NAIDA AND RUBINA: WHAT'S BEHIND THE MASK - 2
By Gerdha & Joe7
(previous article: here)

VERSION GENERALLY RECOGNIZED BY FANS ABOUT NAIDA AND RUBINA HISTORIES

This, more or less, is the summary, almost universally accepted by fans, about the events concerning Naida and Rubina.

King Vega, intending to expand his kingdom by conquering planet Fleed, to fool the king of Fleed sends his daughter Rubina on Fleed to marry the latter's son Duke Fleed, while he actually prepares an attack. Rubina, a golden-hearted gentle girl, is reluctant to her father's diktat, but, forced by her cruel father, goes to Fleed for the combined marriage and once there she falls in love with Duke Fleed. In spite of the marriage imposed, Duke Fleed feels affection and perhaps even more for the sweet Rubina. At some point, King Vega invades Fleed. Naida, a fleedian girl, whom Duke had previously fallen in love with, is captured during the attack and is made a Veghian slave. Duke Fleed is captured too, but manages to escape away to the Earth with the robot Grendizer. Planet Fleed becomes uninhabitable, destroyed by the radiation resulting from the launch of a bomb at vegatron. Rubina, against her will, is sent to planet Rubi.

Years later (ep25), during the war invasion to Earth, Naida is mentally conditioned by King Vega and is sent to Earth, in order to deceive and kill Duke Fleed. During these events, Naida communicates to Duke Fleed that all the Vega monsters launched against Grendizer carry Fleedians' brains installed inside them; then, conditioned by King Vega, Naida hurts Duke Fleed with an iron bar. He survives, but temporarily he goes crazy because of Naida's revelations.

Afterwards Naida, freed from conditioning, redeems herself by suicide, carrying with her the Vega invasion fleet sent in that episode, despite Duke, healed, begs her not to do so.

It is assumed that the idea of Naida's story in ep25 was actually taken from Gosaku Ota's manga, but, since the story of brains installed in monsters was too "strong" for Grendizer's audience, later this topic was forgotten and the whole episode 25 was considered by the same Authors of the anime as a "parenthesis", a kind of "what if?".

After 47 episodes, at the end of the anime (ep72), Rubina discovers that Duke Fleed is still alive and she flies to Skarmoon Base, with the aim of bringing peace between Vega and Earth. King Vega promises at the Ministry of Science Zuril to let him marry her daughter. In disagreement with her father, Rubina contacts Duke Fleed to inform him that the planet Fleed has actually survived the destruction and, in order to finally conclude the war, proposes him to marry her and to go back together on Planet Fleed to ensure peace.

At the end of the episode, Rubina, attempting to defend Grendizer from Zuril's attack, sacrifices herself for her beloved prince, revealing him, as the last gesture of love, the position of the Skarmoon Base. Duke Fleed, heartbroken for Rubina's death, with whom he has always been in love for, despair himself blatantly at the end of the episode.

However, it is not certain who of the two women Duke Fleed really loved: whether Naida or Rubina. In any case, it is assumed that both women loved him very much. In addition, it is sure that Duke Fleed feels for Hikaru only a feeling of sincere friendship, despite her passionate and hopeless love for him.

This, as I have said, is the "recognized version", so to speak, by the vast majority of fans about Naida and Rubina stories.

But this is a superficial analysis. Ufo Robot Grendizer is a complex anime, and its author is universally recognized to develop poetics focused on the dark aspects of the human soul. Not only: UFO Robot Grendizer cannot be understood using western logic and approach. You have to consider it in the Japanese culture context to fully understand its meaning. Finally, the scripting strategy is much more complex than how it may appear at first sight. or at the average perception of a children audience. As analysed in Gerdha's previous dossier (blog version: here; forum version: here), the relationship between Daisuke and Hikaru is not that what it seems to be at first sight, so, if this narrative approach was used for them, it is reasonable to assume that Naida and Rubina stories are not what they seem, but they are also "matrioskas", where the true story to tell is hidden, and it can be discovered only with a careful analysis.

(to be continued here)

HERE ALL THE ENGLISH LINKS ABOUT GRENDIZER

Edited by joe 7 - 13/2/2020, 18:43