I've written numerous times about the late 1997 TV anime Next Senki/Record of Next War Ehrgeiz before, & how I will forever have a soft spot for it, even though it's been completely forgotten with time; it just "clicks" with me. Now when it comes to the first ever mech anime to air in late-night, most people will quickly assume that it has an association with the 3D fighting game of the (almost same exact) name, 1998's Ehrgeiz: God Bless the Ring, especially since the game came out in arcades around the same time the anime was receiving its (only) home video release in Japan. Those people would be wrong, though, since the two Ehrgeiz-es have absolutely nothing in common, aside from both using the German word for "ambition" in their titles; they also share a couple of voice actors, coincidentally. But what would you say if the anime may actually have a link to another video game, one that is mech-based? Specifically, was Next Senki Ehrgeiz really an aborted adaptation of Capcom's Cyberbots?
For those unfamiliar, Cyberbots: Fullmetal Madness originally came out in April 1995 for Capcom's CPS2 arcade hardware, & was a 1-on-1 fighting game where you took control of giant robots piloted by a variety of different characters; it was the spiritual successor to 1994 beat-em-up Armored Warriors, as they used the same mechs. While it did become a bit of a cult favorite over time, today it's best known as the game that Marvel vs. Capcom 1 & 2 pulled Jin Saotome (& his mech Blodia) from. Unlike most Capcom fighters of the time, though, Cyberbots wasn't ported to home consoles for a whole two years, with the first being the Sega Saturn version on March 28, 1997. Now, in terms of any relation to Next Senki Ehrgeiz, the Saturn port still predated the anime's debut later that year on October 2, but the second console port is where things get interesting. You see, the Sony PlayStation wouldn't see a port of Cyberbots until December 25, 1997... The same day (sort of, since the show aired at "25:15" on December 24) that Ehrgeiz's final episode aired on TV Tokyo! While one can chalk up the port's delayed release down to the PS1 not being as friendly for 2D fighting games, though the Saturn version didn't require the RAM expansion cart to play (it did improve performance, however), maybe the port was also delayed so that an anime adaptation could be made to help promote it... At least, that's if these Japanese blogs are correct. So, to change things up for Theory Musing, allow me to ruminate on a theory made by others & see if there's something to this idea that Next Senki Ehrgeiz was originally meant to be a Cyberbots anime.
First off, I think it's best to establish the story concept behind each title, & see if there are similarities from that perspective. Cyberbots takes place "near the end of the 21st century", where overpopulation has resulted in some of humanity deciding to live in man-made space colonies, and primarily follows the stories of the playable pilots as they each get involved with the machinations & experiments of the planet's army, the Earth Force. with the fate of the planet eventually at stake. Ehrgeiz, in comparison, takes place sometime in the future, where some of humanity has decided to live on man-made space colonies named Next. Eventually, the Next Colonies unite into the Next Government & declare independence, resulting in a war with the Earth Government; at the same time, an Earth resistance group called Terra fights its own battles with the Earth Government. The primary story, however, focuses on how Next, Terra, & a group of outlaws on an abandoned Next Colony all become intertwined when a mysterious mech starts causing a rampage in space. While there are certainly some similarities here, they are much more general in nature, and though Cyberbots' plot can vary wildly depending on which pilot you play as, no one's personal storyline really matches the plot to Ehrgeiz closely enough to warrant mentioning. Therefore, we should dig a little deeper & see if there are more specific similarities between these two products, like with the characters themselves... Because that's where this theory starts to have some potential legs to it.
So let's start with who are effectively the main characters of these two titles, Cyberbots' Jin Saotome & Ehrgeiz's Jay Striker. Actually, scratch that; let's start with their mechs. Yes, there's really no similarity between Jin & Jay, outside of their names both being three-letters long & starting with "J", but one can argue that their respective Metal Vehicle/MV & Variant Armor/VA are much more alike. Though "Jay's MV" (Ehrgeiz literally has no specific names for any of its mechs) is comparatively lean when put up against Jin's husky Blodia, they both have a very similar red & black color scheme to them. Also, both robots feature arm-attached shields that they can utilize in both defensive & offensive situations. Finally, in an interesting little point, the Blodia has wheels on its heels, allowing it to slide around for quick maneuvering, while all of the MVs in Ehrgeiz have the ability to glide around the ground; it was likely a budget-saving decision for animation, but it's a neat quirk, nonetheless. Of course, one can also easily argue that these similarities can be coincidental more than anything, because a lot of what makes Jay's MV & the Blodia similar can also apply to other "real robot" style mecha. So let's finally see what the rest of the major cast of both Ehrgeiz & Cyberbots have to offer, because it is interesting that I managed to notice that the whole "One character is an expy for another" can theoretically apply to a good majority of the major casts.
