JsARCLIGHT

Oh damn... I also had this kid as a kid! This thing must have been some sort of rite of passage for us '80s kids. I think I got it from my grandparents as an easter gift of all things in 1980 or so (I was 10 so it would have had to have been '80). I remember hastily putting it together at their house using old airplane glue of my dad's from the 60's that still was good somehow and then playing with what was left of it. If memory serves me the little boxcar thing had sliding doors which I distinctly remember I glued shut. Then again I also remember getting boosted on that "classic" airplane glue while building it so it's anyone's guess if it was modeling skill or my state of fog that caused that thing to go together all wonky. I sucked at models then as I do now.

Most of the Battletech original units were "swiped" from animes like Dougram, Macross, Crusher Joe and the like. Do a search for those and you'll hit all you need to about the early line art for them.

It's always been my opinion that FMV sequences in games, while nice to look at, take me out of the game. Sure they are pretty and sometimes can add some "oooh and aaahh" to an otherwise lackluster game but when you are playing a game and suddenly the screen goes black and you hear that telltale disc rampup of an approaching FMV sequence you just put down your controller and watch... any tension or action that built up in the preceeding game stage totally falls apart while you stop to watch this video clip. While watching the cip I usually start muttering things like "wouldn't it be neat if the game actually had those graphics?". Just for comparisson take a game like the Metal Gear Solid series that uses a combination of FMV and game engine cutscenes... during the spots when they use the in game engine to generate a story bit my hands are on the controller, I'm waiting for "my turn" to start so I can kick some a... but durring the FMV spots you put down your controller and just watch. It just totally takes you out of the game and makes you feel like you are a bystander rather than a player. It all comes down to your own personal game playing likes and dislikes though. As games become more graphically appealing the lines between "movie" and "game" keep blurring... except for the main difference that you watch a movie and you play a game. I'm one of the people who want to play and not watch... hence why Metal Gear grates my nerves so bad. Plus when they use the in game engine to generate the cutscenes you have this feeling the game can "drop you" at any second back into the game... the transition from talky story bits back to action can happen in a split second. The transition from FMV back to game is herky jerky at best. As for Robotech: Invasion... they shoved that cake in the oven too fast, took it out too soon, hurried through icing it, mispelled your name when they scrawled "Hapy Birfdaye" on it and then threw it in your face and charged you $50. If you think that analogy is a train wreck then just imagine the game. If they would have taken their time, refined a lot of things and cleaned up their engine and controls the game might have been decent.

Exactly. All this "anime political correctness" is what makes me not like going to anime discussion boards any more. You say you hate something and people harsh on you for being a hater... then you say you like something and peolpe harsh on you for not liking "the right version". You make fun of something and someone who likes it just can't let you have your opinion and they feel the need to smack you down. You try to defend something you personally like and people call you a hypocrite. Yes my "logic" for liking BOTP is wonky but then again so is the darn show. I just like it... it's not some cerebral "I have to really think why this amuses me" sort of thing. Why do some people laugh when someone trips but others don't? Why do I also love the american bastard Samurai Pizza Cats yet when I tracked down the original show it was made from I did not laugh once? It's all just personal taste and opinion in the end until opinion is outlawed we all just need to back up and let people think what they want to think whether we agree with it or not. After all, it's a cartoon. If this was about something important then we'd have an issue.

