Brave series
The Brave series is a Japanese toy and anime franchise originally created and produced by Sunrise and funded by Takara. The franchise ran from 1990s to 2000s, producing eight official series and several side media including Original Video Animations, toys, and several memorabilia in Japan. It was one of Sunrise's most notable productions in the 90s, and its run played a key role in the reintroduction of the Super Robot genre to the Japanese mainstream.
As of 2022, the rights to the series were now owned by Bandai Namco Filmworks, following the 1994 acquisition of Sunrise, who produced and animated the series.
History
Background
At the beginning of the series, the slogan for the franchise was "animation that does not appear in anime magazines", and the intended audience were aged 3 to 5 years old. The original concept is to "Make a hero robot for small children.", with the project produced as a joint effort between Sunrise's Studio 7 Division and Takara. Takara's decision on choosing Sunrise for the project is their expertise on several robot anime shows in both the 70's and the 80's, which included Mobile Suit Gundam and both companies once worked on shows such as Fang of the Sun Dougram, Panzer World Galient and Armored Trooper Votoms, in which Takara is a sponsor. Shinji Takamatsu recalled after he joined Sunrise during the success of Gundam that "if you release a robot in an anime, the toys will follow later," and that "I'll do more with toys". Takayuki Yoshi, who in that time, was a producer at Sunrise, cited that he was worried about this situation and was one of those who wanted to create robot works and characters that could compete with Toei and Bandai's Super Sentai series. It was a good for them that the target age group was getting older, but at the same time, Katsuyoshi Yatabe, who directed the first three works, testified that he had in mind the idea that if there were works for younger children, it would spread from there.However, when Takara entered the American market, their partner Hasbro had lumped all the various transforming and combining products they had been working on under the name Transformers, which resulted in complicated rights issues for the series. Inoue Koichi said that during the time Transformers Victory is ending its run, an executive at Takara approached him asking if Sunrise could make a work like Transformers, and Yoshi, readily accepted, thinking that it would be interesting if the series could continue for 10 or 20 years as an introductory series to robot works. However, with the success of the aforementioned real robot series having established the brand, there was strong reluctance within Sunrise to work on a work aimed at children at this point, and Yoshi apparently spent a great deal of time explaining to the executives the need for the aforementioned "introductory series to robot works for children."
When this series was launched, while they were developing toys that made use of the know-how they had gained from Transformers, Takara apparently made requests to Sunrise saying, "There are robots that transform from vehicles, so we would like you to create a story based on that," and "It should be taken from a completely different angle to Transformers.", and as this was Sunrise's first project for children in a long time, the animation production side, led by Inoue, solidified the basic pattern of the series, which involves robots that transform from vehicles and that can combine with each other.
The first work in the series, "Brave Exkaiser", was originally planned and produced with the theme of "eliminating complicated themes and settings" in order to be a "pure children's program".
However, as the series progressed, the target age and the range of settings and styles of each work gradually expanded, up to the final installment of the series, "The King of Braves GaoGaiGar". It has also gained support from non-fans up to that point. In response to its popularity, the franchise was also developed in various media such as OVAs, games, and drama CDs in addition to the TV series.
Both companies' partership is solid during the production of the series, however in 1994, during the first airing of The Brave Police J-Decker, Sunrise was acquired by Bandai through capital acquisition. As a result, Takara also distanced itself from Sunrise, and next year's project was temporarily cancelled. The influence is felt in the series as Takamatsu, who was the director of "J-Decker" at the time, later recalled that since the series was also aiming to return to the series' roots, he had approached the project with the intention that "this would be the end of the Brave Series." Eventually, as J-Decker was nearing the end, Takara again brought the next year's project to Sunrise, and the series continued after that year. However, as time passed and the planning for The King of Braves GaoGaiGar was launched, there was already an atmosphere within Sunrise that it might be difficult to continue the Brave series in collaboration with Takara. As a result, GaoGaiGar was produced with the intention of it being the last in the series, and unlike previous works, Sunrise was proactive in proposing ideas for things like robot designs and took a leading role in production.
