Toshiba Video Softwares' ATX-2 Best Collection assembles the complete Armored Trooper Votoms run — 52-episode TV series in compiled arc form plus all three OVAs — across six double-sided CLV discs, each identified by its production arc: Vol. I/II covering the Uoodo arc and earliest episodes; The Unknown Red Shoulder; Woodo/Kummen; Battle of the Heterogeneous Species; Sunsa/Quaint; and Red Shoulder Document: The Root of Ambition. A seventh disc — the Confidential Disc, pressed in CAV — sits alongside them as something categorically different: not a content disc but an indexed production reference archive. The box also contains two booklets: the Votoms Perfect Manual, which runs director interviews, arc summaries, cast comments, and a timeline of the Votoms world, and the AT Manual, a grey technical reference with Kunio Okawara's original Armored Trooper design sheets, weapons breakdowns, and character model reference in print production order.
Armored Trooper Votoms aired on TV Tokyo in 1983. 52 episodes, four arcs, one man: Chirico Cuvie, a soldier from a hundred years of interplanetary war who is ordered to raid his own side's covert facility and then targeted for elimination by his own commanders. The ATs — Armored Troopers — are mass-produced bipedal combat machines designed to be cheap, replaceable, and expendable. So are their pilots. Ryosuke Takahashi ran the series for four arcs without once offering Chirico an uncomplicated victory, and gave their protagonist almost no dialogue — psychologically damaged, surviving on instinct rather than principle. The plot evolves from battlefield drama into conspiracy thriller: covert experiments, prototype soldiers, political manipulation reaching back to the Hundred Years' War itself — enough story for three OVAs after the TV run ended. ATX-2 collects everything: the TV series distilled by arc, the OVA expansions, and then the documentation. A series built around machines as industrial systems generates a natural parallel audience for its own reference archive. The release was shaped around that use-case.
Six Arcs on Seven Discs
The ATX-2 box contains six double-sided CLV content discs. Each disc carries two labels — a front jacket that functions as a standalone cover painting, and a back with chapter/track listing, full staff and cast credits, and format specifications. The TV series compilations are organized by production arc rather than episode number: Uoodo, Woodo, Kummen, Sunsa, Quaint, and the concluding arc at Quent. The three OVAs — The Unknown Red Shoulder (1985), Battle of the Heterogeneous Species (1986), and Red Shoulder Document: The Root of Ambition (1988) — each occupy their own disc. All content discs are CLV, NTSC, color, with stereo analog and digital audio in the D-2 format. Runtime varies by disc: the compiled TV arcs run 113–115 minutes per disc; the OVAs run 52 to 116 minutes depending on length.
Armored Trooper Votoms Vol. I / Vol. II — front jacket. Illustration by Norio Shioyama (塩山紀生), character designer for the TV series. Chirico carrying Fiana Geenberry. Published by Toshiba Video Softwares.
Vol. I / Vol. II reverse. Side 1: Stories of the A.T. Votoms (装甲騎兵ボトムズ VOL.I). Side 2:装甲騎兵ボトムズ VOL.II. Chapter track listing for both sides. Staff credits list director Ryosuke Takahashi (高橋良輔), script writer Hiroyuki Hoshiyama (星山博之), character designer Norio Shioyama, mechanical designer Kunio Okawara (大河原邦男). Format: ATX-2 / CLV / 113min / COLOR / NTSC / STEREO / digital D-2. Publisher: 東芝映像ソフト株式会社.
The OVAs
The Unknown Red Shoulder (ザ・ラストレッドショルダー, 1985) and Red Shoulder Document: The Root of Ambition (野望のルーツ, 1988) together form a prequel and postscript to the TV series' backstory, focusing on the covert special forces unit that made Chirico what he is. Battle of the Heterogeneous Species (ビッグバトル, 1986) stages a confrontation in a futuristic arena city — more contained in scale than the TV arcs but consistent in the series' refusal to make combat feel glorious. Each OVA disc carries jacket art commissioned separately from the TV compilation covers, typically by different illustrators, giving each one a distinct visual register from the series proper.
The Unknown 'Red Shoulder' — front jacket. Illustration by Toru Yoshida. A standard Scopedog facing down a massive Brutal Dog AT against a cracked terrain backdrop. Published by Toshiba / Toshiba Video Softwares.
The Unknown 'Red Shoulder' reverse. Chapter/track listing. Tagline: 断ち切られた鎖の先を求めて / 暗く冷たい時の狭間に眠るものは何か (What sleeps in the cold and narrow gap of severed time). ATX-2 / CLV / 52min / STEREO / digital.
