Two missing parents episodes in a row and here ends this low budget attempt to milk more of the super robot gravy train from 70s.

[The real "ending" is actually episode 26, but okay]

There is no real ending because the show was cancelled. Though, indeed, 26 was the last episode to be shown on TV.

Episodes 27 and 28 were produced but never aired, and even their intended airing order is unknown. They were first released on a DVD in the late 2000s, where "27" and "28" was slapped on them for convenience.

The cancellation announcement is presumed to have happened around episode 22, and looking at the stock footage used in those episodes there is reason to believe that 27 was supposed to be aired before 25-26, and 28 some time after, so it's likely that they weren't intended to follow one another.

The "missing parents" arc was planned for the second half of the show, with episode 22 kick-starting it. But since the show got abruptly cancelled and that subplot would never get to be resolved, they decided to shelve these episodes instead of any other ones and just air the double-header (that should have been a mid-season upgrade story).

Oh, very interesting: where did you find all that information?

Mostly on Japanese Wikipedia and on old Japanese blogs. This comment section doesn't seem to let links through, sadly. Higecom is one of those Japanese old anime blogs with quite a bit of info.

The exact timing of the cancellation and the episode order for 27-28 are still half-speculation - the DVD I have straight up writes "it's been well over 30 years so nobody remembers the order for sure anymore".

Mostly on Japanese Wikipedia and on old Japanese blogs.

The exact timing of the cancellation and the episode order for 27-28 are still half-speculation - the DVD I have straight up writes "it's been well over 30 years so nobody remembers the order for sure anymore".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wi...
http://higecom.web.fc2.com/...

Links working now - I guess they went in moderation.