Trivia / GaoGaiGar

• Acting for Two: The majority of the Japanese cast would take on at least 2 characters, which was already a rare move by Japanese industrial standards in The '90s.
  • The performance of Kenichi Ogata splitting his voice for brothers Liger ^note A higher pitch voice. and Leo ^note A lower husky pitch Shishioh, especially when they crash into arguments was so superb, it's totally breathtaking.
  • Then you have the four Dragon brother robots: Enryu, Horyu, Furyu, Rairyu; along with their combined forms: Choryujin, Gekiryujin, Genryujin, and Gouryujin, that would be a total of 8 distinct performances to voice actor, Shinichi Yamada's credit.
  • Mic Sounders and Stallion White are introduced in the same episode, and were both voiced by Mitsuo Iwata.
  • According to the now late Voice Director Koichi Chiba, Nobuyuki Hiyama was supposedly been immune from double casting since he was the principal actor, but Hiyama eventually did branch off into voicing one possessed zonder victim, and one GGG China operative.
• Dyeing for Your Art: A voice actor example. For the climax of the Goldion Crusher scene in FINAL, Nobuyuki Hiyama was noted to have repeated yelling the iconic line "Hikari ni Nare" until he deemed it perfect. It is noted that he couldn't even speak for more than a week as a result and this scene alone broke two microphones.
• Fountain of Expies: The titular mecha itself. Robots with lions' heads on their chests are not too uncommon, and GaoGaiGar is usually cribbed from moreso than Daltanious and GoLion. Sometimes they use tools for weapons as well.
  • Digimon has HeavyLeomon, who debuted in Digimon ReArise. HeavyLeomon has a Pile Bunker arm keeping with the tool theming and a mane reminiscent of Genesic.
  • Fate/Grand Order has a character voiced by Nobuyuki Hiyama, with the epithet 'King of Braves'. Said character is Camazotz of the South American Lostbelt. As ruler of Mictlan, Camazotz possessed this title, but he no longer has a population to rule over. He still means well, but the nature of his situation means that he can't protect the human race as he wishes.
  • GUN×SWORD has Eldora V/Soul. No lion's head on this one (an eagle's head instead), but Eldora's combination uses a sound effect from GaoGaiGar, and Mitsuo Iwata, Mic Sounders and Stallion's voice actor, voices the pilot of the Monster of the Week in Eldora's debut episode.
  • Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2's CFW Brave. While the GaoGaiGar influence is the most obvious (lion head, bullet-like shoulders, wings, and head shape) its colors call back to earlier installments in the series. The cannons and flaming sword bring to mind Great Fighbird.
  • Mobile game Last Origin has Iron Protector Ramparion, a skin available for the Rampart character. Lion chest, black helmet with yellow fin, cylindrical forearms, wings, sharp knees, Nobuyuki Hiyama...
  • Super Robot Wars Z introduced Gunleon, whose offensive use of tools and lion motif bring to mind the King of Braves.
  • Anime Tomica Kizuna Gattai Earth Granner has Gao Granner Leo, a Cool Car that combines with another to form a robot with what else but a lion chest. Gao Granner Leo is voiced by Nobuyuki Hiyama to boot!
  • The G-Elements from Xenogears. The G-Elements is a Combining Mecha with the aforementioned chest lion head when combined. Several nods to GaoGaiGar's Final Fusion sequence are present in the G-Elements' combination.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: As it once was, so it is again: in The New '10s and beyond, finding any listing for the official English release of the series can be an adventure, and the series has never been licensed for streaming. A prospective viewer's best bet is, sadly, piracy, much as it was around the turn of the millennium.
  • Averted for fans from South East Asia, as Muse Communication has picked up the series for streaming on their Muse Asia YouTube channel for free since February 1st this year (the series' 25th anniversary). It's available in both English and Chinese subtitles, and each episodes are uploaded daily, available only to South East Asia region.