Armored Trooper Votoms Woodo / Kummen — front jacket. Illustration by Norio Shioyama. Chirico in AT cockpit, Fiana reflected behind him. Disc covers the second and third arcs of the TV series.
Woodo / Kummen reverse. Side 1: 装甲騎兵ボトムズ「ウド」 (Woodo arc). Side 2: 装甲騎兵ボトムズ「クメン」 (Kummen arc). Opening tagline: 衝撃のあの日からをトレスする (Tracing back from that day of impact). ATX-2 / CLV / 113min.
The Jacket Programme
Toshiba commissioned jacket illustrations from four artists across the six content discs — Norio Shioyama's character paintings for the TV arc compilations, Toru Yoshida and Moriyasu Taniguchi for separate OVA volumes, an abstract AT faceplate in saturated color fields for Sunsa/Quaint. No attempt was made to impose a consistent visual identity across the set. That appears to be the natural result of the box's organizing logic: the ATX-2 was assembled from materials as they were made across several production years, not designed as a coherent aesthetic object after the fact. The same instinct gave the box a CAV reference disc and two production booklets. The goal was completeness of documentation, not unity of presentation.
Battle of the Heterogeneous Species (ビッグバトル) — front jacket. Illustration by Moriyasu Taniguchi (谷口守泰). Two opposing Armored Troopers in extreme foreground: one black (KG markings), one tan (unit 110). Published Toshiba.
Battle of the Heterogeneous Species reverse. Chapter/track listing. The AT closeup composition by Taniguchi continues into the right panel. ATX-2 / CLV / 1h56min / digital.
Armored Trooper Votoms Sunsa / Quaint — front jacket. AT cockpit faceplate in extreme abstraction — yellows, greens, red. The pilot's eye visible through the targeting visor. The most formally experimental cover in the set.
Sunsa / Quaint reverse. Tagline: 衝撃のあの日からをトレスする. Side 1: サンサ編 (Sunsa arc). Side 2: クエント編 (Quaint arc). Staff and cast credits. ATX-2 / CLV / 115min.
Red Shoulder Document: The Root of Ambition (野望のルーツ) — front jacket. Illustration by Norio Shioyama. Chirico in full-frame portrait, surrounded by red-beret soldiers. The final OVA in the box, completing the Red Shoulder prequel arc.
Before the Confidential Disc
The back cover of Root of Ambition carries the standard layout: chapter track listing, staff credits, format specs. What it also carries is a note visible in the bottom-right — the collector disc to follow is not a bonus disc in the promotional sense. The Confidential Disc is CAV. Every other disc in the box is CLV. That one format distinction signals the category shift: from home video to production reference archive. CAV means one rotation per frame. It means the disc can be paused on any individual frame and hold it indefinitely without degradation. It means the index on the back cover of that disc — every scene reference, every character and mecha shot, organized by arc and frame number — can actually be used as a lookup tool against the playing disc.
Red Shoulder Document: The Root of Ambition reverse. Chapter listing includes 16 entries across both sides. Staff credits. Tagline: 吸血部隊の異名を抱くレッドショルダーの全貌が惑星オドンに暴かれる (The full picture of the Red Shoulder, known as the vampire unit, is exposed on planet Odon). ATX-2 / CLV / 1h56min.
CONFIDENTIAL DISC — front jacket. Illustration by Shin Ueda (上田信). Pencil-toned infantry and AT combat scene. Title set in tall military stencil type. CAV format. Published Toshiba Video Softwares.
The Confidential Disc
The Confidential Disc is CAV. One disc. Twenty-six minutes per side, which in CAV means 54,000 individual frames per side accessible by stop-frame. Shin Ueda's cover illustration is rendered in sepia pencil — infantry soldiers in the foreground, an AT looming over them in a rubble-strewn battlefield — and carries no cast credits, no voice actor listing, no synopsis of story content. It is not a story disc. The back cover is a chapter index organized into sections: the TV series arcs, the OVAs, and then sub-sections for each one breaking down character reference, mecha reference, and scene documentation by frame number. It runs in two dense columns across the entire reverse, covering every key composition in the other six discs of the set. You use it to look things up. It's an internal production reference tool pressed onto a home video format and sold to the public under a name that announces exactly what it is: Confidential.
