Taekwon V Animation Version

A bit of explanation is needed here.

Back in 1976, Korea was on its way out of being 3rd world country. That would be 23 years after the war that devastated the entire country. A country that is in constant political turmoil...

Because its gloomy past of being occupied by Japan (Korean war broke out 5 years after Japan surrendered in 1945), Japanese culture is significantly regulated. That includes mangas and animes.

Famous Japanese animes were dubbed in Korean and aired on TV. Many times it was done illegally. Well... it didnt' matter if it was done legally or not. Not many people growing up watching these shows knew they were Japanese.

The infamous "Mazinger Z" was no exception. Just like in Japan and the rest of the world, Korean boys totally dug it.

And out of nowhere, out came this incredible feature animation called Taekwon V. Kinda looking like a brother to Mazinger Z... But it was very different. It had fairly complex characters and even the villains had pretty complicated background. Certain action scenes had life like movement (rotoscoped animation often used in Disney animation).

Needless to say, it was a huge hit. Taewon V spawned numerous follow-up features every vacation seasons. And had refresh of design in 1984, 1990 and... I believe one more after it...

By the 90's people found out that the all the designs of Taekwon V were pretty much rip-off of various mechs from different Japanese animation. Imagine the betrayal the fans felt. All those years they grew up thinking it was the most original thing they have seen coming from Korean animation scene.

Regardless of the history, the topic about Taekwon V always brings up huge debates and argument among fans and haters alike.

The director vaguely admitted for copying the design and never officially apologized.

30 some years later, they are planning on making a live action version of the film. After couple of test CG footages, they also released some concept designs done by pretty famous people in the industry including Josh Nizzi. Most of the designs heavily resemble super busy designs from Transformers.

They also recently released the original 1976 film in Japan recently and imagine what kind of controversy this would bring...

Well... I was one of those boys who grew up loving the original Taekwon V animation.

I personally think they should have had rebirth of the original design and push the super-robot genre it falls under.

In that line of thinking, I did my own "redesign" here... I would love to see animation version done properly again...

Edit: A bit on the design itself...

*I tried to really minimize the details and go as "clean" as possible. Especially on the head design.

*Major inspiration is the taekwondo gear people wear for sparring.

*I wanted to retain the bulky yet very straight lines from the 70's design retained. And yet, I made sure all the panel lines and divisions in the body is done to ensure most human like movements. After all, this thing is supposed to do melee attack by doing Taekwondo moves (hence its name).

*I have a clean version too. But I made this scratched up version because it's been about 30years since the original release and wanted to give more retro/nostalgic feel to the finished piece.