NAIDA AND RUBINA: WHAT'S BEHIND THE MASK - 1
By Gerdha & Joe7

I. OVERVIEW

Copyright © 2018 Gerdha & Joe7, All Rights Reserved

Article by Gerdha, based on her posts on the french forum originally owned by DJInspace (now disappeared) and on her own analysis.
Notes, images and added considerations by Joe7. I assume any responsibility towards the Authors and I am available to modify the article upon their demand.

All the references to the original content of Ufo Robot Grendizer’s Roman Album are related to its translation in italian language by Stella Di Fleed, which was originally published on www.nagaifans.it (as of today 12/31/2021 no longer active). The analysis / interpretation of the content of Roman Album are the exclusive work by the authors of this article.

Forum version: here.

1) COPYRIGHT

Since copyright laws do not allow to publish the complete translation of an intellectual work without author's formal permission, with the exception of excerpts for analysis and commentary purpose only, in this dossier I have selected only a few passages of the original Japanese version, which will then be posted here without any lucrative purpose and exclusively for the purpose of analysis. The images on the site are property of the right-holders and these have been collected here for the sole purpose of commentary to the text. All trademarks belong to their respective owners. Each dialogue is divided into two parts: translation and comment.

2) EPISODE CREDITS

EPISODE 25
“A love flower which shines in the sky” (japanese title)
Screenplay: Mitsuru Mashima
Directed by: Tomoharu Katsumata
Artistic Direction: Shingo Araki
Wallpaper Manager: Tadanao Tsuji
Character Designer: Kazuo Komatsubara

EPISODE 72
“The long distance homeland star" (japanese title)
Screenplay: Mitsuru Mashima
Directed by: Tomoharu Katsumata
Artistic Direction: Shingo Araki
Wallpaper Manager: Fumihiro Uchikawa
Character Designer: Shingo Araki

II. INTRODUCTION

1) INTRODUCTION (Joe7)

Naida and Rubina: these two women are fundamental characters in UFO Robot Grendizer anime. They are often cited in fanfiction or fanart: Naida is commonly seen as a victim of Vega, and Rubina as a woman of peace. But are they really so? In a more careful analysis of their stories, following in particular the Original Japanese Version (OV), it turns out that things are more complex than what they seem, and that the conclusions to which we may arrive are definitely different.

In this Gerdha's long analysis, whom I thank very much for giving me permission to publish, I will briefly present Naida and Rubina stories in the commonly accepted viewpoint. Afterwards, there will be two sections: the first, dedicated to Naida and the second to Rubina. Finally, a summary of the results of the analysis will be provided.

2) INTRODUCTION (Gerdha)

The dossier you will see developed in the next chapters is composed of both my personal analysis recently born and (mostly) from the synthesis of a series of discussions that were published on the French forum of DJinspace between the end of 2002 and 2006. Or rather, it is what I could reconstruct, since the forum was first attacked by a hacker who deleted all my posts and some posts of other users, then the forum disappeared definitively from the web when the provider, without notice, ceased hosting it. So, the only trace of the hundreds of interesting analysis that took place in the DJinspace forum over the course of 10 years are just a few prints that I had done of some of the discussions I had loved and which I had kept with the thought "you never know...". I thank Pambou (DJinspace forum user and webmaster of the site "La Lune Rouge" (HERE) to give me the possibility to publish them.

In the spring of 2003, I began to have access to OV (Original Version). Being lucky of having a perfectly bilingual japanese/italian relative in my family, with her help I started to take care of its translation. In the autumn of 2005, I started posting the ep72 and ep25 translations on the DJinspace forum. There were therefore various discussions on the subject, which were interrupted temporarily, due to the attack of a hacker, and then resumed in 2006, with various pauses, until the end of 2009.

If the DJinspace forum was a privileged place for profound analysis with a very high cultural value on Ufo Robot Grendizer, it was certainly because the people who attended them - starting with myself - were mostly available to question their "infantile certainty" about the versions of the anime they had always known, in order to search for an explanation that would put the original dialogues in harmony with the pictures and make justice to the author's will to describe a story consistent with his poetry. Very few users refused to travel this route for fear of having to give up their own rooted idea of the real content of Ufo Robot Grendizer. I hope the same will happen here, too.

(to be continued here)

HERE ALL THE ENGLISH LINKS ABOUT GRENDIZER

Edited by joe 7 - 10/1/2022, 22:03