Force Five

Force Five was a syndicated anime anthology during the late 1970s/early 1980s. In the US, this series was primarily shown only in New England and Virginia, though it did make brief appearances in other markets, such as Dallas, Texas and San Jose, California on KICU-TV 36. It was also shown in Toronto, Canada on CFMT channel 47. It was produced by Jim Terry and his company American Way, and consisted of five imported Japanese giant robot serials (originally produced in the mid-1970s by Toei Animation) in response to the popularity of the Shogun Warriors toy collection (in fact, Mattel was one of the sponsors). Over 156 segments had English dialog written for the series by a team led by Mike Haller and Lynn Garrison. These elements were the first attempt to market the Transformer concept but did not succeed. The Transformer success in 2010-2011 is basically an expanded production of the same themes.

In an anthology style, the five shows were broadcast simultaneously with one episode of each serial assigned a specific weekday. Additionally, all of the shows were edited into two hour movies and marketed on video tape by Family Home Entertainment. In the UK the video company Krypton Force released several of these cartoons, but under different series titles.

Force Five consisted of the following five series:

• Gaiking
• Dangard Ace (Planetary Robot Dangard Ace)
• Starvengers (Getter Robo G)
• Grandizer (UFO Robot Grendizer)
• Spaceketeers (Starzinger)

Great Mazinger was supposed to be among the five shows, but the deal to pick up the series fell through, so Starzinger (Spaceketeers) was picked up instead of this. Gaiking's instrumental version of its theme song was actually re-used to be the ending song for the series, rather than using an original song.