Professor Hamaguchi is one of the overarching protagonists of the anime series Chōdenji Machine Voltes V.
He is Earth's top scientist, the former commander of Camp Big Falcon fortress and a good friend of Professor Kentaro Gō. He would later summon Go's children to join the Voltes team (alongside Megumi Oka and Ippei Mine) to save the world from the invading Boazanians. Due to Go's absence, Hamaguchi serves as a father figure to the team.
He was voiced by the late Seizō Katō.
Appearance[]
Hamaguchi is an old man past his prime with long, gray hair, beard and mustache, and black eyes. He wears a scientist's traditional outfit, completed with a lab coat.
Personality[]
Hamaguchi is wise and always seeks to defend the Earth from outside forces. Regarded as Earth's top scientist, he's also a genius who can design giant robots and inventions in general, as it was him who helped Goh designing Voltes V to begin with. It's also him who personally chooses Kenichi Gō to be the Voltes team's leader, and acts as their mentor and father figure throughout the war. Ultimately, Hamaguchi dies a hero, sacrificing himself to save the team.
Biography[]
14,000 light years from Earth, there exists a planet known as Boazania. The inhabitants of the planets are split into two classes, those with horns, and those without horns. In the past, both classes live in harmony. However, at some point in time, a caste system was introduced that stated that those with horns were allowed to form an aristocratic nobility, while those without them are forced to live as slaves. This cruel caste system would dictate Boazanian society for aeons.
Boazania was ruled by a Royal Family, which would reinforce this caste system. However, one day, the younger brother of the 123rd Emperor of Boazania, Prince Oral, had a son. The baby was born hornless. Enraged and calling the child cursed, Prince Oral attempted fillicide, while his wife, their doctor and the court messenger tried to retrain him. Oral's wife begged him to spare the child and kill her instead. Oral, who couldn't bring himself to kill his wife and child, agreed to spare them. The boy's parents, the doctor and the court messenger swore to keep the hornlessness of the boy a secret. The boy was named Gohl, and he grew up with prosthetic horns to hide his otherness.
Growing up, Gohl witnessed the cruelty the Hornless Boazanians would witness at the hands of the Horned. They were often assaulted, maltreated, made to labour and had little to no rights. Being a Hornless Boazanian himself, he felt their plight in his heart. Gohl's dream was to create a society where both Horned and Hornless Boazanians could co-exist without oppression.
Gohl discovered that he had a great talent for technology and engineering. Soon, he became the Boazanian Minister of Science and Technology. At some point, Gohl fell in love with a noblewoman named Lozaria. On their honeymoon, he revealed his secret to Lozaria - that he was hornless. Lozaria, while shocked at first, told him she loved him anyway. After they embraced, Gohl told Lozaria of his dream for an equal society.
When the 123rd Emperor of Boazania died, a succession crisis occured because his only child was mentally disabled, therefore unfit to rule. Next in line to the throne was Gohl. However, the son of the Emperor and his concubine, Zambajil, had been eyeing the throne for a long time. Before the coronation event, Zambajil's subordinates began looking for ways to incriminate Gohl so that he wouldn't be able to become King. They tortured the doctor that delivered him, who confessed that Gohl was Hornless.
Zambajil interrupted the coronation event and pulled of Gohl's horns in front of the public, exposing him as a Hornless Boazanian. The onlookers gasped upon finding out that he had been hiding his true nature from them, while Lozaria covered her eyes. Gohl was then thrown in prison, while Lozaria was exiled from the palace. Fearing Zambajil's wrath, she fled to the countryside with her parents, preparing to raise her son with them. Since Gohl was in jail, she was unable to tell him that she was pregnant with his child. Lozaria then died in childbirth after delivering a boy.
Gohl, who at this point was enslaved, didn't know Lozaria had died until news spread that she died in childbirth. He begged his overseers to at least let him buy flowers for her grave, but was abused in return. Gohl, now enraged, began inciting slave rebellions. Using his skill in science and technology, he began creating weapons that the slaves would use to attempt to overthrow Zambajil. However, they were unsuccessful each time.
