Kara Dennison
December 15, 2021 
It’s a great time to be Hideaki Anno. He’s just put a cap on his magnum opus, and now he’s remaking all his favorite shows. Just like he wanted to back in college. And we’re here for it, too.
From Shin Ultraman to Shin Kamen Rider and now Shin Thunderbirds, things are getting pretty new in here. We know he’s got a full slate. But if he ever decides to remake more classics, we have a few thoughts:
Sukeban Deka
Shinji Wada’s action manga series Sukeban Deka has had a pretty impressive life cycle. The story of a yoyo-wielding high school detective came to life in anime, TV, and feature films. (And there’s a new spinoff manga running as we speak!) In the 1985 TV series, several girls took on the code name “Saki Asamiya” to fight crime in school uniforms. And with all the action and intrigue, we could see Hideaki Anno having a stab at it.
Anno is approaching a lot of shows pivotal to the DNA of Japanese entertainment, and Sukeban Deka is definitely in that bunch. It paved the way for tougher heroines and bigger action in shoujo manga and anime, and you can see its fingerprints all over series like Sailor Moon and Revolutionary Girl Utena. That’s a pedigree worth celebrating.
Giant Robo
Not to pull Hideaki Anno right back into mecha-esque action after he’s closed out Evangelion, but he does have a knack for it. Gunbuster blew the roof off our expectations for giant robots, in a time when the genre was already constantly changing. So we’d love to see a Shin take on Giant Robo — or, as we knew it in the U.S., Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot.
The series hails from Mitsuteru Yokoyama, who kicked off the whole giant robot scene with Tetsujin-28. So if you want a pedigree, there’s that. Plus, the series had its own central team: the Unicorn Peacekeeping Agency. We know Anno loves to play with the dynamics of the team back at base, and Unicorn seems perfect for that.
Doctor Who
Wait, hear me out.
While it may not have the same fandom cred in Japan as Thunderbirds, Doctor Who did have a presence. It was a decent enough presence that four of the early novelizations got localized via Hayakawa Bunko, complete with some gorgeous new cover art.
Doctor Who has its own plans going forward on the BBC in the near future, of course. But seeing a tokusatsu spin on it, especially through Anno’s eyes, would be wild. Maybe we’d get to see those redesigned Daleks in action, too.
Regardless, we’re here for anything and everything he does next.
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