As the franchise ended, news of it was announced in the newspaper as the top article of the evening edition of the Asahi Shimbun Nagoya edition on December 22, 1997, and two weeks later, the national edition on January 5, 1998, saying that any mecha animation will be halted due to the declining birthrate and the popularity of video games in Japan. Also, on page 13 of the morning edition of the Tokyo Shimbun on February 4, 1998, the end of this series was reported under the heading "The disappeared giant robot", and in the same article, the audience rating and toy sales were sluggish as to the reason for the end of the series. Tomomitsu Mochizuki stated about the decline in an interview that "When the series was first launched, the toys sold really well, but sales gradually dropped due to a decline in the number of children and the popularity of video games," and "Towards the end of the series, around the time Brave Command Dagwon is airing, the series struggled in terms of ratings, and TV stations often approached us for help."
During the Takara-Tomy merger in 2006, the Brave series wasn't part of the franchises that will carry over to the new company, with the intellectual rights to it were sold to Bandai Namco Entertainment.
Themes
The overlying theme of each series is "Bravery", the interaction between the robot "Brave", who has a heart and the boy, the will of the mecha, the union of the robots, and other unique themes for each series. With the exception of the relationship between "Brave Exkaiser" and "The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird", there is no direct relationship between each series in terms of world view or time. Therefore, almost all the works are different to each other in terms of themes and motif, and that changes every series.The robots that appear in the series are called "Brave Robo". Vehicles familiar to children, such as police cars, ambulances, fire engines, airplanes, and bullet trains, are transformed into the brave robos. This is because it was judged that it would be easier for children to sympathize with a familiar vehicle as a motif. Brave Robo can talk at will, and were classified into three types: "advanced life form type" where their life is transferred to a machine such as a vehicle and turned into a robot while "super AI type" where brave robots is made by human hands and granted advanced human-like intelligence and "fusion type" in which the main character fuses with a brave robot at will.
Design
All of the main hero robots' mechanical designs in the Brave series were those of prolific Sunrise mechanical designer Kunio Okawara. In most of the Brave series, there is a main hero robot, backed up by one or two support combiner teams and later receiving one or two combiner partners, upgrading the hero to more powerful forms. A number of supporting characters and enemies across the Brave Series had designs or remolds derived from earlier and present Generation One Takara Transformers designs, most notably those of Transformers Victory, Transformers: Zone and Transformers Battlestars: Return of Convoy. The enemy "Geister" characters in Brave Exkaiser were actually designed off of the first-generation Dinobot toys, for instance. Ultra Raker was also one of those designs whose origin was intended for Transformers and bore little resemblance to their final designs.There are also similar design elements between the Brave toys and Generation 2/Beast Wars Transformers, which were released around the same time. Many of the Da-Garn toys have light-piped eyes thanks to transparent pieces of plastic in their heads, a design element which many Generation 2 Transformers share. The Goldran DX toyline contains many projectile launchers, something Generation 2 shared as well. In particular, Advenger contains a rotor-launching gimmick identical to that of the Rotor Force from Generation 2. Lastly, the elbows of Leon from the DX Leon Kaiser toy contain ball joints, a design element that gained much broader use during Generation 2 and even more so during the Beast Wars toy line.
Toys for these robots were created in two sizes: DX versions that contained more gimmicks and more complicated transformations, and STD versions that contained fewer gimmicks and more limited transformations, but often also higher accuracy in reproducing the look of the robot from the anime series. Generally, the transformation of the robots was created by Takara, while the look of the robots was created by Okawara.
Brave series overview
There are currently a total of eight original entries in the Brave Series: one new series released every year, from 1990 to 1997, each with an episode count exceeding 40 in length. Each series is set in separate, unrelated timelines from each other. No further series appear to be planned for development in the near future.They are the following, sorted by year of first airing:
To date, only GaoGaiGar and Betterman have been licensed for distribution in the United States; their licenses originally held by Media Blasters and Bandai Entertainment, respectively; each company releasing DVD's of the series in the 2000s. GaoGaiGar and its OVA sequel were recently licensed for distribution in Asia via Muse Communication and Discotek Media in the United States while Bettermans license now belongs to Sentai Filmworks.