CONFIDENTIAL DISC reverse. Full chapter/frame index for the complete ATX-2 set. Organized by arc: TV series Vol. I/II, The Last Red Shoulder, Woodo/Kummen, Big Battle, Sunsa/Quaint, Root of Ambition. Sub-indexed by character frames (キャラクター編), mecha frames (メカ編), and scene documentation. ATX-2/CAV / 1h26min.
Votoms Perfect Manual — booklet cover. Illustration by Hayashi Hiroki. Chirico Cuvie, Fiana Geenberry, and a Scopedog AT in painted composition against a dark ground. Included as the primary companion booklet for the ATX-2 Best Collection.
The Perfect Manual
The Votoms Perfect Manual is the ATX-2's editorial voice — the component that explains what each disc contains and why it was made. The contents page identifies the structure: a Grand Explanation covering the full series, individual arc explanations for each disc volume, 'The History of the Votoms World' timeline, a 'Votoms Directors Party' interview section on the visual language of the show, and a Staff & Cast Comment section. The booklet is produced in Toshiba's standard companion format — predominantly black with red accent typography, dense Japanese text surrounding screencaptures organized by arc. The closing page carries the full VOTOMS BEST COLLECTION production staff credits, with Special Thanks to individuals across Q-TEC, Wave, and Bantom. Copyright Sunrise.
Votoms Perfect Manual — contents spread. Left: Table of contents listing all sections from Grand Explanation through Staff & Cast Comment. Right: 'Grand Explanation' section header with timeline of the Astragius Galaxy conflict. Chirico profile illustration.
Perfect Manual — Vol. I / Vol. II explanation spread. Screencaptures from the Uoodo arc: Chirico, Fiana, key action sequences. Text describes the narrative pivot: the soldier who survives because he cannot be killed by conventional means. Printed at publication quality.
Perfect Manual — The Last Red Shoulder section. Screencaptures: the AT encounter at the Melkia military facility, Chirico in combat with PS pilots. Text introduces the Red Shoulder prequel context: who trained Chirico, what the unit was.
Perfect Manual — Woodo / Kummen section. Screencaptures from both arcs. Right panel: 'ウド篇' (Woodo arc) and 'クメン篇' (Kummen arc) labeled sections with story summaries. The mecha reference images are drawn from the same frames indexed in the Confidential Disc.
Arc by Arc
The Perfect Manual's arc sections follow the same structure across all six disc volumes: a title header with the arc name in stylized Votoms typography, a narrative summary running three to four paragraphs in dense Japanese text, and a grid of screencaptures organized by scene. The images are not promotional stills. They are captured frames from the CLV discs — individual moments selected to convey the arc's visual character. Some sections also include character introductions for key figures appearing in that arc only. The Kummen arc section is the longest, reflecting the TV series' four-episode concentration there, and includes a geographic map inset showing the Kummen region layout relative to other locations in the series.
Perfect Manual — Battle of the Heterogeneous Species section. Screencaptures: the Balarant arena combat sequences, AT battle formations. Right panel transitions to next section with bilingual section header.
Perfect Manual — Sunsa / Quaint section spread. Left: Sunsa arc. Right: Quaint arc. Screencaptures including the alien landscape sequences from the Quaint arc. The final TV arc before the concluding episodes at Quent.
Perfect Manual — Root of Ambition / Sunsa section. The Root of Ambition OVA material alongside Sunsa recap. Screencaptures include the Red Shoulder training sequences and the Odon planet exterior shots.
Perfect Manual — 'The History of Votoms World' spread with director portraits (left). Right: full-page key visual with THE HISTORY of 'VOTOMS WORLD' header and dense timeline text. Two production staff photographs, identified in caption text.
Directors Party
The 'Votoms Directors Party' section is an extended interview on visual language: what the series' cinematography was trying to do, how it differs from standard mecha production, and what constraints Takahashi set for the camera and color teams. The spread carries photographs from a production roundtable — Ryosuke Takahashi and the episode directors gathered in a workspace, annotated with names. The interview is structured around topics: 高橋監督の任務とは (Director Takahashi's mission), 高橋監督から見たこと (What the director observed), キリコの人格形成 (Chirico's character formation), OVAへの思い入れ (Investment in the OVAs). A production still from the roundtable occupies the right half of the second spread, below extended quotes from 加瀬元子 (Kase Motoko, voice of Fiana), 今西隆志 (Imanishi Takashi, voice of Chirico), and 吉川惣司 (Yoshikawa Soji).