Gohl was urged by his fellow slaves to flee Boazania for his own good. He initially refused, but they stated that he was their final hope for a future free of slavery and he was too valuable to die given his intelligence. They managed to safeguard a ship for his travel and shielded him with their bodies as the Boazanian Empire's forces opened fire on them. A frenzied Gohl hurried into the ship and flew as far as he could, far away from Boazania. It was by pure chance that the planet the ship eventually crash-landed on happened to be Earth, which had a populace full of people that looked like him.
Upon landing on earth, Gohl was discovered by a Japanese scientist named Mitsuyo Goh. They fell in love, and he assimiliated into Japanese society. He adopted the name "Kentaro Goh" to hide his real identity. Kentaro and Mitsuyo had three children, Kenichi, Daijirou and Hiyoshi. He was a loving father to them, but he also foresaw the Boazanian invasion. He told the Earthlings of it, but only a few of them thought he was telling the truth. Some of the humans that believed him included Professor Hamaguchi, Professor Sakaonji and General Oka. Kentaro, Mitsuyo, Hamaguchi and Oka worked together and created the robot Voltes V, designed to protect the Earth when the invasion inevitably happened.
Some time later, Zambajil recalled Gohl to Boazania. Gohl told Mitsuyo he needed to return to Boazania to appeal to him to end his cruelty. Mitsuyo begged him not to go, but Gohl insisted on it. Boazania was already conquering planets left and right and it was only a matter of time until Earth would be next. Before he left, he told her that if he wasn't back in two months, she can assume he failed.
Gohl returned to Boazania and begged Zambajil to stop colonizing other planets. Zambajil instead offered him his old position back, with the caveat that he would manufacture weapons for the Boazanian Empire due to his skill in science and technology. Gohl refused this offer, so Zambajil had him imprisoned. He planned to have him executed, but a Horned Noble, Dange, who was inspired by Gohl's spirit and drive for justice, broke off his horns and joined the resistance movement, rescuing Gohl from prison.
Back on earth, after months passed without Kentaro returning, Mitsuyo assumed he died. With the help of Professor Hamaguchi, General Oka and Big Falcon, she prepared her children to fight the Boazanians. Alongside Kenichi, Daijirou and Hiyoshi, Oka's daughter, Megumi, and Hamaguchi's grandson, Ippei, were trained to pilot Voltes V.
After several years, Emperor Zambajil launched an invasion on Earth led by Prince Heinel. Heinel is aided by his General, Jangal and two scientists, Zuhl and Katherine. The Boazanians manage to lay waste to countries all over the world, including three million fatalities in Italy, burning Buenos Aires to the ground, destroying the Twin Towers and cutting off all commmunication between London and the rest of the world. Many survivors were forced to retreat. Mitsuyo Goh and Professor Hamaguchi summoned Kenichi, Daijirou, Hiyoshi, Ippei and Megumi to enter their respective vehicles and form Voltes V.
At first, the team manage to successfully defeat the first Beast Knight sent by Heinel's forces, Dokugaga. However, Heinel then deployed Baizanga, a stronger Beast Knight that manages to subdue the robot. Fearing for her children's safety, an injured Mitsuyo abandons her hospital room and enters a jet plane, where she flies into Baizanga, killing herself but managing to free the robot. Kenichi is broken and screams in shock, before brutally beating down Baizanga. The Voltes team mourned the loss of Mitsuyo, with Hamaguchi becoming a surrogate parental figure for them afterwards. From then on, they would fight Boazanian's forces to protect Earth from them.
