Introduction
Daicon III Opening Animation
An unnamed girl watches as the Science Patrol lands their aircraft. A masked individual exits the ship and approaches the girl, entrusting her with a cup of water and a simple task: to water a radish. The girl enthusiastically accepts her mission but is obstructed by a multitude of foes. Faced with waves of unrelenting monsters, mechas, and starfighters, can the young heroine protect the cup of water and make it to the radish unharmed?
Daicon IV Opening Animation
Clad in a Playboy Bunny suit, an older version of the same girl takes on new and notable adversaries from around the galaxy. From dueling with lightsabers to surfing the magical sword Stormbringer, there is no shortage of action!
Set to Electric Light Orchestra's "Twilight," the Daicon IV Opening Animation is a grand tribute to science fiction culture, showcasing hundreds of familiar characters in one spectacular bout.
[Written by MAL Rewrite]
Audience reviews
10 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
blizar
Daicon III Opening Animation is a charming, short animated piece featuring a young girl battling various monsters, accompanied by a City Pop instrumental track. For its time, the animation quality is impressive, and at just five minutes long, it doesn't overstay its welcome. The significance behind this project becomes even greater when you learn that it was created by only 3 university students, one of whom is Hideaki Anno who would later go on to create the classic Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise.
Daicon IV Opening Animation, also a five minute short, is the more famous of the two, and for good reason—it's the better of the two. With a tripled animation team, the production quality increased immensely. This installment is packed with many pop-culture references with the appearances o…
Read at the sourceCaptainSalty
Simply incredible for the time. Holding up and surpassing things today with the sheer amount of talent, passion, and experimentation that makes Diacon III and IV a historical legend that jumpstarted Studio Gainax. All for a convention to get their names out, they blow everything out of the water with stellar visuals and a wonderful background track of Electric Light Orchestra's "Twilight" to create a visual masterpiece. Many shots would go on to change the anime industry forever and its so breathtaking to see all of these things in the span of a few minutes. Amazing work, another reason for Gainax's legendary status as the best (and my favorite) studio.
Read at the sourceThe_Cmoose
This was a guerilla team of otaku's tribute to everything they geeked out over. Made with a fast and loose approach to copyright laws, and using Electric Light Orchestra's music without permission these opening animations are a hallmark of GAINAX's love of big cool nonsense.
Star Wars, Ultraman, Kamen Rider, other old sentai properties, bunny girls, booba, huge explosions animated by Hideaki Anno himself, these shorts have everything befitting a science fiction convention in the late 80's.
Massive copyright infringement, fair use in limbo, and made for free in their spare time these projects are an essential part of understanding Gainax and all of their subsequent works.
Read at the sourcelethargilistic
Daicon III:
It's endearing to know that the otaku in charge of that convention understood even then that the essence of anime is "cute gorl; also fetishistic referencing and remixing." I liked her design and I liked the ersatz monsters and mechanical stuff. It's not like I was expecting a story, so I wasn't really disappointed in any regard. If there's not enough here, it's just because they would go on to do bigger and better stuff as professionals. As a community, we should be and are glad that they did.
Daicon IV:
Everything that Daicon III was, but, like, more of it. And topping it in basically every way. Cute gorl? We have a cuter gorl. Fetishistic referencing? We have references to everything a 1980s otaku would have given a shit about. And we have it all in smoother animation, w…
Read at the sourcebigunderscorepp
I'm not at all biased. Anime is worth watching after all! I'm a boomer named Booms Mcgriddle and I gotta say this changed my mind almost immediately. My son Bartholomew is a crazy person who will not stop jerking off to bunny girls, and I thought he should be put to death, but he showed me this video and my mind is completely not the same anymore, because now I can't stop jerking off to Bunny Women. So there it is, it is, what it is, I love anime!!!
Additionally, I have now discovered my fetish for Daicon. Live long and prosper.
Read at the sourceKrav40
EVERYTHING started here, well, in terms of Gainax at least.
Daicon is a two-part entertaining yet unintentionally educational OVA released by Gainax with the first part being released in 1981 and the other one in 1983. What makes Daicon Opening Animations so interesting and different than any other OVA I’ve ever seen is the extraordinary context that it fits in, this little two-part OVA will give you all the necessary knowledge that you will need to know about the foundation and early history of Gainax since this was their very first show. Gainax was founded by a group of three otakus in the early ’80s. They were these three chads; Hideki Ano (who would later become the creator of Evangelion and director of Kare Kano), Hiroyuki Yamaga (who would become the president of Gainax for over 30…
Read at the sourcebrandotendie
This is history. This is art. This is the passion and love of a medium encapsulated and condensed into 5 minutes with the care and effort of three men who would change the face of anime forever.
In just over 5 minutes, this opening animation to the 1981 DAICON sci-fi/anime convention, DAICON III tells the simple story of a little girl's quest to water a radish. Along the way, however, she is assailed and chased by popular pop culture icons, forcing her to utilize her full power to get to her goal.
It's a simple plot, yes. Also, the animation looks very dated and low-budget, yes. But the reason why DAICON III is so beautiful is because of its historical significance.
The short film was made by Hideaki Anno, Hiroyuki Yamaga and Takami Akai, the forefathers and founders of the legendary an…
Read at the sourceFAKEANIMEGIRL
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This entry represents Gainax's two short films made for the science-fiction conventions, Daicon III and Daicon IV. But that's not exactly true. The truth is is that this wasn't made by Gainax in name, but rather a group of young animators that would go on to form that of one of anime's most prolific and influential studios of all time. These seemingly little things birthing such a giant of Japanese animation would come as no surprise to anyone who'd watch them. These music videos are full of fluent, active animation as mascot girls jump between absurd scenes and battles featuring science-fiction icons such as Darth Vader, Gundam, and Transformers. The number of references is astounding, and th…
Read at the sourceYoungVagabond
I came across this anime in an unusual manner. Recently, I lost some files on my computer, including a number of music albums.
That included ELO's (Electric Light Orchestra) phenomenal 1981 concept album "Time", which I consider one of the finest of the decade. Luckily, there was a complete playlist on Youtube. Out of curiosity, I decided to check out the comments and noticed a number mentioning "Daicon IV". "The fuck is that?", I wondered.
Turns out that it was a series of specially made intro videos to several anime conventions during the 1980s (who knew they even existed back then?!), also notable for being the first output by Studio Gainax.
Essentially, it's a specially-made 80's AMV featuring a girl, small and innocent during Daicon III, and then an adult in a Playboy bunny cost…
Read at the sourceAnnoKano
The Daicon Opening Animations are two short films that were created for two Sci-fi conventions. They have gone down in history as the first and second titles produced by the infamous Studio Gainax, which at the time was little more than a group of students from the Osaka University of Arts.
Though they may be fairly humble origins for one of the most influential animation studios of the past 30 years, the Daicon films still demonstrate the tremendous potential of the Gainax staff. Both Daicon III and Daicon IV have essentially the same premise; a single girl fighting a battle royal against the Sci-Fi heroes of yesteryear. Deep and compelling storytelling it is not, but one can’t help but enjoy watching dozens of characters, some familiar and some long since forgotten, fighting each other…
Read at the source