Perfect Manual — 'Votoms Directors Party: 装甲騎兵ボトムズの映像表現' spread. Director Ryosuke Takahashi (right portrait: 高橋良輔) and episode director Nobuhiro Takahashi (left: 瀧沢敏文) in production roundtable photograph. The interview section covers visual methodology across the TV series and OVAs.
Perfect Manual — cast interview spread. 加瀬元子 (Kase Motoko, Fiana) and 今西隆志 (Imanishi Takashi, Chirico Cuvie) and 吉川惣司 (Yoshikawa Soji) with extended comments on Chirico's character, the OVAs, and the appeal of Votoms. Journalist interview format.
Perfect Manual — 'Staff & Cast Comment' section. Multiple staff members' comments in column format alongside an AT illustration (credited to A-HAI Series / B-2 UNIT). Comments from animators, directors of photography, and production coordinators across the TV run and OVAs.
The Back Page
The Perfect Manual closes on a black page with the English text: 'This is... a story of CHIRICO CUVIE born in the Hundred War divide Astragius Galaxy, in flame and smoke, be destined only fighting.' Below it, the full VOTOMS BEST COLLECTION staff listing: Kazuhiko Enomata and Miheiro Kuro of Toshiba Video Softwares; Shinichiro Kobayashi of Sunrise; Kunihiko Kondo, Ayumi Kano, and Yuichiro Takeda of Yui Corp; Nobuhiro Kawashima of Creators Union. Special Thanks to nine additional individuals across Q-TEC, Wave, Bantom, and Sunrise. Copyright Sunrise. The AT image on the facing right panel is painted — a Scopedog in dramatic low angle against a dark gradient. The booklet's final visual decision is to end not on cast, not on crew credits in Japanese, but on Chirico's one-sentence biography in English.
Perfect Manual — closing page. English text: 'This is... a story of CHIRICO CUVIE born in the Hundred War divide Astragius Galaxy, in flame and smoke, be destined only fighting.' Below: full production staff credits for the VOTOMS BEST COLLECTION, Special Thanks listing, © Sunrise. Right: painted Scopedog AT in low-angle composition.
The AT Manual
The AT Manual is the second booklet and the one furthest from the story. It is a grey technical reference — grey cover, grey paper stock, black ink — with no painted illustration and no narrative content. It contains Kunio Okawara's original Armored Trooper design sheets, printed in production reference format: front/side/rear views for each AT variant, weapons breakdowns with part labels, cockpit schematics with operator notes, and a character model reference section at the back with settei for Chirico, Fiana, the recurring cast, and secondary characters from across all four TV arcs. The AT models covered run from the Scopedog (BSC, TC, BSTTC variants) through the Berzelga, Marshydog, Standing Tortoise, Bluefish Dog, Blood Sucker, Tsvark, Fatty, Eclubus, and every other machine that appears in significant form across the series. Each entry includes a Botoms Column technical sidebar with operational specifications.
AT Manual — cover. Grey paper stock. Title: ARMORD TROOPER 'VOTOMS' AT·Manual. Rough sketch illustration of Chirico in AT cockpit, ink on white field. No color. Published as companion booklet to the ATX-2 Best Collection.
AT Manual — introduction spread. Full AT lineup silhouette sheet (top): every Armored Trooper in the series in scale comparison. Below: operational formation diagrams and AT unit deployment charts. Right column: 'AT総説史' (General AT History) and 'AT操作ガイド' (AT Operational Guide) reference text.
AT Manual — cockpit systems spread. Top: multiple cockpit interior diagrams showing instrumentation and pilot positioning. Center: detailed AT articulation studies. Bottom: additional cockpit and hatch schematics. Right column: expanded AT operational guide continuation.
Okawara's Design Sheets
Kunio Okawara's Scopedog — the protagonist AT of the series, Chirico's machine — is one of the most reproduced mecha designs in anime history. Where Okawara's Gundam designs were prototype war machines built to communicate technological advancement, the Scopedog was designed to look manufactured: exposed hydraulics, roller-dash ground wheels, crude armor plates fitted over industrial-grade structural components. The visual premise is equipment, not symbolism. The AT Manual presents it not as a polished illustration but as working reference: multi-view orthographic sheets with dimension annotations, weapons mounting diagrams showing exactly where each armament attaches and how it connects, and operational variant charts showing the BSTTC (Battling Scopedog, Tournament Type Custom) and the range of Scopedog configurations Chirico pilots across different arcs. The mecha documentation extends through every AT in the series at the same level of specificity: the Berzelga's unique joint configuration, the Marshydog's aquatic adaptation, the Bluefish Dog's oversized barrel layout. Each entry carries the Botoms Column sidebar with in-world operational specifications as if the booklet were a field manual rather than production documentation.
