Tomino builds toward something that feels inevitable the moment you understand what the Ide actually is. The show moves slow in the middle, grinding through repetitive battles that feel pointless until you realize they are pointless, that's the entire weight of it. By the end, every death compounds into a philosophy about whether humanity deserves to survive at all, and the final episodes stop pretending this is a story about winning a war.

On the planet Solo, human investigators studying the remains of a long dead alien civilization unearth three mysterious machines and a powerful warship. Soon the Buff Clan, an alien race hunting for the limitless energy called Ide, launches a brutal attack on the colony. Fleeing the assault, Cosmo Yuki, Kasha Imhof and Bes Jordan board three trucks that transform and join into the giant robot Ideon. After the settlement falls, the survivors escape aboard the Solo Ship, but the Buff Clan keeps up a relentless pursuit. A mecha science fiction drama of giant robot battles and flight across space.