S6E6 - TOMINO-THON! THE IDEON Movies – A CONTACT & BE INVOKED (1982) History & Review

Many years before Anno Hideaki remade the ending to his audacious but unfinished sci-fi TV series with an avant-garde theatrical tour-de-force in The End of Evangelion, Tomino Yoshiyuki blazed the trail with The Ideon: Be Invoked, providing the full ending Space Runaway Ideon never got on television in spectacular (and spectacularly violent) fashion. Alongside its companion film, A Contact – which recaps the story of the TV series – Be Invoked completes the Ideon experience in the most purely Tomino ways imaginable, with incredibly intense action, an absolutely astonishing amount of bloodletting, and, in the end, a transcendental vision of collective human consciousness breaking free from these shackles we call bodies. It is one of the darkest, strangest, and most spectacularly produced anime films of all time, a crucial step not just in the career of Tomino Yoshiyuki, but in the history of Japanese animation itself. 

Enjoy, and come back next week for something completely different: Tomino’s delightful Western mecha comedy Combat Mecha Xabungle! 

Time Chart:

Theme Song: 0:00:00 – 0:01:37

History and A Contact Review: 0:01:37 – 1:03:44

Eyecatch Break: 1:03:44 – 1:04:28 

Be Invoked Review: 1:04:28 – 3:17:29

End Theme: 3:17:29 – 3:19:43 

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