Densetsu Kyojin Ideon

Mankind has traveled to the stars and come across various alien civilizations, now long dead. Upon discovering the archaeological remains of such a civilization on the planet Solo, humanity finally has its first encounter with a living alien species: the Buff Clan. When Karala Ajiba, the daughter of the Buff Clan's military leader, sets foot on the surface of Solo, the Buff Clan launches a brutal assault on the colony to retrieve her.

In order to escape, Cosmo Yuki, Kasha Imhof, and Bes Jordan climb aboard three trucks, which soon transform into the giant humanoid robot Ideon. When the settlement on Solo is destroyed, the survivors board a recently discovered spaceship—the Solo Ship—and flee, endeavoring to get away from the aliens and finally find peace. The relentless Buff Clan, however, is still in hot pursuit and will not give up so easily.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Jordan, Bes Main

Tanaka, Hideyuki Japanese

Yuuki, Cosmo Main

Shioya, Yoku Japanese

Ajiba, Karala Main

Toda, Keiko Japanese

Imhof, Kasha Main

Shiraishi, Fuyumi Japanese

Formossa, Sheryl Main

Inoue, You Japanese

Zaral, Gije Supporting

Hayashi, Kazuo Japanese

Piper, Lou Supporting

Inoue, You Japanese

Afta, Deck Supporting

Matsuda, Tatsuya Japanese

Ira, Joliver Supporting

Shiozawa, Kaneto Japanese

Kitten, Kitty Supporting

Ukai, Rumiko Japanese

Hasegawa, Tooru Producer

Matsushima, Tadashi Producer

Ishikawa, Hiroshi Producer

Tomino, Yoshiyuki Director, Storyboard, Theme Song Lyrics, Original Creator

Reviews

Jul 31, 2025

Realkaku

Recommended

I’ve watched a lot of the big-name anime from the ’70s to the ’90s, but Ideon still hit me in a way I didn’t expect. I went into it thinking it’d be another classic mecha show, you know, big robot, space war, some tragic deaths maybe. But Ideon is something else entirely. It doesn’t just get darker as it goes, but it gets heavier too.

You expect the usual sci-fi setup, but there’s this slow build of dread that doesn’t let up. Every decision they make, every fight they get into, it all feels like it’s dragging them toward something awful. You can tell early on ... this won’t end well, but you still hope it might.

What hit me was how human everyone felt. They’re not brave pilots or heroes. They’re tired, scared, and sometimes completely broken. They argue, they make stupid mistakes, they get people killed, and honestly, that made them feel more real. It’s messy, and that messiness hurts.

And the Ideon itself doesn’t feel like a savior. The more powerful it gets, the more alien and terrifying it becomes. It’s not there to protect anyone. It’s something ancient, something no one fully understands, and you get this feeling like they were never meant to find it at all.

By the end, I wasn’t sure what to feel. Not sad, not satisfied, just… hollow. But not in a bad way. More like I’d just watched something that didn’t care what I thought, it told its story, and now I have to live with it. No big emotional payoff. No clear answers. Just this quiet, heavy feeling that stays with you.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Jul 19, 2018

ggultra2764

Mixed Feelings

Following his work on the famous Mobile Suit Gundam, director Yoshiyuki Tomino moved on to direct what is yet another one of his famous works in the mecha genre with Ideon, an entry in the super robot genre focused on humanity's clash with the alien Buff Clan by utilizing the titular mecha of the series.

Personally for me, Ideon felt like a step down with what Gundam contributed in being one of the grandfathers of the "real robot" anime genre, though has some glimmers of potential. Whereas Gundam took the time to explore its world and offered enough fleshing out of both the Federation and Zeon ... factions to show both had their morally grey areas, the same can't really be said for Ideon to a good extent. While a number of the human characters do get some fleshing out like Cosmo and Bes, nearly all members of the Buff Clan remain as two-dimensional characters in conflict with the human crew of the Ideon. Also, the series mostly focuses on the Ideon crew's conflict with the Buff Clan, with the latter continually spawning "mecha of the day" plots to attempt getting the Ideon in their possession and killing its human crew. Not helping matters is that it does take the series nearly a dozen episodes to start picking up steam with offering up some story development.

