Muse Asia picks up Dandivine for an October stream

Good Smile Company's first original super-robot anime, Dandivine, will stream on Muse Asia from October, the licensor said on 18 September, with the series itself starting in Japan on 7 October.

Who is making it

Yi Cao directs at LIDEN FILMS and Kayac Animation, with Toshiki Inoue overseeing and writing the series scripts after a run that takes in several Kamen Rider series and Death Note. robin handles character design, Majiro of Macross Delta is the original character designer, An of GOD BRAVE STUDIO designs the mecha, and Yoshikazu Iwanami is sound director. Takuma Terashima leads the cast as Gekiha Shijima, alongside Haruka Shiraishi as Akane Kuzumi, Saya Aizawa as Kirei Shijima, Nao Tōyama, Aya Yamane and Misaki Kuno as Haru, Natsu and Aki, Asuna Tomari as Gō Sera, Katsuyuki Konishi as Yūsaku Kuroiwa, Ryōtarō Okiayu and Atsushi Ono as Daigo and Genjūrō Shijima, and Ruriko Aoki as Yūga Shinonome.

A toy company's robot, twenty years after the war

The story opens two decades after the robot Dandivine defeated the mysterious Aposdoll. Peace has held, and Kasuga, the toy manufacturer that lived off Dandivine merchandise, has slid into decline. Its president, Genjuro Shijima, prays for Dandivine's return; the Aposdoll comes back instead, and high-school student Gekiha Shijima is invited by his uncle, the machine's former pilot, to take the controls himself.

Themes, and where else Dandivine turns up

Takanori Nishikawa performs the opening theme, Zankyō ≠ Blaster, with DayRe: on the ending theme, Mikansei Ordinary. TOGUCHI is drawing a manga adaptation for Kadokawa's Monthly Comic Dengeki Daioh. The anime is the first project in Good Smile's The God of Combined Series and lands in the company's 25th-anniversary year. Muse Asia's licence covers South and Southeast Asia, and no UK or European streaming has been announced.

Our opinion

Good Smile has spent 25 years selling the models and letting other people make the cartoons, so a first original series is the company admitting that the toys came first for a reason: the mecha design is the pitch. Dandivine's premise has the decency to start with the hangover instead of the war, which is a more interesting place to begin than another squad of teenagers finding a cockpit in a shed, and it means the show arrives with a question about what a hero is for after the fighting stops. The sour note is the licence. Muse Asia's announcement is good news if you live inside its footprint and useless if you do not, and a series built around merchandise should not be this easy to miss in the markets that buy the most of it. If the manga adaptation travels further than the anime does, that will be the story.