Dinozone OVA Dinozaurs or Dainozōn are the OAVs that eventually led to the anime Dinozaurs. It’s only 5 episode in early CG at around 22 minutes each that came out in 1998. These wer emostly made by Bandai to sell the transforming fossil mecha figures. From what I can see most were on VHSs included with the toys with at least one of them being in a magazine.. Not a lot of information on these is out there so I decided to find them and watch them. It wasn’t an easy task but as a true paleontologist trying to excavate the past, I did it.
These videos were clearly made to sell the toys and the toys are well translucent plastic and chrome. Decent enough gimmick for a humanoid robot Transformers like concept.. They kind of look cheap to be honest, There’s not much of a story and it’s more a way to show cool battles and that’s good enough. The dragon villain is a cool design for example. And well if the designs weren’t so distracting perhaps it’d be better. There’s even toy commercials in the OVA.
There are no subtitles for any of them, in fact just finding them in Japanese was hard enough. But it begins explaining that dinosaurs existed in the past and an evil menace came to attack. It gives the origin how someone brought demise to the dinosaurs. At some point they transformed I think. And yet they became extinct over the years. I mean I’m trying my best to understand. Since there’s basically no info on these I’ll do my best.
Despite coming out in the late 90s, this looks like really early CG with dinosaurs but in a way it’s awesome. It reminds me a bit of Beast Wars transformers although a bit more primitive than even that show.. A bit dated perhaps but I would’ve been all over it. I mean the dinosaur bones are transforming basically into humanoid robots. Each has a transparent neon color skin that goes along with it. The dinosaur forms look pretty cool which make up for the gawdy designs and color combination. There is of course a mammoth and sabretooth because why not they’re dinosaurs too. I don’t particularly love the human forms and find the designs are a bit gross. The concept just sounds better on paper: “Transparent chrome dinosaur skeletons in neon colors transforming into humanoid creatures is kinda cool”
First OVA already starts with a fight, I guess the full intro was all they needed for character growth. Then we get a brief showing of the different heroes’ powers and personalities., like a true toy commercial. All dinosaurs except a mammoth and a spare tooth tiger because reasons, Japanese just love it it was the same with power rangers. Stuff stops in the middle of the fight and a toy commercial. Second ova again retells the story quickly of their origin although with different details, adding some info not previously told and omitting some.It also repeats some of the info of the members, perhaps they say different info, we do get different toys I think in the toy segment. Third ova we get a different opening segment where it retells the story, I think but with CG of the final battle, it’s interesting the one before the revival.giving more details. definitely new characters here, these ovas definitely a toy commercial. what little plot it has I can’t understand it so I just see neat fights., They aren’t amazing fights but they’re decent early cg fights, early beast wars at least. Fourth Ova is just a different set up with new places and well also more of the same stuff that repeats only with the new parts of that one. And the last one-fifth of OVA is just a new setting again with new characters. I’m guessing these last two came out later to promote different waves of toys.
We did get an adaptation of these OVAs in the US in aw ay. A promotional Dinozaurs VHS has footage of the first two OVAs in a 12 minute video. I’m guessing this was the pilot used to sell the show. This helps add context to these OVAs. Tells us how scavengers wanted to consume life forces so with dragozords they drained the life force of the planet. Another race put their DNA on dinosaurs to become dinosaurs. They were able to fight the scavengers and fight the evil although not before dinosaurs went extinct. In modern times they came age Dragozaurs back but now the heroes have revived as well and they are Dinozaurs. Having this in English really helps understand the OVAs.
The voices they gave them feel very 90s cartoons. This VHS is by the same people of the Americanized Sailor Moon and Saint Seiya, Toon Makers and Reinessance Atlantic. it ends on a cliffhanger and well meant to get you excited for the Dinozaurs anime. The Dinozone anime videos are short enough and repeats enough stuff that you could easily just repackage it into a 1 hour special of dinosaurs, unsure why it was never done this way., perhaps a bit difficult to piece together the different stories and yeah almost half the episode is repeated stuff but you still had a good solid 50 minutes worth of content.