And said story development does gradually start to deliver if you can survive past Ideon's earlier episodes. Later episodes of the series offer some interesting twists in the anime's story as the Ideon's crew start to learn more about the mecha's mysterious origins and question the very force that empowers it. Some solid character development is offered with the character of Karala, a Buff Clan member who defects from her race to join the human Ideon crew and develops a relationship with Bes. Also, the anime tosses in some twists to the "robot of the day" formula for later episodes when the Ideon crew also have to evade apprehension from human military forces who want to claim Ideon's power for themselves or assume the crew is in league with the Buff Clan. Still, this doesn't stop the formulaic plot setup and largely shallow members of the Buff Clan from rearing their heads throughout Ideon's run and the anime is also left abruptly unresolved during a major point in the anime's plot thanks to the series abruptly being cancelled during the time it aired. However, this issue would be resolved a year later with the release of Ideon's film sequel, Be Invoked.

Visually, Ideon hasn't aged all that well. The character designs are a product of their time with the seemingly disco vibe that many characters sport with their appearance like Cosmo's afro and the Buff Clan's clothing looking like anything you may seen worn in retro sci-fi titles like The Jetsons and Flash Gordon. The animation quality can vary from looking terrible to decent during battle scenes, which are mostly not too spectacular to see for their choreography due to how slow and played out they are.

Overall, I suppose my reception to Ideon is mixed. While touches of Tomino's story direction are on display in later episodes to make the series somewhat engaging, its flaws still stick out like a sore thumb compared to other mecha titles of the time period he directed like Gundam and Aura Battle Dunbine. Still as I hear Be Invoked is what is Ideon's most memorable use of Tomino's "Kill Em All" moniker, I suppose I'll be continuing my viewing of Ideon by checking out the film.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jun 21, 2023

sirap

Not Recommended

Funny

The first few episodes of this anime were interesting and showed great promise with interesting ideas being introduced. I felt excited to find out what was going to happen next. Unfortunately, after only a few episodes the anime stopped being interesting because instead of building on the ideas that were introduced at the beginning of the show it became boring and the plot started to barely move forward at all and nothing interesting happened. It became repetitive and each episode was basically just about that single episode on its own without contributing almost anything to the overall plot.

So it became a repetitive anime where each ... episode felt just like the one before it and almost nothing interesting happened. I was about to stop watching this anime but then I read some reviews that said that it gets better after episode 20 so I kept on watching. After around episode 20 some new things were introduced, however, it did not stop being repetitive. The new ideas that were introduced were barely explored and the show just kept on being repetitive and every episode still felt very boring.

The ending was rushed and did not really explain anything. They later made a movie to fix the ending and although the ending in the movie was better, it was not even that good.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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	Poll: Space Runaway Ideon Episode 39 Discussion Beatnik - Aug 30, 2009	20 replies	by combi2015 »» Jan 22, 1:52 PM
	Poll: Space Runaway Ideon Episode 32 Discussion Beatnik - Aug 30, 2009	15 replies	by combi2015 »» Jan 21, 2:22 PM
	Poll: Densetsu Kyojin Ideon Episode 31 Discussion Hannah_Ana - Mar 6, 2014	5 replies	by combi2015 »» Jan 21, 1:52 PM
	Poll: Densetsu Kyojin Ideon Episode 29 Discussion Hannah_Ana - Mar 6, 2014	6 replies	by combi2015 »» Jan 21, 12:22 PM
	Poll: Space Runaway Ideon Episode 14 Discussion Beatnik - Aug 22, 2009	19 replies	by ChangKang6 »» Dec 31, 2025 1:51 AM