Grendizer at 50

It stands 30 meters tall, weighs about 280 tonnes (in Earth’s gravity, at least), can run at speeds up to 700 kph and is capable of leaping clean over the world’s tallest building with room to spare. 

But Grendizer, the fictional giant robot star of the anime TV series of the same name, created in Japan 50 years ago, somehow managed to make an even greater leap between two very different cultures in the real world when it landed in Lebanon four years later, where it offered escapism and hope to a generation of children growing up amid the horror and uncertainty of war and desperate for a hero to emerge. 

The Arabic version of the TV series “Grendizer” quickly won an army of adoring fans across the Middle East; nowhere more so than in Saudi Arabia, where in November 2022 a giant statue of the show’s mighty “mecha” was unveiled in Riyadh at the Boulevard World entertainment complex. 

Standing 33.7 meters tall, even bigger than the TV original it celebrates, the statue was recognized by Guinness World Records as “the largest metal sculpture of a fictional character.”  

Fictional it might be but thanks to its story of resistance against alien invaders, the anime show “UFO Robot Grendizer,” which debuted in Japan in 1975, resonated with viewers young and old not only in Lebanon, where the show was dubbed into Arabic and first aired on Tele Liban in 1979, but throughout the region. 

By 1980, the show was a fixture on TV screens across the Arab world, including Saudi Arabia where it won the hearts of a generation of young fans and inspired an interest in anime and manga that endures to this day. 

Fifty years after its debut, the giant robot Grendizer lives on in the Middle East, not only in the hearts of fans of the original show but also as an ongoing commercial concern that has been refreshed for a new generation as part of a recent creative reinvention in Saudi Arabia. 

Following in the massive footsteps of “Grendizer,” the Kingdom has embraced anime on a grand scale. Manga Productions — a subsidiary of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s MiSK Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the cultivation of entrepreneurship among Saudi youth — has trained thousands of Saudis in the arts of manga and anime, sending many to study at the renowned Kadokawa Contents Academy in Japan.

In 2021, in partnership with Toei Animation in Japan, Manga Productions produced its first animated feature, “The Journey,” based on Saudi folklore. 

Th company is also the Middle East and North Africa publisher for the Grendizer video game The Feast of The Wolves, which is available in Arabic and eight other languages on platforms including PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch. 

And in 2024, Manga Productions released a brand new Arabic-language anime series, “Grendizer U.” 

Bringing Grendizer back and updating it for a new generation was “a unique challenge,” according to Abdulaziz Alnaghmoosh, head of business development at Manga Productions. 

“How do you tackle an iconic intellectual property and bring it back without making the original audience angry about it?” he said. 

“The last time ‘Grendizer’ was shown on TV was around the 1980s, so there is a big generational gap … If we go exactly with the old style, nobody will watch it, and if we go with the new style, none of the older generation will watch it. 

“So we tried to find a middle balance, a way that the new generation would like more, but the older generation will still feel that there is some hint of the old one there.” 

“Grendizer” is back; though to its multitude of fans across the Arabic world, of course, it never really went away.

ROBOTIC ORIGINS

When “Grendizer” debuted in Japan in 1975, there was already no shortage of giant robots in manga and anime culture. Known collectively as “mecha,” they defined a genre born out of the horrors of real-life war. 

One of the first was “Tetsujin 28-go” (which translates as Iron Man No. 28), which was created as a comic book, or manga, in 1956 by Mitsuteru Yokoyama. He had lived through the Second World War and the dropping of atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and the plot of his story reflected this. 

Go Nagai, the manga artist who created “Grendizer,” was inspired by “Tetsujin 28-go” but added an original twist to the idea: a pilot who controlled the robot from a cockpit within the massive machine. Until then, the robots had been piloted by remote control. 

“Grendizer,” too, emerged from the rubble of post-war Japan. Nagai (real name, Kiyoshi Nagai) was born on Sept. 6, 1945, a month to the day after the bombing of Hiroshima, and his experience of growing up in a country scarred by war influenced the violent subject matter of many of his stories.

He reflected on this during an interview with Arab News Japan reporter Hala Tashkandi in October 2019: “Looking at history, there have been so many wars and battles in many countries, so I wanted to integrate the different situations people experienced during those wars and battles in ‘Grendizer,’ so that the work will bring back those memories to the people who watch it.  

“I did not intend to include specific areas but I guess that resonated with people in the Arab world at that time. It was good timing, I think. 

