ビッグ・ファイア — The Organization That Wants to Free the World

Can an antagonist organization be right?

In Yokoyama's Babel II, Big Fire (ビッグファイア) is the villain organization — a global power structure Koichi opposes through the series. Imagawa imported the organization and its name into Giant Robo, kept its scale and its opposition to the Earth Defense Force, and gave it a cause: the BF Dan knows the Shizuma Catastrophe happened, knows the Earth Defense Force's founders caused it, and wants the world to know. Their methods are destructive. Their information is accurate.

The structure Imagawa built requires the BF Dan to have legitimate grievances. If they were simply villains, the series would be an adventure. Because they're right about what happened — the Shizuma Catastrophe, the cover-up, the Earth Defense Force's institutional complicity — the series is a tragedy.

The Earth Defense Force members fighting them are not corrupt. They are protecting a world that runs on the Shizuma Drive. Exposing the catastrophe could destabilize that world. Their case for suppressing the truth is practical and costs them their integrity. The BF Dan's case for exposing it is moral and costs everyone else stability. Giant Robo never finds the clean exit from this. The resolution it offers is not a solution. It is a price paid.

For example

The leader: ビッグ・ファイア, a young man in a blue cape with a black panther companion. Yamashita Akihiko's design keeps him young — almost boyish, with a composed face that contrasts with the chaos of the faction's campaign. He is not theatrical. He is certain. The contrast with Daisaku — another young person entangled in a war their elders created — is structural.
The BF Dan's cast includes some of the most visually distinctive antagonists in 1990s anime: Alberto the Impacter (dark suit, a red sphere, precise menace), the Wan Brothers, Ivan of Russia, the Cervantes the Dazzling. The roster is drawn partly from Yokoyama and partly invented — a mirror ensemble to the Ten Magnificent, similarly diverse, similarly committed.
The Babel II connection runs deep. Murasame and Genya both come from that source. The BF Dan in Giant Robo is the organization their original home gave them — but their original home no longer applies to them in the same way. Murasame left. Genya stayed. The split between them maps onto the split within Babel II's own universe of superhuman servants.