Japan is under attack by alien invaders (must be Tuesday) from the Boazanian empire. The call goes out to the Go brothers: sharpshooting biker Kenichi (voiced by Yukinaga Shiraishi), burly karate expert Daijiro (Tessho Genda) and plucky pint-sized Hiyoshi (Noriko Ohara). Together with fellow teens: rodeo rider Ippei Mine (Kazuyuki Sogabe) and foxy ninja girl Megumi Oka (Miyuki Ueda), the Go boys take control of Voltus V, a giant super-robot with an arsenal of weapons created by their father Professor Kentaro Go (Yu Mizushima) before he went missing in space. In a string of apocalyptic battles the young heroes sock it to the Boazanian forces led by Prince Hainel (Osamu Ichikawa), a charismatic bad boy with a secret to hide. Plot twists, tragedy, child trauma and spectacular robot carnage ensue.
After the success of Combattler V (1976) Toei Animation and director Tadao Nagahama decided to do it all over again with a near-identical brothers-plus-token-girl-with-a-super-robot anime. The result was an even bigger hit. In America Voltus V (or Super Electromagnetic Voltus V, to use its full Japanese title) remains best remembered as one of the imported toy robots included in Mattel's legendary Shogun Warriors line and subsequently featured in a hit comic book series published by Marvel. However both show and subsequent feature film were even more popular across Cuba, Indonesia and especially the Philippines. In 1979 infamous President Ferdinand Marcos issued a decree banning Voltus V along with similarly themed Japanese cartoons ostensibly owing to concerns about their "excessive violence" and "harmful effect on children." However, some have since speculated it was the anime's themes of rebellion and social revolution that really irked the Marcos regime. The resulting outcry among young people over the show’s removal fed into increasing demand for democratic reform. To the point where once Marcos was ousted from power in February, 1986 local TV networks immediately screened the remaining five episodes of Voltus V. Such is the enduring popularity of the anime in the Philippines, Toei signed off on a live-action remake from local director Mark A. Reyes.
Interestingly Voltus V was released internationally with two different English dubs. One supervised by writer-producer William Ross and relatively faithful to the original, the other produced by "New Hope Productions" (see what they did there?) and fashioned to more closely resemble Star Wars (1977). The latter dub was eventually sold to the Christian Broadcasting Network which, strangely enough, became a haven for many Japanese genre fans with screenings of obscure anime and live-action fare including an actual Star Wars cash-in: Swords of the Space Ark (1979).
While Voltus V’s staccato Seventies TV animation has invariably dated, both the production and chara design by Akehiro Kaneyama and Nobuyoshi Sasakado reflect the groovy dynamism of Showa era anime. The same holds true for the feature film's breakneck pace. It throws in explosions, giant robot fights, karate and laser battles every five minutes. Heck, the opening montage has kid sidekick Hiyoshi knife-fighting a shark for god's sake! As per Seventies super-robot anime convention the plot lays on the emotional trauma pretty goddamn thick. Along with enduring the frankly psychotic training methods of their mentor Professor Hamaguchi (Seizo Kato), who in one exercise calls on troops to fire live ammunition (!), our teen heroes witness their mother (Takako Kondo) sacrificing her life in a kamikaze jet attack on the dastardly Boazanians. Then blitz an alien base where their captive father stands cheering, merrily awaiting his own death. A subplot also has Megumi break formation to rescue her own captive father, proving quite the badass. For her trouble she gets a slap in the face and a stern lecture...
If there is one theme unifying Japanese sci-fi anime in the Seventies (see also Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (1972) a.k.a. Battle of the Planets) it is the virtue of sacrificing one's youth, enduring all manner of emotional and physical pain, in the service of a greater cause. It is a concept that has uncomfortable parallels with World War Two propaganda, something that did not go unnoticed by more critical anime auteurs like Yoshiyuki Tomino who worked on Voltus V but then later skewered mindless militarism in his groundbreaking Mobile Suit Gundam (1979), sowing the seeds for even more critical anime like Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) that really took the concept of governments deploying child robot pilots to task.