Ippei mocked the Go brothers for grieving over the loss of Mitsuyo, inciting a fight between him and Kenichi. Megumi breaks up the fight and demands Ippei be respectful, but Ippei acts dismissive. Later, while he's in his room, Megumi enters, demanding to know the reason behind his callous attitude. He refuses to answer her but takes off his shirt, telling her that he'd like to train, "but she's welcome to watch". Megumi then asks about his mother, which makes him angry. Megumi manages to take his whip from him and says she won't give it back until he tells her the truth about his mother. Ippei reluctantly confesses to her that when he was a child, his parents immigrated to America in search of a better life. However, this only brought them more hardship, as they failed to become successful and had to live on the streets. His mother abandoned the family shortly before his father succumbed to his disease and Ippei grew up an orphan in a country he was new to. He had to do odd jobs to survive, but found he had a passion for horseriding. Befriending a pony named Eiffel, Ippei managed to become a successful rodeo star and three-time national champion. However, Hamaguchi had him kidnapped from California to Japan so he could become the pilot of the Volt Bomber.
Later that night, as Kenichi, Daijirou and Hiyoshi were fixing Mitsuyo's grave (as Ippei had accidentally knocked it over during training practice) he mocked the dead woman again, earning the ire of the Go Brothers and resulting in Kenichi and him having a fistfight. However, before the fight could worsen, Megumi intervened. She told the Voltes team his (perceived) backstory and how Ippei felt upset that his mother abandoned him, causing him to run away in shame. The next day, Hamaguchi told Ippei the truth of what happened, having obtained a newspaper that reported on the incident where she supposedly abandoned him. Ippei's eyes filled with tears as he realized that he had misremembered the details and apologized to the Go brothers and Mitsuyo's grave for his actions.
The Voltes team would repel Beast Knights deployed by Prince Heinel's forces on the regular. The five teenagers formed a close friendship along the way and often supported each other's goals.
In episode 14, Zuhl came up with a plan to imitate Kentaro's voice to fool the Go brothers into abandoning their positions in Voltes V. Heinel gave him his permission to do so and the plan commenced.
At the same time, Professor Hamaguchi took the Go brothers to the edge of Falcon island to tell them about their father. He told them their father loved the earth and everything about it, and created Voltes V to protect it. As the waves crashed, he told them to never give up their struggle no matter how ugly the war got.
Skullrook located the Go brothers, and Zuhl used the voice imitator machine to tell the boys to abandon the Earth. They were shocked that their father would suggest such a thing and refused. Realizing they won't budge, Zuhl attempted to capture the Go brothers but only managed to catch Hamaguchi. Inside the ship, Hamaguchi recognized the voice imitator machine and realizes that they had been tricked. Zuhl called him smart for recognizing it, and Jangal stated that his plan was to hold Hamaguchi hostage in exchange for the dismantling of Voltes V.
Refusing to let them use him, Hamaguchi attacked the Boazanian soldiers. He managed to escape Skullrook and tell the Voltes team they had been tricked, but the ship he was in crashed into the Beast Knight the Boazanians had deployed. Afterwards, Voltes V slaughtered the Beast Knight with the Heaven Sword.
The Voltes team mourned the loss of Hamaguchi and continued to speak his name in high regard, even after Professor Sakaonji was sent in his place.
Some time after the Boazanian invasion of Earth, Gohl, leading a group of Hornless Boazanian rebels, led a spaceship to Earth, with the intent of hiding them in his secret base. Zuhl intercepted their ship and killed off a large amount of the Boazanians, though he deliberately left Kentaro alive.
Not knowing that Kentaro was Prince Gohl, and assuming that he was just a very skilled Earthern scientist, Zuhl told him that he wanted to use his genius to help him create technology that would overthrow Heinel. Kentaro refused, knowing that Zuhl was just as oppressive as Heinel. As a result, Zuhl took him prisoner, while the remaining refugees managed to make it to the base.
Zuhl eventually took him to Earth and hoped to trick him into working for him, but he escaped. When Kentaro fell off a cliff during a Beast Knight attack, Zuhl, and the rest of the Boazanians, assumed he died. Kentaro was actually rescued by the rebels he took to Earth and taken back to their secret base. In the base, Gohl constructed the Solar Bird, which would often assist Voltes V in battle. He also spread his knowledge of technology to the other Boazanian rebels. Though he was on the same planet as his children, Gohl didn't tell them where he was because he felt as if his mission to free the Boazanian slaves took precedence.