For example, let's look at who are both pretty much the "lead females" for each title. Akane Aoi is a Captain for the Next Government assigned to capture S.A.C., or simply "S" for short, a special self-operated MV that's escaped & started roaming nearby space. In comparison, Mary Miyabi is the only Captain for the Earth Force sent out to recover a prisoner who escaped recently. Now, aside from the fact that Akane & Mary have the same exact rank & even dress similarly, though that can be due to the fact that most realistic military outfits tend to look similar in some way, it is interesting that each of their involvements in their respective stories are about retrieving something. The main difference, however, is in what each character goes through when it comes to their sources of employment. Akane stays a dedicated Next officer for the entire anime, even when she's taken off of the project & resorts to continuing her original mission like a woman possessed, while Mary eventually winds up defecting from the Earth Force when she comes across Bao & Mao, the very "escapee" she was sent out to capture; in some storylines, though, Mary does stay dedicated to the Earth Force. For the first time in this theory, we have a similarity that's both close enough to make sense, yet differ enough in a way that could make someone argue that said change was done to mask the "fact" that Akane Aoi was originally meant to be Mary Miyabi.
Speaking of Bao & Mao, Ehrgeiz does have its own pair of young siblings in the form of Ken & Ann, two orphans who lost their parents during the battle that ravaged Next 7 & turned it into the abandoned space colony that Jay & the other outlaws, including Ken & Ann, now call their home. Both pairs of siblings operate a single giant robot, though Ken & Ann do know how to actually pilot their MV (Ken mostly, though Ann does show a basic understanding on her own in Episode 4), compared to how Bao & Mao seem to operate their VA solely through sheer luck & the fact that it's pre-programmed for self-defense. All siblings are very protective of each other as well, though Ken & Ann get their own respective moments in their story, while Bao gets more of a showing than Mao does. In a more notable difference, however, Ken & Ann are never captured by anyone in Ehrgeiz's story, which is a stark contrast to Bao & Mao's entire Cyberbots story being about them escaping from the Earth Force & wanting to be free. Sure, both productions having a pair of brother/sister siblings is interesting, but outside of that there's little all that similar between Ken & Ann and Bao & Mao.
However, coincidentally enough, Ken's seiyuu, Urara Takano, is also the voice of Mary Miyabi, so you could imagine that Bao wound up getting help from Ken, which is amusing.
But then we get these two characters, who are shockingly similar in a few ways. In Ehrgeiz, Arnold is an enigmatic character, a seeming cyborg who's reawakened from cold sleep by Akane in order to help capture S, since Arnold was involved in the creation of the AI-driven MV; by the end, we find out just how involved Arnold was, exactly. In Cyberbots, SHADE is the result of an Earth Force "super soldier" experiment, one in which he was made into the perfect cyborg killing machine that takes orders from his masters; he even killed his entire squadron to prove that he won't disobey orders. In terms of their actions, the two do differ in that Arnold tends to want to do his own thing when is comes to S, usually resulting in Akane having to reign in him & force him to follow her orders, while SHADE's story is about him slowly trying to remember who he once was, & eventually regaining enough of his humanity so that he can go against his Earth Force masters. Still, what's most similar between them is their general design, combined with their overall mystique. Both are bald-headed mysteries with unnatural skin colors & a penchant for not saying much unless necessary, and their respective straitlaced dedication to their objectives, at least at the start for SHADE, does lend some credence to the idea of Ehrgeiz having been originally based on Cyberbots; these two characters are that similar, at least compared to most others here.