AT Manual — Scopedog MECHANIC pages. Scopedog BSC front/side/rear orthographics. Weapons array: GAT-22 Grenade Launcher, GAT-BRL Short Barrel Custom, GAT-BRL Precision Shooter, ATC-AFV missile launch system. Botoms Column sidebar: Scopedog technical specifications.
AT Manual — Scopedog variant pages. ATM-09-BTTC and ATM-09-STTC configurations with cockpit variants. Multiple AT-09 configurations in formation reference. All views: front, side, rear, three-quarter. Okawara production reference sheets.
AT Manual — Light Scopedog, Berzelga Ightnaught, Strong Backs, Purple Bear, Marshydog entries. Multi-view orthographics for each. Botoms Column sidebar continues across right margin with individual unit specifications.
AT Manual — Bluefish Dog, Blood Sucker, Strike Dog entries. Each with full multi-view orthographic, weapons breakdown, operational notes. The Blood Sucker's distinctive arm-gun configuration shown in detail.
AT Manual — Rabidly Dog, Diving Beetle, Standing Tortoise, Standing Turtle entries. The Rabidly Dog's distinctive brachycephalic headform in contrast to the Scopedog's spherical camera-head. All production reference format.
AT Manual — Snapping Turtle, Standing Tortoise 2, Berzelga DT/WP entries. HRAT-9B head rocket unit and flame thrower weapon breakdowns. Botoms Column specifications for Standing Tortoise variants.
AT Manual — Tsvark and Fatty entries. GAT-4C assault rifle breakdown, X-BAT-B hand rocket launcher with component parts. Fatty's rounded form factor in contrast to the angular Scopedog line.
AT Manual — Eclubus entry. D-BATM-6A hand-held rocket launcher and climbing arm system. Bailvenger configuration. Eclubus's four-legged spider-type form factor distinguished from the bipedal AT standard.
Character Reference
The AT Manual closes with character model reference — settei sheets for the recurring cast in the same format as the mecha pages: multiple views, height notation, no color. Chirico Cuvie, Fiana Geenberry, Ypsilon — the Perfect Soldier against whom Chirico is measured — plus Arurus-Goto, Vanilla Halkun, Cocona, Ru-Shacks, J.D. Locka, and Krataya-Niva. Each carries a brief data block with name, combat role, and series appearance notation. The Fiana entry notes her Prototype Soldier (PS) status. The format treats the characters as the same category of reference object as the machines: things that appear in the animation and need to be drawn consistently. The fact that the manual arrives at the characters only after exhaustively documenting every combat machine in the series is not accidental. Votoms is not a character drama that happens to contain mecha. It is a mecha production in which a particular character refuses to die.
AT Manual — CHARACTER section. Settei sheets for Chirico Cuvie, Fiana Geenberry, Ypsilon, Arurus-Goto, Vanilla Halkun, Cocona, Ru-Shacks, J.D. Locka, Krataya-Niva. Multiple view orthographics. Height notations. Production reference format identical to the mecha pages.
AT Manual — back cover. Grey stock. Title repeat. Staff credits: Toshiba Video Softwares, Sunrise. © Sunrise. The manual concludes without promotional text or series synopsis — reference material does not advertise itself.
The DVD Memorial Box (BCBA-2106, Bandai Visual, 2005) contains all 52 episodes and the three OVAs. The Blu-ray Perfect Soldier Box (BCXA-1622, Bandai Visual, 2012) restores them in HD. Neither contains the Confidential Disc. Neither contains the AT Manual. Those decisions reflect a different theory of what a collector wants from a release.
Across 52 episodes, Votoms described its machines through model designations, unit configurations, weapons systems, and operational variants across four theaters of war — each rendered with the specificity of a field manual rather than a drama. Okawara designed over two dozen distinct Armored Troopers for the TV run and OVAs, each catalogued by designation, each with a defined tactical role. A franchise with that level of investment in its own hardware generates a natural audience for technical documentation alongside the episodes — people who wanted to understand, and eventually reproduce, the exact construction of an ATM-09-ST Scopedog. The ATX-2 addressed that audience directly. The Confidential Disc is an indexed frame archive. The AT Manual is a grey production-reference booklet with Okawara's design sheets in print. Neither has appeared in any release since.
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