The base, unfortunately, did not have adequate healthcare for the rebels. When one Hornless Boazanian woman, Nina, gave birth, she required care the base was unable to provide. Kentaro ordered Dange to take the Solar Bird to fly Nina to Big Falcon as there were doctors there that could help her. Upon arriving to Big Falcon, the Go brothers assumed the pilot of the Solar Bird, would be their long-lost father, but were surprised to see Dange instead.
Kenichi was surprised when General Dange informed the team of Kentaro's true origins. He was doubly shocked when he realized that Boazanian blood flows through his veins. He vowed to not let this change anything about his fight to protect Earth.
Gurul and Belgan, two agents of Zambajil, discovered the rebel's secret base and took Gohl back to Boazania, where he was held prisoner - Zambajil wanted to use his talent in science to strengthen Boazania's machinery. After a gruelling battle with Heinel's forces, the Voltes team learn that Gohl is on Boazania. At this point Heinel has been exiled by Zambajil due to his failures in stopping Voltes V, and is desperate to fight them to regain his honour. Katherine, however, shoots him with a stun gun and takes him to Boazania, while Gurul and Belgan try to blow up the Earth with a magnemite bomb.
Doyle, one of the Hornless Boazanian rebels, flies a ship and disposes of the bomb. He then reveals that Big Falcon is actually a spaceship, and the Voltes team, alongside Sakaonji and Doyle, go to Boazania to free Gohl.
In episode 38, the Voltes team make their way to Boazania. When Zambajil sees them coming, he dispatches Bergan and Gururu to deal with them. While they initially seem victorius, the tides turn when Voltes V overpower them and bypass Sodom and Gomorrah, planet Boazania's defense system. Do Bergan and Gururu die in the battle when their starship is destroyed by the Voltes team.
When the Voltes team reunite with Kentaro Go, Kenichi and his brothers hug their dad. Just then, Voltes V is challenged by the legendary mecha Godol. They fight and Voltes V manages to defeat it. The Voltes team are shocked to discover that Heinel was the one who had been piloting it. Heinel then tosses a sword at Kenichi and challenges him to a fight, despite Kenichi telling him the fight is pointless. The two engage in a swordfight, and as they both break their swords, Heinel yells that the fight isn't over yet and pulls out a dagger. Kentaro instantly recognizes it and asks Heinel where he got it, to which Heinel responds by saying that it doesn't matter and he can't distract him. However, he does say that it is the dagger his mother gave him before she died.
Kentaro then says it does matter because it is the dagger he gave to his first wife, and says it has twin doves on it. Horrified, Heinel looks at the dagger, notices the twin doves, and realizes that Kentaro is right. He feels ashamed that he had been participated in a meaningless war against his family.
Just then Zambajil appears, having tried to escape with a wagonload of riches and a grenade. Once he realizes that he is cornered, he attempts to shift the blame to Heinel, saying that the earthlings should hate him since it was his idea to invade Earth (even though it wasn't). Angered, Heinel yells "What?! I thought you were on the side of good, but you're just a materialistic bastard! DIE!!!" and flings the dagger at him, killing Zambajil. Unfortunately, Zambajil accidentally drops the grenade in the process, causing it to explode and engulf the castle in flames, killing him. Heinel then saves Kenichi from the fire and willingly accepts his death, but not before biding a farewell to his newfound family, despite Kenichi screaming "brother" at him and trying to save him. Kentaro, while crying, also acknowledges Heinel as his son before the flames swallow him whole, while Heinel calls him "father".
After Zambajil's death, Gohl finally becomes the emperor of Boazania and reorganizes the empire into one where the horned and hornless ones co-exist peacefully once again. The Voltes team help reconstruct the empire after it was devastated from battle. When they're leaving, they ask him to come back to earth, but he chooses to stay in Boazania. Hiyoshi is sad, but Kenichi reminds him they can visit each other regularly thanks to the Boazanian warp technology. Gohl then tells Sakaonji he leaves Earth in his hands and the Voltes team depart, smiling.
In the end of the anime, Kenichi, Ippei, Megumi, Daijiro and Hiyoshi vow to stay as Voltes V pilots and to always protect the Earth from threats together no matter what.
