Japanimation Station Season 6 - TOMINO-THON!

This month marks the 60th anniversary of the premiere of Japan’s most iconic tokusatsu franchise: ULTRAMAN!  Created by the legendary special effects wizards at Tsuburaya Productions, Ultraman  premiered on July 17th, 1966, and has been a phenomenon in Japan and around the world ever since. To mark the occasion, today we’re taking a look at 15 episodes from 5 different Ultraman  series directed by...

For our last episode of Season 6 Part 1, we’re taking a look at the 3 OVA releases for Heavy Metal L-Gaim.  Released between 1986 and 1987, the first two offer recap specials of the TV series alongside original comedy shorts, while the third, Full Metal Soldier,  is an original story set during the first half of the show, and it’s a real treat if you enjoyed the series as much as we did. Then, we...

The second half of Heavy Metal L-Gaim  bucks the trend from Xabungle  and Dunbine  of Tomino shows that become messier down the home stretch, as this final set of episodes sees Daba Myroad step fully into his role as rebel leader, and the show itself tighten into a more focused, substantive experience. As we come to learn more about the truth of Oldna Posaydal and the fractured politics of Pentago...

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a prickly anime veteran named Tomino Yoshiyuki teamed up with a plucky young aniq`mator named Nagano Mamoru, and with a healthy dose of inspiration from an obscure international sci-fi hit called Star Wars,  they made one of the most rad mecha anime of the 1980s: Heavy Metal L-Gaim!  In these first 26 episodes, we enter Pentagona World and meet our hero,...

The second installment of the Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway  film trilogy is finally here, and it was absolutely worth the five-year wait. The Sorcery of Nymph Circe,  based on the second novel of Tomino Yoshiyuki’s Hathaway’s Flash  light novel series, is a more complicated, dense, and challenging film than its predecessor, but also one that dives deeper into its characters fractured psyches. And...

The second half of Aura Battler Dunbine  is one of the most fascinating and divisive stretches of Tomino Yoshiyuki’s career. After a killer set of episodes following the deepening conflict in Byston Well, the series’ action shifts to Upper Earth – our world – for the final cours, an increasingly brutal and bleak set of episodes that frustrates some viewers even as it invigorates others. That divid...

Grab your motorcycle, hop on the aura road, and cross between the sea and the shore to join us in Byston Well, where we’ll be spending the next 2 weeks with Aura Battler Dunbine!  One of Tomino’s most audacious, ahead-of-its-time creations, Dunbine  anticipates the popularity of the isekai  genre decades later with the story of Show Zama, a young man from our earth who falls into the high fantasy...

The second half of Combat Mecha Xabungle –  episodes 27 through 50 – plays like a second season, with the action moving to Planet Zola’s snowy tundra, a new group of characters arriving on the scene in the form of the freedom-fighting Salt crew, and the kidnapping of the Iron Gear’s captain, Elchi Cargo, leading to a new set of stakes for the series’ second half. It doesn’t all work, as Xabungle ...

Beginning an historic, uninterrupted run of 5 back-to-back 50-episode anime series airing from 1982 to 1987, Combat Mecha Xabungle  marks an exciting turning point in Tomino Yoshiyuki’s career. After really giving his ‘Kill ‘em All’ ethos a workout on Space Runaway Ideon,  Tomino set himself a very different challenge with Xabungle:  What if this could be a ‘Nobody Dies’ show? The result is a vibr...

Many years before Anno Hideaki remade the ending to his audacious but unfinished sci-fi TV series with an avant-garde theatrical tour-de-force in The End of Evangelion,  Tomino Yoshiyuki blazed the trail with The Ideon: Be Invoked,  providing the full ending Space Runaway Ideon  never got on television in spectacular (and spectacularly violent) fashion. Alongside its companion film, A Contact –  w...

It’s finally time to discuss what is almost certainly Tomino’s best-known and most widely renowned work outside the world of Gundam:  1980’s Space Runaway Ideon,  the 39-episode TV series that begins with a relatively similar premise to Mobile Suit Gundam  – a ragtag crew of space colonists flee an invading army, with a mysterious and powerful mecha in tow – before quickly spinning into much stran...

Considering Japanimation Station  started its life in 2019 as Weekly Suit Gundam –  which itself started with a six-part podcast miniseries following Sean and Jonathan discussing every aspect of the original Mobile Suit Gundam  series from 1979 – it’s safe to say we’ve already reviewed the legendary ‘ First Gundam ’ on this show. So for today’s episode, we’re doing something a bit different to cel...

