Review: Battle of the Planets/Gatchaman
Battle of the Planets/Gatchaman
Gatchaman was a groundbreaking Japanese cartoon back in the early '70s. Sandy Frank thought it could play in the US with a little tweaking so he bought the rights. A MASSIVE amount of reworking later he released Battle of the Planets.
The biggest obstacle to showing Gatchaman on American TV was the level of violence and death. Giant mecha rampage through the city sweeping commuter trains off their tracks, stepping on cars, and demolishing tall buildings. In return the good guys, Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, strangle, drown, incinerate, and otherwise mow through the enemy agents responsible. Their language while doing so isn't very pure either. Airing a children's program like that would have caused a bigger stink than Janet Jackson's nipple ring.
So, Frank had editors cut out the visual stuff that standards and practices would go postal over, then hired a team of writers to watch what was left, untranslated, and write English scripts. In order to cover the lost footage, sometimes nearly a third of a half hour show, he got some new animation done at Hanna-Barara of a new pair of characters a robot who monitored the team and his robot dog sidekick.
7-Zark-7, the robot narrated the episodes and helpfully reassured us that those fighter jets that just got burned out of the sky were robot plains, and that no one was harmed when downtown was destroyed because everyone had been evacuated. Which was strange since you can still see cars moving around and other signs of life. He also had really silly vignettes in which he flirted with the computer on Pluto and took oil showers. Anything to fill the time.
His design was pretty basic and footage could be used over and over again with different dialogue since he didn't have a mouth. Unfortunately someone got the idea to have some of the human characters visit him from time to time and the animation of those scenes was truly awful. It looked nothing like the animation of the rest of the show which was pretty high quality for TV animation at the time.
To Americanize the show the characters were renamed. Originally the team were Ken, Joe (half Italian/half Japanese), Jun, Jinpei, and Ryu. So, you'd think they'd keep Ken & Joe change Jun to June and only have to come up with two more names, say, Jim or Pete for jinpei and Roy for Ryu, instead the characters became Mark, Jason, Princess, Keyop, and Tiny. No idea whatsoever where the heck "Keyop" cam from or how it was easier for American kids than Jinpei.
I was a little above the target audience at 14 but it was still a blast. I had never heard of Gatchaman, had no idea what had been changed, and even with the occasional bit of bad new animation Battle of the Planets was probably the best animated show on at the time. It had actual character development and continuity from episode to episode. It had a female character who could fight as well as the men. It had hunky guys. Maybe I wasn't too old for it. Heh.
When I read an article about it in a magazine that mentioned the original it got me curious about Japanese animation and from the first time I got to go to a Con with an anime room I've been pretty hooked ever since. There is direct line between sitting in front of the TV after school that year and shelf full of manga I'm looking at right now.
I'd never got to see the original though and when I found out that there were DVDs coming out that paired the Gatchaman episodes with the Battle of the Planets remakes I put off seeking them out. What if Battle of the Planets didn't hold up to my memories? What if I didn't like Gatchaman?
A friend bought vol. 2 of the box set and loaned it to me last week and my fears were groundless. As an adult I can see more of the seams in the BotP episodes but they are still watchable thanks to the great animation and excellent voice acting. The Gatchaman episodes are outstanding though. There is even more character development and the lack the obvious holes that some episodes of BotP ended up with. I can watch both versions of the same episode in one sitting without getting bored and enjoy each on it's own merits.
I'd recommend this as something adults could watch with their kids and both enjoy. For all the death in Gatchaman there is very little blood and none of the 12 episodes I watched had nudity so if a kid can deal with the the subtitles it could be a good way to introduce him or her to anime once you've shown them the BotP episodes. The occasional curse words aren't that bad by our current TV standards and nothing the kid hasn't heard already.
Gatchaman was a groundbreaking Japanese cartoon back in the early '70s. Sandy Frank thought it could play in the US with a little tweaking so he bought the rights. A MASSIVE amount of reworking later he released Battle of the Planets.
The biggest obstacle to showing Gatchaman on American TV was the level of violence and death. Giant mecha rampage through the city sweeping commuter trains off their tracks, stepping on cars, and demolishing tall buildings. In return the good guys, Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, strangle, drown, incinerate, and otherwise mow through the enemy agents responsible. Their language while doing so isn't very pure either. Airing a children's program like that would have caused a bigger stink than Janet Jackson's nipple ring.
So, Frank had editors cut out the visual stuff that standards and practices would go postal over, then hired a team of writers to watch what was left, untranslated, and write English scripts. In order to cover the lost footage, sometimes nearly a third of a half hour show, he got some new animation done at Hanna-Barara of a new pair of characters a robot who monitored the team and his robot dog sidekick.
7-Zark-7, the robot narrated the episodes and helpfully reassured us that those fighter jets that just got burned out of the sky were robot plains, and that no one was harmed when downtown was destroyed because everyone had been evacuated. Which was strange since you can still see cars moving around and other signs of life. He also had really silly vignettes in which he flirted with the computer on Pluto and took oil showers. Anything to fill the time.
His design was pretty basic and footage could be used over and over again with different dialogue since he didn't have a mouth. Unfortunately someone got the idea to have some of the human characters visit him from time to time and the animation of those scenes was truly awful. It looked nothing like the animation of the rest of the show which was pretty high quality for TV animation at the time.
To Americanize the show the characters were renamed. Originally the team were Ken, Joe (half Italian/half Japanese), Jun, Jinpei, and Ryu. So, you'd think they'd keep Ken & Joe change Jun to June and only have to come up with two more names, say, Jim or Pete for jinpei and Roy for Ryu, instead the characters became Mark, Jason, Princess, Keyop, and Tiny. No idea whatsoever where the heck "Keyop" cam from or how it was easier for American kids than Jinpei.
I was a little above the target audience at 14 but it was still a blast. I had never heard of Gatchaman, had no idea what had been changed, and even with the occasional bit of bad new animation Battle of the Planets was probably the best animated show on at the time. It had actual character development and continuity from episode to episode. It had a female character who could fight as well as the men. It had hunky guys. Maybe I wasn't too old for it. Heh.
When I read an article about it in a magazine that mentioned the original it got me curious about Japanese animation and from the first time I got to go to a Con with an anime room I've been pretty hooked ever since. There is direct line between sitting in front of the TV after school that year and shelf full of manga I'm looking at right now.
I'd never got to see the original though and when I found out that there were DVDs coming out that paired the Gatchaman episodes with the Battle of the Planets remakes I put off seeking them out. What if Battle of the Planets didn't hold up to my memories? What if I didn't like Gatchaman?
A friend bought vol. 2 of the box set and loaned it to me last week and my fears were groundless. As an adult I can see more of the seams in the BotP episodes but they are still watchable thanks to the great animation and excellent voice acting. The Gatchaman episodes are outstanding though. There is even more character development and the lack the obvious holes that some episodes of BotP ended up with. I can watch both versions of the same episode in one sitting without getting bored and enjoy each on it's own merits.
I'd recommend this as something adults could watch with their kids and both enjoy. For all the death in Gatchaman there is very little blood and none of the 12 episodes I watched had nudity so if a kid can deal with the the subtitles it could be a good way to introduce him or her to anime once you've shown them the BotP episodes. The occasional curse words aren't that bad by our current TV standards and nothing the kid hasn't heard already.
posted by Ranuel | 1:53 PM
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