Steel Jeeg

Steel Jeeg (鋼鉄ジーグ), more commonly known as Kotetsu Jeeg or Koutetsu Jeeg, is a super robot anime and manga series created by manga artists Go Nagai and Tatsuya Yasuda. The TV anime was produced by Toei Doga. It was first broadcast on Japanese TV in 1975. The series lasted for 46 episodes. Steel Jeeg also ran as a manga in several children's publications.

A sequel series called Kotetsushin Jeeg (which appears to take place 50 years after the original show) aired on the satellite network WOWOW, beginning April 5, 2007.

Story
The story tells about Hiroshi Shiba, a car racer who is mortally wounded on a laboratory accident, but restored to life by his father, Professor Shiba, a talented scientist/archeologist, who is incidentally investigating the relics of the ancient Yamatai Kingdom. The professor discovers a tiny bronze bell with sorcerous powers, and shortly afterwards he is murdered by the henchmen of Queen Himika, the ruler of the Yamatai, who wants to seize the ancient bell and its power.

Hiroshi learns about his father's death, and his legacy: after the accident, Hiroshi was turned by his father into a cyborg, the bronze bell hidden in his own chest, able to transform into the head of a giant robot, the Steel Jeeg, created by Prof. Shiba with the purpose of stopping the Yamatai invasion of modern Japan. Jeeg is also assisted by a robot horse known as Panzeroid. The minions of Queen Himika have huge haniwa robots, called phantom gods buried thousands of years under Japan's soil, and only Jeeg can destroy them and save the world. Therefore, Hiroshi must roughly try to live his double life as his career as a racer who takes care of his mother and sister and a hero who fight to save the world. After episode 29, the Yamatai invaders were replaced by the Ryoma Empire and used robot monsters, which all but replaced the phantom gods as the series' monsters of the week.

Concept
Steel Jeeg is formed by combining the parts released by the jet Big Shooter, piloted by Prof. Shiba's lovely assistant, Miwa Micchi Uzuki.

Production notes
Steel Jeeg was later broadcast on some European countries, and was quite successful, especially in Italy, where it still has a huge fanbase. In the 80's the series was shown in Latin America, where it was part of a giant robot show fashioned in the style of Force Five, called "El Festival de los Robots" which translates to "Festival of Robots". Steel Jeeg was called "El Vengador" (The Avenger) along with four other anime shows including Gaiking, Starzinger and Magne Robo Gakeen. The names were translated in Spanish to "El Gladiador", "El Galáctico", and "Supermagnetrón" respectively. Like many popular 70s super robot shows, Steel Jeeg has never been released in the US.

Staff
Series director: Masayuki Akihi

Episode Director: Kazuja Miyazaki, Masamune Ochiai, Masayuki Akihi, Yoshio Nitta, Yugo Serikawa

Music: Michiaki Watanabe

Original creator: Tatsuya Yasuda, Go Nagai

Character Design: Kazuo Nakamura

Theme music
Opening theme: "Song of Kotetsu Jeeg" (鋼鉄ジーグのうた), by Ichirou Mizuki with Columbia Yurikago-kai and Koorogi '73

Ending theme: "Theme of Hiroshi" (ひろしのテーマ), by Ichirou Mizuki with Koorogi '73

Video games
Jeeg makes an appearance in 2nd Super Robot Wars Alpha and 3rd Super Robot Wars Alpha for the PlayStation 2.

Merchandise
Takara made Jeeg and Panzeroid toys as part of their Magnemo line, making use of a system of magnetic sockets and steel ball joints for unprecedented articulation and interchangeability.

In the United States, the Jeeg and Panzeroid toys were remolded in different colors and new heads were sculpted for Mego's Micronauts "Magno" figures; Baron Karza and Force Commander.

In Italy, the toy company Gig Co, who had the European rights to the Micronauts at the time, made three more figures using the Jeeg toy as a basis; King Atlas, Green Baron, and Emperor. These toys (with the exception of Emperor, who was released in very limited numbers by a company called Lion Rock Toys) were never released in America due to the fact that Mego went bankrupt before the toys could be unveiled to the US market, while Gig kept the Micronauts liscense going for a few years afterward in Europe.