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.)

Included alongside the two Battle Of The Planets episodes and their Japanese counterparts is an episode of the miserable TBS re-dub of the series, G-Force. For the purposes of this review, I forced myself to watch the G-Force episode on this DVD, and I have to say that the cheesy names ("Dirk Daring"? Aren't the makers of Dragon's Lair supposed to sue?) and equally sappy dialogue and voice treatments aren't the show's most annoying feature. It's that Casio-keyboard-demo drum loop that the producers just had to cram into every aural crevice for the whole half-hour. I would say something about how it makes me want to cram said music right back into every available crevice they have, but...naaaaahhh.

Sadly, the cheesy but fun trading cards ceased with the previous volume - as, apparently, did sales. Industry sources have told us that the six volumes of Battle Of The Planets released are all we're likely to get due to dismal sales. In fact, Rhino probably would've bailed out of the Battle Of The Planets DVD releases much earlier, but the third through sixth volumes were already in duplication; had they waited for sales figures to roll in, we might not have gotten this third volume.

Alas, poor Battle Of The Planets. Three stars for this volume, mainly for the work of art that is Gatchaman.

Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com webmaster / editor-in-chief