Customer Reviews

Gatchaman Collector's Box 1: Vols. 1-2

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Thanks to the Battle of the Planets DVDs (Volumes 1-6 and Ultimate Boxed Set) released thru Rhino Home Video, I finally got to see some uncut Gatchaman episodes. But not all of them, with Rhino no longer having rights to the series.

Enter ADV Films, which will release the entire Gatchaman series (on 7 collector's boxes) for the first time ever in North America. Collectively, the seven-volume collector's edition will contain all 105 episodes of the original uncut Japanese series, including 20 episodes never before seen in the U.S. Each set features stunning original artwork by Alex Ross.

This Gatchaman Collector's Box Volume 1 is a three-disc release containing two sub-volumes (The Legend Begins and Meteors and Monsters, each available separately) with 12 episodes presented in English 2.0 and Japanese 2.0 with English subtitles. Extras include: clean opening and closing animation, episode commentary, Gatchaman Karaoke, and previews. The bonus extras DVD includes: Ken, the Eagle profile, character sketches: Ken, episode sketches, interviews with the English staff and cast, and audition footage.

Episodes:
"Gatchaman VS. Turtle King"
"The Evil Ghostly Aircraft Carrier"
"The Giant Mummy That Calls Storms"
"Revenge of the Iron Monster Mechadegon"
"The Ghost Fleet from Hell"
"The Grand Mini-Robot Operation"
"Galactor's Grand Airshow"
"The Secret of the Crescent Coral Reef Operations"
"A Demon From The Moon"
"The Big Battle of the Underground"
"The Mysterious Red Impulse"
"The Greedy Monster Ibukuron"

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.

I can remember catching the odd episode of Battle of the Planets (BOTP) as a very young kid and thinking it was great. At the time, I was oblivious to the abrupt, heavy handed editing that put 7-Zark-7 and a poorly animated Jason and Princess in place of the original action.

Over the years, I'd catch an odd episode here and there, often times the characters would have different names. I won't go into detail here (do an interenet search if interested), but the original series Gatchaman has been translated by Sandy Frank into Battle of the Planets, Ted Turner into G-Force, and Saban Entertainment into Eagle Riders--each with it's own pros and cons.

Eventually, I came upon some fan-produced subtitled episodes of the original Gatchaman series. I was really amazed! The original series was a complex, deep, action-packed serial. There are things that happen and people we meet early in the series that seem trivial at first, but end up having a gigantic effect on the series. The characters care for each other and act with an honest plend of passion and loyalty.

Unfortuneately, I personally don't feel the series really gets going until perhaps episode 30 or so--where Jun (Princess) is presumed dead and we see how the rest of the team reacts. The early episodes are much more episodic, introducing the team, Gallactor, Dr. Nambu, and are fairly formulaic in the sense that 1) Gallactor attacks a city, 2) Gatchaman investigates, 3) the Team fights the monster and wins.

This first volume gets four stars, because I have to save five stars for the rest of the series. If you buy it however, you WILL NOT be disappointed!

Finally, ADV's new translation of the Japanese classic, GATCHAMAN, is on the market and rabid Gatchafans can finally weigh in on it.

Contrary to ADV's previous publicity, volumes one and two contain the first twelve episodes of the series, not the first ten. Those of us who had already bought Rhino's BATTLE OF THE PLANETS releases will have already seen those Gatchaman episodes in subtitled form, so the main selling point of this box set is the new dub translation. [The first examples of Gatch material not included on the Rhino discs should show up on Volumes 3 in Collector's Box #2 in a few months.]

How is the new translation? It's not too shabby. I have some reservations about some of the vocal choices, but the final result is often less cringe-worthy than 1978's kiddified BATTLE OF THE PLANETS or the campy re-dub G-FORCE: GUARDIANS OF SPACE Fred Ladd helmed circa 1986.

The dub translation has a good 5.1 stero mix. The Japanese audio track is two-channel mono and strikes me as being a little too quiet in comparison.