“In the long history of Japan there have been so many wars as well, so people have that kind of memory deep in their heart. So probably that resonated with the people who watch my work.” 

Ali Itani, the head of Arab News Japan, grew up in Jeddah, where he first encountered “Grendizer” on TV as a child in the mid-1980s. 

“At the time we had only two channels, and for kids ‘Grendizer’ was one of the highlights,” he recalled. 

“‘Grendizer’ had a moral message, which none of the other cartoons did, and I think that’s why it crossed over so much. I was a five-year-old watching cartoons, and this one was talking about justice and honor, standing by your word and fighting for what’s right. 

“It was a cornerstone of my youth. It had a very big impact.”

A GENERATIONAL ICON

Itani, who like many of his generation in the Arab World still has a collection of “Grendizer” memorabilia, visited Japan for the first time in 1983 for the opening of Tokyo Disneyland. He would later study for a master’s degree in international relations at the International University of Japan between 2001 and 2003. 

And when he oversaw the launch of Arab News Japan in October 2019, it was the creator of “Grendizer,” Nagai, that he called upon to design the rising-sun artwork for its masthead. 

Karim El-Mufti, a political scientist who teaches at Sciences Po in Paris, France, and Saint Joseph University’s Global Campus of Human Rights in Beirut, Lebanon, is another lifelong fan of “Grendizer,” a passion he shares with his children. 

The show remains a potent symbol in the Arab world, he said, “because my generation passed it on to their kids, who know it by heart.” 

There is also enduring nostalgia for “Grendizer” in France, where the original cartoon was also popular, El-Mufti added, “but in the Arab world it’s in a completely different league; in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq. You see it reflected in graffiti, rap groups, artists, memorabilia.” 

Does he still own any “Grendizer” memorabilia? 

“Oh yes,” he happily admits. “I have a mug, I have posters from events, a figurine or two, copies of old ‘Grendizer’ magazines in French, and all 74 episodes of the show in Arabic on DVD.” 

But to him, “Grendizer” is so much more than merely the subject of some nostalgic collectibles. In 2020 he published a paper in the cultural research journal Mutual Images in which he examined the phenomenon of the show’s crossover success in the region. 

In the article, titled “Influence and success of the Arabic edition of ‘UFO Robot Grendizer’: Adoption of a Japanese icon in the Arabic-speaking world,” he explored the reasons “why ‘Grendizer’ struck such a profound echo in the minds and hearts of the generation of children who found in the character a superhero figure as an escape route” from the problems of their world.

The specific context of the Middle East at the time was the “key to grasp the cultural resonation of a cartoon about alien invasions against one’s homeland,” he wrote. 

“For adults living in the Middle East and their children in the 1970s, the anime story is closely connected with the historical occurrence of the Nakba … Arab children came to deeply identify with the cartoon, its plot, the invasion of Earth, the gigantic battles and the superhero characters in ‘UFO Robot Grendizer’ whom they were looking up to in their daily ordeal, as they could feel and observe how the adult generation was struggling to uphold the different Arab causes.” 

The “Grendizer” anime series was not the first outing for this new breed of mecha piloted from within by humans, nor even its first form or name. Its origins stretched back to Oct. 2, 1972, and the publication in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump of a new manga by Nagai featuring a mecha called Mazinger Z. This was followed in 1974 by a new and improved version, Great Mazinger, in a series also written and drawn by Nagai. Both were adapted as anime. 

The Grendizer mecha, also created by Nagai, debuted in Japan on Oct. 5, 1975, in the third show in the sequence, called “UFO Robot Grendizer,” and simultaneously in a manga of the same name. 

The TV series, which introduced a number of new characters including the hero, Duke Fleed, was produced by renowned anime studio Toei Animation and broadcast in Japan on Fuji TV between Oct. 5, 1975 and Feb. 27, 1977.  

That might have been that; after all, in manga and anime, giant battling mecha tend to come and go in a flash. 

But thanks to a combination of visionary Lebanese business acumen and the geopolitical upheaval in the Middle East — and perhaps some “good timing,” as Nagai suggested in 2019 — “Grendizer” debuted on Arabic television in 1979, as the region was reeling from an Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Almost overnight, a new hero was born for a generation. 

The plot of “UFO Robot Grendizer” was simple enough but it resonated strongly in the febrile atmosphere of the Middle East in the late 1970s and early 1980s. 

Duke Fleed, crown prince of the planet Fleed, escapes to Earth following the occupation of his world by the evil Vegan Empire. He lands in Japan, bringing with him his planet’s secret weapon: the giant mecha, Grendizer.

