GENESIS CLIMBER MOSPEADA
Genesis Climber Mospeada aired on Japanese television from October 1983 to March 1984 and had 25 episodes. It was a joint project involving Studio Artmic and Tatsunoko Pro. Mospeada featured mecha designs by Kakinuma Hideki and Aramaki Shinji and original character designs by Amano Yoshitaka. Mospeada stands apart among mecha anime for its strong science-fiction themes. Rather than showing us aliens that look like humans the alien invaders are very alien. Their society, their motives – even their appearance are hidden from humanity. Their bodies and culture are nowhere near human. Towards the end of the show they adopt human bodies as an experiment and it throws their society into chaos.
The fact that Mospeada only had 25 episodes is testament to the show’s lack of success. Mospeada fans debate the reasons for this. Some cite a poor television time slot on Sunday morning. In translated interviews staff members talk of how Mospeada was "ahead of its time" and had a serious, melancholy feel that didn’t appeal well to younger viewers. However, it was popular enough to allow the production of an OAV to thank the fans. It was released in September 1985 and titled Mospeada: Love, Live, Alive. The OAV wasn’t a sequel but rather a look back on the TV series. Since Mospeada wasn’t a commercial success the OAV was mostly recycled animation from the TV series set to music from the TV series’ soundtrack. The new animation that was created for the OAV gives us a brief look at how the characters are doing after the conflict with the Inbit.
Gears Online is pleased to be able to bring you images and information from Mospeada. Although we focus on the mecha, characters and storyline are covered here too.
Special thanks to levrin for translation help on pages in this section.
Material from The Imai Files by Roger Harkavy was used in this section. Mospeada fans everywhere thank Roger Harkavy for his work.