Relationships[]
Kentaro Goh[]
Gohl/Kentaro and Hamaguchi were good friends, and he promised to look after his kids while he was in Boazania. Gohl also taught Hamaguchi about Boazan technology. Before he left Earth, Gohl told Hamaguchi to look after his family, to which Hamaguchi agreed. He was a father figure to the three Go brothers and helped raise them with Mitsuyo. When they came of age, he trained them at Big Falcon, alongside Ippei Mine and Megumi Oka.
When Gohl was presumed dead, Hamaguchi and Mitsuyo prepared accordingly to how he asked. Hamaguchi would also often visit his grave and pay his respects. Whenever he talked to the Go brothers about their father, he would speak of him as a honourable man who loved the earth and wanted to protect everything about it.
Mitsuyo Go[]
Though it wasn't mentioned in the anime, Professor Hamaguchi was Mitusyo's teacher from her college days. When Kentaro foretold Earth of the Boazanian invasion, he was one of the few who believed him, as was Mitsuyo. Hamaguchi helped Mitsuyo raise her three sons after Kentaro went to appeal to Zambajil. After Mitsuyo became injured, he was gravely concerned for her safety. His concern would turn into horror when she chose to sacrifice herself to save her sons. After her death, Hamaguchi became the Go brother's only remaining parental figure, and did his best to be there for them.
Kenichi Go[]
Hamaguchi was the most prominent father figure in Kenichi's life after the disappearance of Kentaro. He was involved in the Go brothers' life ever since they were born, as Kentaro had imagined that they were going to pilot his greatest invention, Voltes V. He is gruff at times but wants the best for Kenichi, and isn't afraid to show his soft side to him and his brothers. He often praises Kentaro the brothers and tells him that he was a loving, caring man.
Ippei Mine[]
Ippei initially resented Hamaguchi for separating him and Eiffel and forcing him to be a pilot for the Voltes team. He expresses his anger at Hamaguchi several times over this, not knowing that Hamaguchi had secretly arranged for Eiffel to be returned to him due to his good performance as a cadet. When he is finally reunited with Eiffel, he tries to abandon the team. However when the Boazanians attack the earth and nearly kill Eiffel, Ippei then understands why Hamaguchi recruited him to the team and rejoins.
Megumi Oka[]
While Hamaguchi and Megumi have a mutual respect for each other as he is the head of Big Falcon and she is the pilot of the Volt Lander, at times he tells her off for minor issues, such as allowing Hiyoshi to go the boat contest. He was also angry when she left the battle to save her father, but let her off with a warning. As is the case with the rest of the Voltes team, Hamaguchi is a supportive father figure to Megumi, in absence to her own as he's too busy with work.
Long after Hamaguchi died, Megumi wept for him and placed flowers on his grave.
Professor Sakonji[]
Sakonji was Hamaguchi's protege.
Other Media[]
Live-Action[]
- Main article: Dr. Richard Smith
Gallery[]
Anime[]
Books and magazines[]
(Text: "Prince Heinel is one of the characters with the highest degree of perfection, even though he has an unusual setting in anime as the protagonist of a tragedy...This is the second robot animation work in collaboration with Toei. Voltes V adds drama that wraps the entire game to the powerful mechanics of the first Combattler V. In Voltes V, the dramatic elements of Combattler V are extracted and drawn to the level of middle and high school students. Mr. Tadao also said that it was a big deal at the time to put so much drama into this kind of work (robot work). And pay for this splendor.")
(Text: "Professor Hamaguchi
Voiced by Seizo Kato
The first commander of the Big Falcon. In battle, Hamaguchi suppresses his inherent kindness and treats the Voltes team harshly. He was Mitsuyo Go's teacher during her university days.
Manga[]
Trivia[]
- His name, Hamaguchi, is derived from Tadao Nagahama (the director of Voltes V) and Shoichi Taguchi (the screenplay writer for Voltes V).
- While it's unintentional, Hamaguchi has a striking resemblance to Santa Claus.
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 Heroes
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