Koichi Kawazu -- Ginga no Seishun （銀河の青春）

With all of the anime that was flooding into North America and then re-shaped and dubbed into new forms back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, one of those shows that arrived when I was in high school was "Voltron" (I guess "Wattron" didn't have the right ring). I'm not sure how exactly but I vaguely remember a show about a giant mecha formed from 5 ferocious robot cats, and then strangely enough, an English-dubbed cartoon starring that exact character popped up on the TV screen.

Along with the Cat Voltron, there was also a Vehicle Voltron series (with a huge cast) which came after the cats. I only found out yesterday that this particular part of "Voltron" was originally known as "Kikou Kantai Dairugger XV"（機甲艦隊ダイラガーXV...Armored Fleet Dairugger XV）from TV Tokyo that had its run for one year between 1982 and 1983. Where these producers came up with the names of these mecha is beyond me. My theory is that they all had their own versions of Scrabble or Boggle, just threw out the tiles or blocks at random and then added a few choice vowels.

Moving on from there, I was at my anime buddy's house once more yesterday for the usual anime outing and of course there was the anison hour. Feeling in the nostalgic mood, he put on the theme song for "Dairugger", and although it's one thing to hear the opening theme on YouTube, it's quite another to hear it on my friend's souped-up stereo. He put it on since he wanted to show how much the bass was working overtime on these old anison back then. However, I also heard the characteristic soaring strings and the rat-a-tat horns (especially that howling French horn) working together to create this heroic song that pretty much populated every super robot anime. Koichi Kawazu（川津恒一）did his level best to sing "Ginga no Seishun" (Youth of the Galaxy) like a national anthem.

"Ginga no Seishun" was written by Keisuke Fujikawa（藤川桂介）and composed by Seiji Yokoyama（横山菁児）.

Now that I think of it, I wonder what has become of this supposed live-action version of "Voltron". Perhaps it ran into the most dreaded of Hollywood monsters, Development Hell.