the United States as "Space Warriors: Battle for Earth Station S/1." The name of the Baldios mecha was unchanged, although it played a surprisingly small part in the movie that was created. In Italy, the TV series and feature film were exhibited under the name Baldios, Il Guerriero dello Spazio. In Cuba, another feature film version of Baldios was released in theaters, including much of the bloodshed and disturbing scenes that had been excised from the American version, under the name of Yaltus. However this version had some sexual content excised as well. As of today, the most complete version of the film is the Japanese DVD release.

Story
In the distant future, another world, S-1, has been badly polluted. Just as scientists find a way to clean up the planet, the followers of military fanatic, Zeo Gattler, invade his laboratory and destroy his work. The scientist's son, Marin, escapes and is angered over what his people have done but before he can do anything, he gets caught in a time warp and ends up near Earth in the year 2100.

When Gattler's Aldebaron Army appears after destroying a Martian colony, Marin finds himself joining the military organization, Blue Fixer, which uses his ship as part of their recently completed robot, Baldios. Together, Marin and the Blue Fixer team face off against Gattler and the S-1 forces which are poised to take over the Earth and make it their new home.

Conclusion
During the final conflict with the S-1/Aldebaron Army, Gattler manages to trigger a massive tsunami which effectively destroys the surface of the Earth, leaving the Blue Fixer team helpless and unable to stop it. Marin can only watch in horror as wave after wave destroy the surface until a shot of the wave freezes and we are left with a caption saying "End". Thankfully, the Baldios movie which came out afterwards gave a slightly more fulfilling conclusion with Marin and Gattler getting a proper final confrontation and the fate of the Earth turning out to be not as abrupt. Still, the end of the television series stands as probably one of the most depressing and haunting finales for a mecha-anime.

In the Italian version of the finale, it is disclosed that S1 and the Earth are actually the same planet, the massive dimensional travel of S1 troops being, in fact, a time travel and that the environmental catastrophe that's actually destroying S1 is the lasting effect of Gattler's "Final Weapon".

Videogame appearances
Baldios is included in the PlayStation 2 game, Super Robot Wars Z. During the game's 44th scenario, should the player lose, a special Game Over screen based on the anime's tragic end will be shown. The Special Disk's karaoke video for Baldios' closing theme ends with the Baldios itself being scrapped by the Artificial Sun.