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This is one of those cases where the differences between Battle Of The Planets and Gatchaman, the early animè series on which it was based, stand out in sharp, sharp relief. In the original Japanese version of the first episode on this disc, a meteor storm causes destruction on a massive scale - skyscrapers topple, and lots of people die. In the American translation of the same show…very little of the above is allowed to come through. It’s more of a major nuisance than a global disaster. (more…)

The fourth of the six original individual volumes of Battle Of The Planets on DVD offers some more interesting studies in contrast. As with previous volumes in the series, the DVD contains two episodes of Battle Of The Planets, along with the two corresponding episodes of the Japanese animè series Gatchaman, from which Battle Of The Planets was created. The long-standing common knowledge that Battle’s cutesy 7-Zark-7 robot sequences were necessitated by the surgical removal of violent Gatchaman scenes, to the tune of several minutes per episode, gets quite a boost here - in both episodes of the original Japanese show, the bad guys get to wreak a lot more carnage before our heroes arrive on the scene. (more…)

Given out as part of a Battle Of The Planets promo packet by Top Cow Comics at the 2002 San Diego Comic Con, this mini-DVD - the most recent (and possibly last) Battle Of The Planets DVD release - contains the two-part episode Invasion Of Space Center - and nothing more. Unlike the commercial releases, this disc doesn’t include the Japanese equivalents from the original Gatchaman series, nor does it include the equivalent episodes from the Turner Broadcasting-butchered G-Force series. The menu is significantly simplified. (more…)

Mark, Jason and the rest of the gang return for two more episodes of saving the world from deadly danger in the third volume of Battle Of The Planets. The two episodes seen here, Ghost Ship Of Planet Mir and Big Robot Gold Grab, are among the more recognizable segments in the series, but once again the real meat of the content here is the Gatchaman episodes, which are simultaneously more violent and funnier than their American counterparts. As deadly serious as Gatchaman was played out, it wasn’t without a healthy sense of humor. (The show’s makers seemed to have a sly sense of how silly it could potentially be to have five kids in spandex saving the world every week, an element which later made the earliest Power Rangers episodes more palatable than later iterations of that series.) (more…)

I’ve already raved about the first volume of Rhino’s eagerly awaited series of Battle Of The Planets DVDs, and while the features are basically the same on this volume - corresponding Gatchaman episodes with subtitles and one episode of the supremely crappy re-edited “G-Force: Guardians Of The Universe” - but the episodes are better, as they’re from a point further into the series where the producers had found the right balance between the original Gatchaman footage and the newly (well, newly in the ’70s) created footage of 7-Zark-7 to fill in for censored violent scenes. (more…)

If I wax a little too enthusiastic in the course of this review, you’ll have to forgive me. I’ve just spent the past few hours being eight years old again.

It was around that age that I first stumbled upon the Sandy Frank Productions animated series Battle Of The Planets, a vastly re-edited, re-written and re-dubbed series based upon the classic 1974 Japanese animè series Kagakuninjatai Gatchaman. (more…)