Duke is adopted by a scientist who owns a ranch where, under the alias Daisuke Umon, Duke works and, for a while, is able to lie low. It isn’t clear where he manages to hide his giant mecha — at 30 meters tall it definitely cannot fit under any bed. Fortunately for all earthlings, however, it means Grendizer is on hand when the evil Vegans follow Duke to Earth. 

“Grendizer” wasn’t the first Japanese anime broadcast in the Arab world. In 1974, Nicolas Abu Samah, a Lebanese director, actor and producer, had founded Filmali, the first Arabic-language film-dubbing studio. 

One of its first projects was an Arabic dub for Lebanese television of the series “The Arabian Nights: Adventures of Sinbad,” which had been broadcast on Japanese TV in 1975 and 1976. The success of the show inspired others in the regional TV industry, including Wissam Izzedine, one of the founders of the Lebanese TV network Tele Liban, to look for other properties to adapt, and for his first project Izzedine chose “UFO Robot Grendizer.”  

According to El-Mufti in his paper published in Mutual Images, Izzedine was drawn to the series primarily because he was “attracted by the alien invasion story, which resonated so closely with his country, Lebanon.” 

Izzedine worked with two partners to bring “Grendizer” to the screen in Lebanon: director Wiam El-Saidi, and Al-Ittihad Al-Fanni (The Arts Federation), a Palestinian-owned production company, founded in Beirut in 1962, which was commissioned to translate the script into Arabic. El-Saidi was a pioneer in his field. 

“The Arabic dub of Japanese anime and English cartoons was a new kind of project for TV in Lebanon in the early 1970s, which I was so encouraged and passionate to do,” he told Arab News Japan reporter Amin Abbas in October 2020. 

The early projects he worked on included “The Adventures of Sinbad,” “Maya the Honey Bee” and, he said, “especially ‘UFO Robot Grendizer.’” 

“(It) was the main attraction of kids and people of all ages who wanted to attach themselves to a heroic character similar to the great Arabic leaders of the past,” he added. 

“‘Grendizer’ was the kind of hero that protects the innocent and weak people against the evil.”

ARABIZING GRENDIZER

Eleven voice actors were hired to record the Arabic script, the opening and closing theme songs were recorded by Lebanese singer Sami Clark, and the first season of 21 episodes was broadcast on Tele Liban in 1979. 

Clark, who died in 2022 at the age of 73, would be forever associated with “UFO Robot Grendizer” — he was frequently called upon to perform the theme song, and was invited to attend anime festivals and exhibitions across the Arab world. 

In 2019, he sang the Arabic version of the theme on stage at the Saudi Anime Expo in a duet with Issao Sasaki, singer of the Japanese original. 

The job of voicing Duke Fleed went to Lebanese actor and director Jihad El-Atrash, whose voice, El-Mufti wrote, “totally personified the deep emotions carried in the storyline.” The vocal “rage” El-Atrash brought to Duke’s clashes with the alien invaders struck a particular chord with Arabic audiences. 

“The central message of the show, defending one’s homeland, was further amplified with the use of an impeccable Arab lexicon and specific ‘tag lines’,” El-Mufti wrote. 

“In a shattered Middle Eastern context, the chosen lexicon and phrasing … was consistent with the glorification of armed resistance against real-life occupation.”

Like Clark, El-Atrash is forever associated with “Grendizer” and has made many appearances at conventions, including the first Saudi Comic Con in Jeddah in 2017. 

It is clear that all of those involved in transplanting “Grendizer” from Japan to Arabia were keenly aware of the symbolism in doing so. 

During an interview in 2005 with Faisal J. Abbas, now editor-in-chief of Arab News and at the time a reporter for Asharq Al-Awsat, voice actor El-Atrash spoke of the “context of the broadcast of the program, as we were enduring a war back then and the entire Arab world was suffering from the occupation of Palestinian territories. 

“And suddenly along comes ‘Grendizer’ and the values he represents relevant to peace-seeking, the defense of one’s nation, and the resistance, facing one’s enemies.” 

Theme song singer Clark echoed this sentiment in 2018, saying the series had a message that was uniquely relevant to the Arab region at that time. 

“The world was crumbling, people were living through periods of wars and they needed a hero,” he told Future TV. 

They found that champion in “Grendizer,” he said, which appeared to “express our rage in that particular context and to give us a glimpse of hope.”