  • Finally averted, as Discotek Media has rescued the original series, along with the incomplete English dub, and is bringing GaoGaiGar FINAL to US shores.
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: Booze, Sunrise released 200 bottles of LIMITED EDITION BOOOOOOOOZE!!!
• No Export for You: None of the supplementary materials, including FINAL, were ever translated in any official capacity, though averted after Muse Asia eventually announced FINAL after uploading the last episode of the original GaoGaiGar on their YouTube channel.
• Show Accuracy/Toy Accuracy: As you can see for yourself, the accuracy tended to vary.
  • GaoGaiGar itself is a reasonable facsimile (especially accounting for keeping costs low) and the Ryu brothers are actually quite famous for being good, high-quality toys (so much so that bootlegs of them weren't uncommon in American toy stores for many years after the show went off the air). Goldy is also okay, though the hammer is too small, Mike comes out pretty well (though the Giragirahn VV suffers in detail a bit due to cost concerns) and the whole J-Ark set came out surprisingly well, given how incredibly involved (and enormous) it is.
  • However... the Guy action figure has a lot of inaccuracies - the armor isn't right in shape or color, the hair isn't the right shape and isn't long enough, his face is off-model, his eyepiece isn't green and the only time he's see-through like this is in the flashback to his creation. Poor Volfogg, however, gets it even worse. The toy focuses on trying to make Big Volfogg reasonably big and imposing, and normal Volfogg and the Gunbots suffer badly as a result, with Volfogg being twice as wide as he's supposed to be. And even then, Big Volfogg's head is about half the size it ought to be.
• Star-Making Role:
  • Pizza/Soldato J for Mitsuaki Madono. Madono initially broke into the industry from his performance throughout YuYu Hakusho as a competent bit player. But this was the series where he was truly promoted to roles of major importance.
  • Volfogg for Katsuyuki Konishi. Though it's kinda hard to see him playing such a stoic character in retrospect. Especially when you consider the INFAMOUS role he played years later...
• Super Robot Wars:
  • This last entry of the Brave Series entry is ironically the first to embrace the SRW franchise, starting from the 2nd Super Robot Wars Alpha, and its over the top nature makes it a fan favorite amongst SRW crowd and becoming even more of the most famous Brave Series entry. It has so far appeared in 2nd Alpha & 3rd Alpha, W, BX, T, and 30. T marked its first appearance together with another Brave Series, Might Gaine, while Super Robot Wars 30 is set to showcase the GaoGaiGar vs. Betterman content in SRW for the first time.
• Unfinished Dub: The DVD release was about half-ways through when Media Blasters put it on hiatus for a year-and-a-half in favour of leeching off the nostalgia of Voltron, after which the rest of the series was released sub-only. Considered by many to be one of the biggest mistakes they could have ever made.
• What Could Have Been:
  • A proposed third series called GaoGaiGar: Project Z got pretty far along in the production process (enough that a toy was released of one of the new mecha) but ended up being canceled. The series would have involved Mamoru and Kaidou joint-piloting a new version of GaoGaiGar to defend Earth from a new threat.
    • It now has an official novel and manga series, but of course it's Japanese only. There is an ongoing English translation for it as seen here.
    • It is scheduled to appear in the upcoming Super Robot Wars 30
  • There was a scrapped design for Star GaoGaiGar were GaoGaiGar would combine with a gold Dragon and have dragonic wings with beam energy tips, a helmet with hair and a large claw hand add on similar to the Marg Hand. This would have it be closer to other final Brave designs compared to the final Star GaoGaiGar design.
    • It's likely, based on the design elements featured that it was reworked into later concepts such as Genesic GaoGaiGar, GaoFighGar and the Goldion Finger/Armor. Given the Dragon looks of a similar origin to Galeon, the final battle may have taken place in the Trinary Solar system like with what happened in Final. It's also possible the Dragon design inspired Goldburn and Dragon King Kaiser Gridknight.

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