Battle of the Planets #1

Rhino

50 minutes
English Language Only
Released: 10/23/2001
Reviewed: 01/10/2006

Listen to Dave and Joel talk about this show! (right click, save as)

Whenever I talk about anime with someone somewhat receptive to the genre there's one thing I always go out of my way to mention, a show called Science Ninja Team Gatchaman in Japan. We knew the show by a very different name here. When we were kids there was a show that used to come on Sunday mornings right before Dragonball Z. That show was called Eagle Riders and I remember liking it quite a bit. Then again, I remember rather enjoying Dragonball Z at that tender age, so maybe my judgment at an early age was up in the air.

Anyway. The quality of the show wasn't really in question though, I just enjoy telling people that there's a show of that name out there somewhere. I don't think scientists are inherently cool, but I think they are naturally made so by combining them with the auspicious aspect of ninja. Ninja baker or Ninja banker are also quite high on my list, but the term can really be applied to anything. Your ninja professor could appear into the classroom with a smoke bomb. Your ninja milkman would remain invisible while dropping milk off under your very nose.

When I was in the EB Games the other day I perused the DVDs, as I am used to doing, and saw a few episodes of this tantalizing show placed on the racks. Since I didn't know much about the storied history of Gatchaman I immediately seized them up, thinking they were the very same show I had watched at a child. I was aware of Battle of the Planets, G-Force, and the annoyingly bad robot character (7-Zark-7) that was injected into the American version, but I sort of just thought they were all the same thing I was watching in the early 90s. How wrong I was!

Battle of the Planets is a 70s era anime about a group of superheroes dressed up like birds that go after a group of badguys dressed as cats who have an astounding amount of animal-shaped giant robots to wreak havoc across the globe. The plots are standard fare. The bad cat-people go after some sort of very important Earth landmark and it's up to the G-Force team to save the day!

But who are the G-Force team? They're all super powered (possibly cybernetically enhanced) people representative of various types of birds. Cool birds like hawks and eagles, semi-cool birds like owls, and really dorky birds like swans and ducks. The characters are all as archetypal as they ever were, but this is excusable considering Gatchaman kind of defined the genre in the first place. The valiant leader that's always getting himself into trouble, the stoic second in command that's always disagreeing with the valiant leader, and, my personal favorite, the fat guy that's comic relief. Or... he would be my favorite if he ever actually talked during the run of the show. I'm not quite sure the man has a line that exceeds a single monosyllabic word. So weak!

Our guess is that all his screen time is taken up by the inclusion of the irritating as hell 7-Zark-7, which you can imagine as that robot from the American Power Rangers show that was always waving his arms around and shrieking about how much trouble the Power Rangers were in. It's a similar idea with 7-Zark-7, except instead of actually caring about the situation he introduces idiotic robot dog sidekicks and spouts useless exposition like there was no tomorrow. THIS is what I traded out the fat guy for?

If you've seen the Power Rangers, or any of the Japanese super hero action shows that started the US movement, you know what you're in for. The characters have extended transformation sequences, extended special attack sequences, and ludicrous special powers with ludicrous descriptions like the ability to cause temporary concussions, an idea I've been boggling over for about four days. Basically it's all the cool stuff that you could want out of a superhero children's cartoon. As well it should be, considering it is the mold on which all other Sentai shows are based. A pretty cool little package for those "in the know".

The show does have its redeeming features, but in this day and age it's going to look lame no matter how you slice it. The animation is fine for 1970, less so for the 21st century. The dubbing, even with Casey Kasem on the cast, leaves a bit to be desired. Etc. But simply being part of the pantheon of Sentai action stuff gives it super credit in my book. It's shlocky entertainment, but it's not exploitative and it's only mildly irritating at time. I don't think I could bear sitting down and watching extended spurts of this stuff, but I have no problem spending 25 minutes to get to the climactic scene of burning space bird flying through giant robot turtle hell-bent on the destruction of the human race. Those G-Force guys, they don't mess around.