At first, one wouldn't really think of Ehrgeiz's Balzak Gaillian, one of the few characters in the series to be given a complete name (& even then it's only shown, never stated, just like Jay's), & Cyberbots' Gawaine Murdock going by looks, but dive deeper & you start to find some curious similarities. Both of them were legendary soldiers for their respective sides (Next & the Earth Force) who wound up retiring & disappearing from battle after a tragic moment; Balzak due to the Battle of Next 7, & Gawaine due to his squad dying after a training accident. Afterwards, both of them lived in seclusion, hiding from their pasts, until certain incidents forced them to make themselves known again; Balzak after the outlaws interact with Terra by accident, & Gawaine due to the Earth Force making trouble. We start to see some differences after these bits, though, with Gawaine being directly related to characters, like having been Mary's captain & being old friends of both the Saotome family & SHADE in the past. Balzak, in comparison, is known as a war hero by Hal, & was thought dead by Next (alongside Jay), but has no direct relation to anyone apart from the outlaws. Another difference is in the ages of the two characters, because while no distinct age is mentioned for Balzak, he doesn't look anywhere near as old as Gawaine does as 63, and the fact that Balzak is a downright drunkard in his post-war life, as a way to not be reminded of the horrors he saw, wouldn't exactly keep him looking young, either.
Now, to be fair, in Animate CD Collection - Cyberbots, the Drama CD version of the story by Movic from late 1995, Gawaine is voiced by Osamu Saka... The same man who would go on to voice Balzak in 1997! While one could use this as strong proof of Balzak being a proxy for Gawaine, especially with the fairly strong similarities, it must be mentioned that the Saturn port of Cyberbots, which came after the Drama CD but before Next Senki Ehrgeiz, did recast everyone, with Gawaine now being voiced by Tessho Genda (who would wind up voicing Galbraith in Ehrgeiz). Truly, this is nothing more than a wild stroke of accidental coincidence... Right?
Okay, these two characters really don't have much in common, but I figure I should try to get as much of the major casts from both products out of the way here, and these two did wind up matching together slightly. In Ehrgeiz, Camel is easily the most mysterious character of all, as we learn pretty much nothing about him throughout the entire series; we at least learn what Arnold's relation to S is by the end, after all. What we do know about him, though, is that he's a bit of a self-centered loner who just lives for his own enjoyment, whether it's by beating his friends in poker or finding new ships to assault & steal their food, booze, & supplies from. In that regard, he is similar to Cyberbots' Santana Laurence, who's also a self-centered loner & narcissist, but that's effectively where the similarities end. Unlike Camel, Santana has relations & pasts to other members of the main cast, and it's those connections that force him to become more involved in the story. Camel, on the other hand, winds up working with Akane more because his old way of life got disrupted, & he thinks working with Akane during her hunt for S might give him a new thrill. Sure, in the end both of them show that they do care for more than just themselves, but Camel & Santana is a great counterpoint to the idea that Ehrgeiz & Cyberbots are intrinsically linked together.
Of course, these similar character elements extend to the antagonists of both Ehrgeiz & Cyberbots to some extents, too. Now this is a bit of a cheat, because where S.A.C is an advanced AI-driven MV that goes crazy, G.O.D. is simply a massive brain that pilots the X-0 Warlock VA (though it does pilot other VAs in certain storylines), so they aren't all that similar in that regard; they do both want nothing more than destruction & devastation, however. Still, it is interesting that both of these "final bosses", if you will, have names that are Engrish-filled anagrams (System of Absolutely Concience vs. Ganglions of Omniscient Disrupter), and the primary (mecha) form they both take are sleek, black harbingers of destruction that move faster than any other MV or VA.
Not just that, but both S.A.C. & G.O.D. take psychic control over specific characters in their respective series! In Ehrgeiz, Hal, the young leader of the Terra resistance force, is able to slowly create a mental link with S, until he eventually gets overtaken by the AI & turned into a maniacal vessel through which S can reveal its true intentions. In Cyberbots we have Arieta, a young girl who the Earth Force experimented on repeatedly until she escapes, and in some storylines winds up being controlled by G.O.D., similar to what happens to Hal (or should that be the other way?). To be fair, this is probably one of the stronger cases one can make for the whole "Ehrgeiz = Cyberbots" theory, but even then it's more on a conceptual level than anything more deep-seated.
