Armor Hunter Merowlink (1988)
Armor Hunter Merowlink was a twelve episode anime OVA spinoff of Armored Trooper VOTOMS. It takes place in the same universe as VOTOMS, but the two stories are entirely independent of each other. Merowlink is the story of a soldier whose unit is sacrificed on the battlefield for reasons unknown. Although he was not meant to survive, the main character, Merowlink Ality, manages to survive only to be framed for a crime he did not commit. Merowlink escapes his captors and begins hunting down his former commanding officers, both to get revenge for his dead platoon members and to find out the nature of the conspiracy that led to their death. The series is available for download on Bandai Visual's official website and the Japanese DVD boxset was released on December 6, 2006. The series was previously issued twice on laserdisc, once as six individual volumes, and once as a three disc box set along with the two soundtracks. A blu-ray boxset was also recently released.
- Ryosuke Takahashi
- Fumiyuki Eda
Country: JP
Language: Ja
Runtime: 30
Season 1:
In September of 7213 of the Astragius calendar, a small military base on Planet Melkia comes under attack. One man has come out of the wilderness to hunt an officer with a link to his past. The path of vengeance begins.
Merowlink arrives at the city of Ta Bing, near the war-torn Kingdom of Kummen. His next target is the pompous Galvin Fox, star of the Battling arena. But getting close to Fox will mean facing off in a game where the price of losing is death.
Crossing into Kummen, Merowlink is on the trail of Major Snook, who has assumed a new identity and become a wealthy crime lord. Snook loves nothing more than the thrill of the hunt, but he's about to learn that the role of hunter and prey can switch very easily.
Just as his last target learned, the hunter can become the hunted. Merowlink finds himself cornered in a crashed star-ship, facing an enemy who has carefully laid his traps. But help can come from surprising directions.
A breakdown leaves Merowlink stuck in the middle of nowhere, sheltering from the acid rains of Melkia. The thorn of a poisonous plant sends him into a nightmarish flashback of the last days of his platoon on Planet Miyoite. We finally glimpse some of Merowlink's past and how he came to be a fugitive.
Merowlink's next target is the sadistic warden of a military prison, and the only way in is as a prisoner. Can he survive when his enemy has him unarmed and completely helpless?
A railway headed through an isolated mountain pass makes a tasty target for bandits. And that's just what Merowlink is counting on, since one of the bandits is his next quarry. But the train has an important passenger who may turn out to be an even bigger prize.
Having survived the bandit attack, Merowlink now learns that General Helmetione is Lulusy's uncle, and that she has her own grudges against him. The two of them flee to an abandoned city, and soon must face an elite special forces unit led by Major Boyle, formerly of the Planbandol battalion. This may be a fight that Merowlink isn't prepared to win.
Lulusy is taken to her family's ancestral home, an actual castle. There she confronts her uncle and the loathsome Captain Numerikov. Things don't look good, but Merowlink isn't about to let this many targets slip through his grasp.
Major Boyle swore he would return to settle things, and Merowlink knows he intends to keep that promise. One way or another, only one of them is walking away from this fight, and Lulusy's castle may be about to fall.
Merowlink and Lulusy head to Coza City, the military base to which General Helmetione has retreated. It's time to learn the truth about the Planbandol Scandal, but exactly how high does this conspiracy reach?
The path of vengeance and obsession can have twists and turns, and it's left Merowlink wondering if he can ever avenge his lost comrades. As enemy forces gather in the skies overhead and the clock ticks down to the resumption of galactic war, two men face each other for a final showdown.
