Galaxy Cyclone Braiger

"Evil laughter echoes in the shadow of the night sky's twinkling stars, burdening the universe with the tears of people crying from world to world! Call Galaxy Cyclone Braiger -- they will arrive in a second!"

Galaxy Cyclone Braiger is the first entry in the J9 Trilogy -- a series of mecha shows with a space-adventure motif drawing on Western literature. Despite being little-known in the West, Braiger and its sequel series were fairly influential in Japan, and went on to inspire several other shows, including fellow Post-Hoc Integration candidate Cowboy Bebop.

Galaxy Cyclone Braiger

Galaxy Cyclone Braiger follows the J9 Team, a group of interplanetary mercenaries/shadow police/bounty hunters, as they pursue their own justice in a lawless solar system. Almost all the worlds of the Sol system in Braiger are controlled by one or more Connections -- crime syndicates often attached to governments and terraforming boards, with weapons and resources that are more than a match for any nation. Over the course of the show, most of these organizations are organized under the banner of Khamen Khamen and his Nubia Connection, as he pursues a plan to radically alter the face of the Sol System by detonating Jupiter and turning it into dozens of Earthlike planets to be populated by only his chosen people.

Integration Notes

So, oh boy. Despite its very episodic nature, Braiger has a lot of proper nouns (a frankly absurd number of them -- the cast is probably larger than even fairly sprawling entries like Anno Domini Gundam or Code Geass, in large part because few characters recur from episode to episode and all of them prop up one of the show's numerous organizations, and there are at least nine major factions) and makes tons and tons of worldbuilding demands. At first we picked it as a Post-Hoc Integration candidate simply because it was an 80s Super Robot show that didn't orient around an alien invasion, but what we got was a piece with a lot of moving parts that serves as a great example of not only how to integrate a Super Robot show but also how to do a really thorough, high-complexity integration (compared to the fairly low-complexity one of, say, Hardcore Mecha). With all that in mind, here goes!

Miscellany

• Poyon and the Bems do not exist. Poyon is in like six episodes and only does anything of consequence in one, and the Bem as a species besides Poyon only exist in one (1) episode. Lots of integration problems, virtually no benefit, Poyon is nonessential given that SRW has never bothered to feature it, etc.
• The voice supporting Khamen Khamen is not exclusively the entity from the show. A Khamen Khamen apper, should one exist, will be made aware of the nature of his mysterious godly patron.
• Isaac's uncle is a sitting Federation representative from the AEU.

Organizations - Space

There are a lot of organizations in Braiger... but not all of them really matter that much when it comes down to it. We've integrated some of them but not all of them, since not all of them really need to exist in an integrated setting, since they're mostly there to provide world-color and create competition between organizations that Braiger then intervenes in.

• The Mercury Weapons Guild -- a shady organization that sells to all sides, has a bunch of outsize technology it shouldn't have, and eventually gets squeezed for it -- has been rolled into Anaheim Electronics (and thus is a fairly recent breakaway from Amalgam besides). This is probably an academic curiosity at best, unless we get a J9 Team or Khamen Khamen that really wants to run their full plot.
• The Venus Connection ... basically doesn't need to exist, so, it doesn't. If you find yourself possessed of a profound urge to app the one Venus Connection recurring character who is a cyborg we will figure something out for you at that time.
• Mars's Viking Connection exists, and does more or less the things it does in the show -- sponsor biker gangs and lean on the Mars Terraforming Project to do a bunch of graft. With Martian colonization having taken a massive hit thanks to the Jovian Lizards, it's a good time to be part of the Viking Connection. They're mostly minor players, though, and indeed even within the show they and their biker gangs have fairly mutable loyalties, so they aren't placed in any particular way.
• The Galileo Connection, based around Jupiter in the show, is largely rolled into the Jupiter Energy Fleet from Universal Century Gundam-- an organization large and diverse enough that it could absolutely have its own crime syndicate wound around it.
• The Saturn Connection and all its constituent organizations are basically completely irrelevant to an even greater extent than the Venus Connection. Not integrating them has zero footprint.
• The Federation Police are, in a stunning twist, the Federation Police.

Organizations - Earth

Earth-based organizations in Braiger actually matter a fair bit more than space-based ones; they tend to have clearer-articulated identities and the conflicts between them matter much more, so we've actually taken a fair amount of time to figure out what goes where.

• The Omega Connection -- based in the Americas, and the largest direct threat to Khamen Khamen -- has been rolled into Cosmic Era Gundam's LOGOS, making it part of the broader Romefeller/Organization of the Zodiac/et al superstructure.
• The Volga Connection -- based in Eurasia, and by far the weakest of Earth's Connections -- is an informal arm of the Republic of East Asia. The REA has long operated on both sides of the law and maintained cutouts for achieving its geopolitical goals so this isn't much of a surprise.
• The Red Dragon Connection -- based in East Asia, and noted for its gambling and human trafficking operations -- has been rolled into Brave Express MightGaine's Asian Mafia, much like its identically named counterpart in Cowboy Bebop. By extension, this means at game start that members will be part of BioNet.
• The Nubia Connection -- based in Africa, and by the end of the show, the most powerful syndicate, led by upstart Khamen Khamen as he attempts to turn Jupiter into dozens of Earthlike planets -- is part of Amalgam, as is Khamen Khamen himself. Despite treating with Amalgam as equals, he outright refuses a Mr. codename because he's a ridiculous man who does whatever dumb thing he wants.