I saved this one for last, simply because this is the one that's actually mentioned on those very Japanese blogs that espouse this theory, and it's about Chiyomaru Kagura & his bodyguard, Tessan Hagure. Now, specifically, these blogs state that Ehrgeiz's Gord & Roddy, two former Earth MV pilots who are already part of the outlaws at the start of the anime, are the expys for the console-exclusive Chiyomaru & Tessan, with some even stating that Gord & Roddy appear in the pair's ending sequence (Spoiler: They don't). Personally, though, I think the blogs have it wrong here, because there's a pair of characters who much better match Chiyomaru & Tessan, and that would be Terra's Hal & Galbraith. Both Hal & Chiyomaru are young leaders of Earth-opposed resistances, while Galbraith & Tessan are both larger & older bodyguards that are dedicated to their leaders. Also, their respective bodyguards are so dedicated that they are both ready & willing to nearly die for the respective young masters, though Cyberbots plays Chiyomaru & Tessan really straightforward, compared to how Ehrgeiz slowly has Hal lose his mind to S, resulting in Galbraith having to decide if he should finally act for himself for once. You know, it's funny that the Japanese blogs point out Chiyomaru & Tessan specifically as a blatant similarity, only to focus on a supposed "cameo" that's nothing more than one of Chiyomaru's subordinates having "pouty lips" like Roddy does in Ehrgeiz, while I not only found a better comparison utilizing that pair in the form of Hal & Galbraith, but also managed to find even better comparisons between other characters for the sake of this article!
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| Oh, are those characters on the left & top of the portrait supposed to be the "cameos" from Gord & Roddy? Trust me, it's not them. |
Finally, just for the amusement of it, one could argue that Chiyomaru's VA Gaits was the direct naming influence for Ehrgeiz, since they sound so similar. That being said, however, the similarity only really works in English, because the Gaits name in katakana is spelled ゲイツ, which actually pronounces more accurately as "Gates", instead of the ガイツ that the word "ehrgeiz" ends with in kana. Really, I'd chalk this up to being more of a wild coincidence than anything, really, especially since the theme of "ambition" is an important one to Ehrgeiz, so I highly doubt that the title originally came from a random VA's name in Cyberbots.
Unfortunately, there is absolutely no character in Ehrgeiz that works, even theoretically, as an expy for Cyberbots' Princess Devilotte de Deathsatan IX, who is the second-most-well-known character to come from the game, as she's appeared in crossovers herself.
So, in the end, is there any validity to those Japanese blogs about Next Senki Ehrgeiz being an aborted Cyberbots anime, so much so that it even got included in the former's Japanese Wikipedia page? Well, in my opinion, I think this is more a case of it sounding really cool more than anything, and though there are some remarkably similar aspects, especially when it comes to some of the characters, I think this is more a case of Japanese otaku simply spreading a baseless rumor that, more than likely, some random person once joked about online. Could Ehrgeiz have been influenced by Cyberbots? Possibly, but I doubt that they are quite as linked together as is stated on Japanese blogs. The real linchpin for my reasoning is that the Japanese laserdiscs for Ehrgeiz all come with mini-posters, the backs of which include a ton of really cool production artwork, settei, & interviews with the director & some of the cast, and not once in any of those posters is there even a mention of the word "video game" at all in kanji or katana, let alone anything that would make one think that Cyberbots had any direct influence on Ehrgeiz's creation. Now having an English translation of those various poster backsides would be awesome, but I doubt they'd shed any more light in favor of this theory. Of course, one could simply argue, "Well it's only natural that they won't actually admit it!", but considering that none of these blogs actually list any sort of source claiming it, I'm going to say that this theory is bunk. Really, what we need is a definitive answer from someone who actually worked on Ehrgeiz, but the chances of someone like the director, Toshifumi Kawase, actually making it to a con so that I can him are effectively nil.
Still, it is a theory that is fun to think about & consider, so I feel like I can't just dismiss it outright... Plus, I just wound up writing an entire article in English about whether it actually makes sense or not, so in the end all I'm doing now is spreading the rumor out even further!
Next Senki Ehrgeiz © 1997 et・BeSTACK/Project Ehrgeiz
Cyberbots: Fullmetal Madness © Capcom Co., Ltd. 1994, 1995, 1997
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