Battle of the Planets:
Ultimate DVD Boxed Set
(Rhino Region 1 DVD)
review by Big McLargehuge

Anyone of my generation knows the anime series Battle of the Planets, love it or hate it, in the late 1970’s it was one of the best afternoon cartoons on UHF TV. Telling the episodic tale of five super orphans, Mark, Jason, Princess, Tiny, and Keyop aboard their space ship The Phoenix, fighting the nefarious plans of Zoltar and his minions, Battle of the Planets offered the first real look at action adventure anime in the west.

The DVD boom has brought the Battle of the Planets title back with a vengeance, and along with it the original language and vocal tracks of Kagaku Ninja-Tai Gatchaman, the show upon which Battle of the Planets was built. The Gatchaman characters are, Ken Washio (Mark), George Asakura (Jason), Ryu Nakanishi (Tiny), Shinatori no Jun (Princess), and Subakuro no Jinpei (Keyop).

Like his importation of the Gamera/Majin films from Daiei studios,
Sandy Frank put Gatchaman through a 5 million dollar westernization to remove some of the more extreme violence, swearing, and thin story arc and add the character of 7-Zark-7 and location of Center Neptune from which G-Force/ Kagaku Ninja-Tai work. Frank also added a much better theme song to Battle of the Planets, but then pretty much anything is better than listening to what sounds like 500 four year olds screaming “Gatchaman... GATCHAMAN!!”

The committement of Frank’s importation team is evident in the
production. Battle of the planets opened a wide door to other
anime/live action imports from Japan. Without Battle of the Planets
we’d not have Star Blazers (Space Battleship Yamato), Force Five,
Ultraman, Goldar, and a whole slew of other childhood defining programs now getting a second life on DVD.

Each Battle of the Planets episode follows a rather similar formula,
G-force is sent to examine something, they find Zoltar and the Spectra organization there, they battle, Zoltar escapes, The Phoenix transmutes into a flaming bird and kills the robot/jellyfish/spaceship Spectra unleashes to kill them.

This is a little different from the Gatchaman episodes, although the
key events are the same. While G-Force works to protect Earth from
aliens and thus travels through space in several episodes to battle
Spectra, the Gatchaman Science Ninja’s work for the UN and battle
Galactor on Earth.

Another distinguishing feature is the intensity of the scripts, the
Japanese tracks are much more adult than any of their Americanized counterparts. For example, Keyop makes a bunch of really annoying stuttering noises when he talks, and tends to say almost nothing of value, while Jinpei swears constantly. Obviously that wouldn’t fly in the USA. It is nice to finally see these episodes in their original condition and it really rounds out the viewing experience.

Rhino DVD brings the boxed set to American shores with a killer
collection of episodes, (12 of them!) in both original Japanese and
their Americanized versions spread out over 4 discs. The episodes are different enough that it’s essentially 24 episodes! Three of the
episodes were never Americanized.

The boxed set includes a whole mess of awesome extras including an action figure, their vehicle, their weapon, a fold out with some
history and episode information. The DVDs contain interviews with Casey Kasem, Ron Schell, Janet Waldo, Alan Young, and Jameson Brewer who provided the voices for G-force, a commentary track featuring Ron Schell, Janet Waldo, and Alan Young. English edit or Japanese original episodes in 2.0 stereo respectively, and a cool 3-D menu.

Battle of the Planets is a fantastic entry into Anime DVD and Rhino
should be damn proud of this release.

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