DVD : Gatchaman Collector's Box 1 (Vols. 1-2)

Rating: - Classic Cartoon!
I was a huge fan of Battle of the Planets as a kid, but of course I never realised at the time that it was a cut down version of a Japanese classic with strange robots thrown in! I was keen to see the original uncut version, 'Gatchaman' so I ordered the first few collectors sets.
BOTP was always a great show and still watchable from a purely nostalgic point of view, but Gatchaman is a completely different show. It is more adult in tone, and nasty things do happen - there is no 7-Zark-7 to explain that the squadron of fighter aircraft that has been destroyed were 'only robot fighters'. I have watched most of the episodes with the American dub, which is very good, and the voices do grow on you; Berg Katse (aka Zoltar) does take some getting used to, and some of the Galactor commanders sound weird! The presentation of the episodes is wonderful - so clean looking, and each box set includes a disc of extra features, the first five each focussing on a different member of the Science Ninja Team in turn.
I cannot recommend these DVD's more highly, and should also make special mention of the excellent soundtrack - the theme song 'Destroy Galactor' is excellent!

---

Rating: - Gatchaman or G-Force Battles for the Planet
Wow! Here it is. Gatchaman aired in Japan in 1972 and is one of the early greats of anime. Many of us remember rushing home at lunch hour to watch "Ken", "Jason", "Princess", "Keyop" and "Tiny" in the watered-down American variant called Battle of the Planets. Battle of the Planets cut down the adult themes and took great pains to cut out the violence, which it replaced with poorly drawn scenes featuring a retarded R2D2 clone called 7-Zark-7 and his pet dog, 1-Rover-1. The result was a much lesser, but still entertaining, hack job. ADV Films has taken great pains to translate and voice the original Gatchaman as it was meant to be seen (and was originally seen, in Japan). This set is comprised of two discs of episodes, #1 through #12, and a Special Features disc. This is a great set, and the Special Features discs of the Boxed Collection sets are fantastic, some of the best and most in-depth I have seen, with audition footage, interviews with the voice actors, and behind-the-scenes stories covering the formation of Tatsunoko Productions and the inspirations of the series creator.

The show was created and produced by Tatsunoko Productions, the same leading-edge company that had produced Speed Racer in 1967 and would bring us Super Dimension Fortress Macross (later to become the first one-third of the Robotech series in the U.S.).

Gatchaman was ahead of its time, boasting a faster frame rate and greater detail than any show that had gone before. Although it may seem today a bit dated, it is a nostalgia-inducing retro trip to the groovy side of the 1970's. The show seems to start off a bit slow, finally hitting its groove between Collection #2 and Collection #3. It has been an amazing trip down memory lane for me, and fun to watch the show in its original, pre-North American release form. Only the first 85 episodes of 105 total received the Americanization treatment, so starting with Collection #8, due to be released in August 2006, we'll be able to watch the shows that were never re-edited as either Battle of the Planets or its dopey younger brother, Turner Broadcasting's G-Force.

There were two subsequent TV series, numerous comic books and even a radio show in Japan, but this is the most beloved incarnation. I personally would love to see either a CGI or live-action revisit of this great show, as long as it's not done by the Hollywood phony farm.

I'm giving the episodes on this boxed set 3.5 stars, although the exceptional effort shown by ADV in maintaining the show's original flavour, the really cool Special Features and the fact that this is the lead-up into a really great series, including more, really great Special Features, brings the rating up to 4.5 stars (rounded up).

Enjoy!

---

Rating: - More like a Question...
Hello all, I am more like asking Questions about this two box-sets than reviewing... I grew up watching the Mandarin-dubbed version of this great cartoon, I saw a total of 3 seasons-1st season they have the main ship called the "Phoenix" and it looks like an ordinary futuristic "dagger-shapped" spaceship; In the 2nd season, the "New Phoenix" looks like an eagle/falcon with a head and a beak, wings in a folded manner...; In the last and final 3rd season, they don't have a main ship, but instead their 5 main vehicles combine to form a triangular-pyramidal shape ship...

So my question is, which season is this box set?? I don't really like the 1st season, but the 2nd and 3rd is quite awesome!

So someone please enlighten me! Thanks!!

Cheers

---

Rating: - Great!
All waht is said before this is very true. It is a great show and finally after 20 I can watch it uncut the way it was shown in Japanese. The Great thing is we should finally see the last episodes where Zoltar dies!
I just like to add that you get 12 episodes and actually get 3 DVD's in this Box set. 2 + 1 Bonus, and the bonus is outstanding.

---

Rating: - good stuff
This is something I thought I'd never see, the planned release of every Gatchaman episode unedited.

I watched the first few episodes in Japanese but I decided to get lazy and switch to the dubbed version, which isn't that bad. I think the worst voiceover is for Berg Katse, the main bad guy. They make him sound almost like Paul Lynde. I think the idea was to riff on his sexual ambiguity or something but it comes off sounding too 60s Batman style campy. But I will always remember Keye Luke's vocal performance in Battle of the Planets as definitive.

The extras on these DVDs focus around the english voiceacting. More thought and effort went into that than I thought.

The translation seems okay, but they throw in some slang every now and then "dynomite!!". At one point Ken says "I'm going to take it to the next level" which is a little too hip-hop for a 70s show. If they play around with that stuff too much it edges it closer to MST3K level.

There really are only a few truly good shows on this collection for an adult audience. The rest are formulaic. There are a couple shows that explore the aftermath of the death that Galactor causes which I thought was well done. And there are some elements here and there that hint at an overall "arc" like Red Impulse.

If you dissect the plots, they are full of holes because the story wants to somehow get the characters into an infiltration scenario (to allow them to do Ninja type stuff) so the godphoenix usually just creeps up into the enemy ship and leaves it sitting there unprotected. The enemy does a lot of "monologuing" as it is called in The Incredibles, or insisting on capturing the team first instead of just offing them directly. If you look at it more as a comic book and not hold it up to a realistic standard then it's okay.

I think Yamato (Starblazers) is the king of 70s Anime, so Gatchaman has to come second.

I've really forgotten a lot of the old Battle of the Planets shows so that, plus watching it unedited with a new voice cast makes it feel almost like a new show.

Since there are over 100 episodes it will be costly to collect the entire set but I'm going to do it. There are a lot of episodes that were never even shown on Battle of the Planets so I'm eager to see the story unfold in order to its completion.