“Exhilaration, humor, and pathos” – these are the three pillars Tomino Yoshiyuki outlined in a pre-production memo for the series that became 1978’s Invincible Steel Man Daitarn 3.  And the 40-episode show that followed very much fulfilled those goals, as this blend of super robot and Kamen Rider- style super hero action – also taking copious influence from the worlds of Star Wars  and James Bond...

Our Tomino-thon reaches its first full review of the season with 1977’s Invincible Super Man Zambot 3,  the debut series from a newly independent Sunrise, and the first original show directed in full by Tomino Yoshiyuki. Combining fantastical, episodic ‘super robot’ action with traces of the darker, more psychologically dense storytelling Tomino would eventually be known for, Zambot 3  also sees s...

Our Tomino-thon kicks off with a history-focused episode exploring the origins of Tomino Yoshiyuki leading up to the creation of his first full original series, Zambot 3  (which we’ll be reviewing next week). Where did this mad creative genius come from, and what was he up to in the years before he earned his ‘Kill ‘em all’ moniker? This episode takes us from the political climate in Japan during...

Japanimation Station returns on March 15th, 2026 for its 6th season, and it’s one listeners have been demanding for a long time: our Tomino-thon! Throughout 2026, we’ll be peering into the delightfully deranged mind of Tomino Yoshiyuki, creator of Mobile Suit Gundam,  which kicked off this entire podcast journey with our ‘Weekly Suit Gundam’ series back in 2019. Now, we’ll be returning to the worl...

We’re back in Kyoto again to look at another new work from our friends at Kyoto Animation: Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid: A Lonely Dragon Wants To Be Loved,  the feature film sequel to the beloved (and bizarre) slice-of-life TV comedy. Originally directed by Takemoto Yasuhiro in its first season before his tragic death in the 2019 arson attack, the series originally returned for a second season dir...

After spending a full year chronicling the history of Kyoto Animation in 2024, we’re back for a brief return trip to review CITY: THE ANIMATION,  the latest anime series from the renowned studio. Directed by Violet Evergarden  helmer Ishidate Taichi and based on the manga Nichijou  author Arawi Keiichi, CITY  is one of the absolute greatest series KyoAni has produced to date, a return not only to...

Demon Slayer  is back in theaters with its second original movie after the record-breaking success of 2020’s Mugen Train,  and the latest installment – Part I  of the planned Infinity Castle  trilogy, adapting the final arc of Gotouge Koyoharu’s manga – is proving every bit as popular, breaking box office records in Japan and now in America. That’s for good reason: Infinity Castle  is an incredibl...

The latest Gundam  TV series, Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX,  wrapped up its 12-episode run this week, which means Weekly Suit Gundam  is back to break it all down! A collaboration between Sunrise and the Otaku madmen at Studio Khara – including director Tsurumaki Kazuya, writer Enokido Yoji, and Evangelion  creator Anno Hideaki himself – GQuuuuuuX  returns to the Universal Century for an alternate...

Our Grand Tour comes full circle for its final stop, as we return to the world of Dragon Ball –  and the premise of Goku becoming a kid again – for the latest installment in the franchise, and the last supervised by Toriyama Akira himself: Dragon Ball Daima!  Like other recent Dragon Ball  stories overseen by the original author, Daima  revisits concepts from earlier anime-original works – in this...

Our Grand Tour finally arrives at one of the most-requested shows in the history of Japanimation Station: the 1997 adaptation of Miura Kentaro’s seminal manga masterpiece, Berserk!  Created by OLM – best known for their decades of work on the Pokémon  anime – this 25-episode series adapts the Golden Age arc of Miura’s manga, brilliantly employing a ‘limited animation’ style reminiscent of the work...

Our dirty pair of Dirty Pair  episodes continues this week with a look at the theatrical feature film and cavalcade of OVAs that followed in the wake of the original TV series. Dirty Pair  was so popular on the home video market that it got two feature-length OVAs – 1985’s Affair of Nolandia  and 1995’s Flight 005 Conspiracy  – and an entire ‘second season’ of 10 TV-length episodes, known as Dirty...

Our Grand Tour takes us back to outer space for the irreverent sci-fi comedy classic Dirty Pair!  Produced by the amazing talent at Sunrise and inspired by the light novels by Takachiho Haruka, Dirty Pair  chronicles the adventures of Kei and Yuri, two 19-year-old ‘trouble consultants’ for the WWWA, who travel the galaxy solving problems, sometimes so aggressively they create many new ones. The or...

Before Anno Hideaki and the team at Studio Gainax changed the course of anime history with Neon Genesis Evangelion,  they produced Gunbuster,  aka Aim for the Top!,  a 6-episode OVA with some of the era’s most spectacular animation, and an overwhelming amount of personality. A mash-up of sports shows, mecha anime, high-concept sci-fi, and American 80s movies like Top Gun,  there’s nothing else qui...