NAIDA AND RUBINA: WHAT'S BEHIND THE MASK - 41
By Gerdha & Joe7
(first article: here; previous article: here)

Copyright © 2014 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in italian language by Stella Di Fleed, which was originally published on www.nagaifans.it (as of today 12/31/2021 no longer active).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.

INSIGHTS: NAIDA IN THE HANGAR - GRENDIZER'S PROTECTION SYSTEM AND THE BOMB

Here I'm deepening an aspect of the analysis about Naida. In ep25, Naida enters in Grendizer's hangar with a bomb in her hand, to eliminate the robot. According to Daisuke's words, Naida should have known that, approaching Grendizer, she could have been electrocuted. Still, she had gone on anyway. So:
- Naida didn't know about it. Then, why did Daisuke say she had to know?
- Naida knew it. Then, why she had gone on anyway? Did she want to commit suicide? And for what purpose? Here is Gerdha's hypothesis that can explain the apparent impasse.

Surely Duke Fleed is telling the truth: Naida should have known it, but she had forgotten, or she has thought that the device had been disabled by Duke Fleed for some reason. I don't find anything strange in this, considering her mental state (Naida is in fact not lucid: not because of her conditioning, but because of her mixed feelings of hate/love for Duke). Furthermore, it is interesting that Umon does not appear to be aware of this, as he does not try to stop Koji when he runs into the hangar assuming he can guide Grendizer.

But Hikaru certainly knew about it, given her comments she reaches Koji in the hangar. It is impossible to believe that Umon was not aware of Grendizer's protective device: therefore it means that he thought it was inactive at the time, or, not being able to run after Koji, he had instructed Hikaru to reach him in the hangar (in fact, what was she doing there at that time?). This also shows how confidently were Hikaru and Daisuke: in fact, only he could have told Hikaru about the Grendizer "burglar alarm" (while, among other things, he evidently had not told Koji: another hidden message which shows the deep confidence that Daisuke had towards Hikaru, while with Koji Daisuke has spoken less). Sure, Umon could have warned Hikaru by explaining the danger Koji was running into, but he couldn't have time to tell her everything in the few seconds Koji was running to Grendizer.

Let's now analyze an interesting detail of the hangar scene: when the proton bomb, which Naida placed, explodes in the hangar, it only causes the destruction of a part of the ramp.

Still, it should have been powerful enough to wipe out Grendizer, in Naida's words.

Instead, it turns out to be a trivial bomb, little more than a firecracker. A real bomb capable of destroying Grendizer would certainly have destroyed not only the ramp and the hangar, but also the entire Research Center. In any case, Naida and Daisuke would have been killed without a doubt (they were only a few meters from the bomb!).

So what were Naida's true intentions? Did she know or not that the bomb was not powerful enough? Thinking well about the story well, I think Naida had no idea about the low power of that bomb. First of all, one should wonder where she got it from. At the end of episode 25, we see that the device that she piloted when she arrived on Earth was still close to the wood where she left it, and it still contained the other proton bombs: those that will eventually explode with her.

It may be thought that, some time before the hangar scene, Naida returned to the spaceship to take the bomb and take it to the Space Research Institute, so the one that explodes in the hangar must have been of the same type as the others.

Those bombs seem harmless enough: they therefore contain only "standard" explosives and not proton-type explosives (note: the fact that Daisuke indicates it as a "proton bomb" is another sign of his altered state, as described in the analysis).

The final explosion of the Vega Monster Dari-Dari and the fleet of minidisks is more due to a chain effect than to the power of the self-destructive explosion of Naida's vehicle itself.

In fact, Naida ignites a bomb on the spaceship, but the destructive explosion occurs only when, for a chain effect, the other spaceships also explode and, consequently, the debris first hit the minidisks, then the damaged monster turns and explodes later. In OV (Originall Japanese version), the disc on which Naida travels doesn't have a name, so it mustn't have been completed yet, or it didn't have all the weapons that the Enbanju normally had. Therefore, it could hardly have contained proton weapons, the prerogative of the Enbanju/Vega Monsters (even minidisks are not equipped with proton rays). It is therefore not surprising that the bomb brought to the hangar was not actually capable of doing much damage. However, it is significant that Naida was not aware of this.

If destroying Grendizer had been part of Gandal and King Vega's plan, and therefore a consequence of telepathic conditioning, it can be imagined that they would have equipped Naida's disc with bombs capable of effectively detonating the robot. But, as it is not so, we can assume that in reality the plan to try to destroy Grendizer was the result of an independent idea of Naida, thus reinforcing the hypothesis that vegan conditioning has little to do with his actions and speeches in the hangar.

(to be continued here)

HERE ALL THE ENGLISH LINKS ABOUT GRENDIZER

Edited by joe 7 - 9/1/2022, 23:09