Leraldo Anazulda sounds young, earnest and a bit callow as Eagle Ken. Brian Jepson's Condor Joe is reminiscent of G-Force's "Dirk Daring", but without the whine Jimmy Flinders gave Dirk back in '86. Luci Christian is hyper as the Great Swallow Jinpei, but I find her performance bearable. I'm not yet sold on Edwin Neal's performance as the hermaphroditic villain, Berg Katse. He comes across as too nasal and weak and it seems like he does a slightly different voice for the character each appearance. Andy McAvin gives a standard reading for the Dr. Nambu character, sounding like a cross between the guy who voiced his EAGLE RIDERS equivalent, Dr. Thaddeus Keane, and the actor who performed Dr Nambu in Urban Vision's dub translation of the mid-nineties GATCHAMAN OAV. I'm on the fence about Victor Casrud as Ryu, the Great Horned Owl. Sometimes, he sounds a bit too much like Curly from the Three Stooges for my tastes.

So far, performances that send me up the wall as a viewer are Kim Prausse's as Jun, the Swan, and the fellow doing the narration. The narrator is a little too stentorian and he isn't helped by the translation from the Japanese original which captures the florid style of the Japanese narration. Those are, of course, minor quibbles and largely subjective.

On the plus side, this new translation has no repetitive pounding techno backbeat and the characters aren't cursed with names like Ace Goodheart, Dirk Daring, Peewee, and Hooty. Additionally, the episodes haven't been bowdlerized with an R2D2 knockoff telling us that dead characters miraculaously found escape capsules or that everyone was evacuated just in time. Nor do we get the lame comic relief antics of said R2D2 knockoff and his inane robot dog.

We fans have finally got what we've longed wished for, a translation of GATCHAMAN that we won't be too embarrassed to show our friends and loved ones.

If you grew up in the mid to late 80's your first anime experience was probably Robotech. But if you were five or ten years older it was probably Battle of the Planets, later re-released as G-Force.

Battle of the Planets was hypnotic and compulsive viewing for my 8 year old self, even if it had been edited so severely it was almost incoherant, the minutes cut replaced with the taint of... 7 Zark 7.

Even at 8 I could see that the obnoxious little winged R2D2 rip-off was somehow seperate from the rest of the show - just as I could tell that the producers of Battlestar Galactica had only filmed about 20 minutes of spaceship footage and kept cutting and re-cutting it for the entire series. It didn't stop me from watching either.

The new Gatchaman DVD release is the real deal, the occaisionally gruesome violence and more involved character detail that had been slashed out is now restored. I know that 7 Zark 7 has a fan base, but frankly, good riddence.

Yes this is formulaic stuff, every episode in this collection plays a limited theme of a giant monster robot, shaped like an insect or animal or giant mummy attacking humanity as part of the evil plots of Galactor (Seemingly an international criminal gang like Marvel Comics' Hydra rather than alien invaders as in BOTP.) The Science Ninja Team Gatchaman swoop in to save the day and that's pretty much every episode. But you don't see a Noh play or a James Bond movie for innovation - simply to see how the creators will riff on the theme.

This is fun, superhero action with great airplane and monster designs. Darker, more involved stories and character moments await in future episodes. Gatchaman was the first kid's superhero cartoon to feature one of the good guys being tortured and murdered.

The extras provided are mildly diverting but in no way required a seperate extras disc and I shudder to think what filler such extras discs will be pumped up with in future collections - ADV, please consider just including a third disc of episodes with the collections.

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!

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!

I applaud ADVs decision to bring the Gatchaman series and i will support their decision with my hard earned dollars. The box set contains the first 12 episodes of the Gatchaman series dubbed in english or in japanese however you prefer. The series looks amazingly good and has a lot more action than the watered down american version. My only complain is the box, IT"S HUGE. In this world where every TV show you love is coming out on DVD, shelf space is at a premium and such a bulky box takes up a lot of space, plus the DVDs don't fit tightly in the box so the cases rattle if you shake it. Oh well those are really minor complaints, Gatchaman is well worth it, Highly recommended to anime fans. EP

I've been looking for these since they went out of circulation. The extras are the best part of the set particularly the history of the series.

Gatchaman vol 1 boxset is a must for any fan, the box art is extremely cool and the cartoons are even better than i remember, a must have for any fan of the series