I just like BOTP. Sandy Frank was a profiteer businessman who added junk to a japanese cartoon because he needed to fill space for all the super violence, cussing and nudity he cut out of it so it could get put on american TV so he could make money. What he did with the show was have someone create new material, totally re-write it and crank it out as something totally different than what it once was. BOTP is not Gatchaman. The only thing they have in common is a few of the animation cells they are made from and the name of their ship "the pheonix". What Sandy Frank did would be like me taking Sienfeld, removing half the show, redubbing it with a business school script, adding in new footage with different actors dressed like the originals in two scenes that are re-used again and again and then pass the whole thing off as an office safety training video that has some scenes of a comedian at a comedy club in it. I laugh at the show and I like it so much because someone actually thought this show was action packed and entertaining and somehow not full of holes and totally bizzare. Carl Macek took three Japanese shows, in effect dubbed them and did a complete almost word for word story transfer with only a few minor changes to the story so they would fit together and then sold the whole thing off as a new show... which it wasn't... which is one of the main points of contention with hardcore macross people. But then unlike Sandy Frank, Macek proceeds to call himself the golden god of americanization of anime and claims credit for the entire Robotech story. My "justification" of Sandy Frank does not dismiss that he did indeed butcher the original show, all I was saying was that he did a hell of a lot more creatively than Macek did and yet Macek is the "golden god of american anime" and Sandy Frank is not. I'm not a hardcore uber purist like lots of people on this site are, I just like to be entertained by cartoons. That is the point in the end: are you entertained by the cartoon. Sandy Frank's frankenstien BOTP entertains me more than the original Gatchaman. If that makes me a total bitch whore two-face sellout bastard hypocrite scumbag pisspockets mcgee like you seem to want to portray me as then F' Yeah! That's me! I know what I like and what I don't like. I don't like Robotech but I like Macross. I like BOTP but I don't like Gatchaman. It's personal taste and my feelings on Robotech and Macek have nothing to do with liking a different show that got chopped to pieces on it's way to the states.

Nice. I like it when my personal opinions and tastes piss people off. I learnt it from watching Agent One.

I don't like "Sentai" shows. To me, they are all dumb. Five member brightly colored super hero teams with acrobatic attacks and crazy vehicles all themed after some animal or something just don't sit right with me. It's like watching a circus attack another circus... shows like that are one step above Dragonball in my mind. They are not my cup of tea, never have been. To see one like Gatchaman rewritten, re-edited and chopped into a campy goofball show with a preachy robot, rumpus room and a supposed intergalactic battleground that always looks like earth is just comedy gold. It's like MST3K... they took something that someone else loves too much and turned it into something so horrid that it's laughable... and I love it. Just because I don't "respect" a cartoon does not mean I can't laugh at it.

Once again, that is what makes the show so darn fun. It's fraught with issues... mental issues... like 7-Zark-7 selling 1-Rover-1's bark noise to Dagget from Battlestar Galactica.

7-Zark-7: R2D2 wannabe... Digital Mack Daddy... and G-Force Apologist all rolled into one bug looking piece of fun.

That is my reason for loving it. It is so bad it's good. It's camp, it's kitch. Why do people like H.R. Puffinstuff? It's '70s camp. That is what sets BOTP apart from Gatchaman for me... it's just sooo damn campy! Science Ninja Team Gatchaman to me is one long joke with no punchline... BOTP added the punchline. 7-Zark-7 going on a diatribe about how all the badguys are robots and how we should not worry about them (after seeing them get shot or hit with bird shuriken) is just so wrong it's funny. Tiny sitting at a chair in the "rumpus room" that constantly erupts hamburgers... heck, all of them in that rumpus room doing the same damn thing everyday just talking about something different... CAMP!

BOTP recast the main bad guy as two different people. In BOTP the mask wearing one is a man and his "female alter ego" is called "his sister" and is given a different voice, and one episode is even edited to make it seem the man version is talking to his female version further driving home their changes that they are two different people. While I understand there are those out there that just cannot stand their precious anime being repackaged and reworked you have to admit that unlike Robotech and many other "rename and photocopy the story" anime ports from the '80s, Sandy Frank actually went one step beyond with BOTP and actually made new footage and new characters in his attempt to completely re-write and retask the show. BOTP, aside from having the same animation used in spots is almost completely different from Gatchaman. Who the characters are are fundamentally different as are the stories and the bad guys, their motivations, all of it. I just like BOTP because it is 100% pure camp. The show just skews into comedy when it is supposed to be serious. To me, Robotech is a bastardization... they could have so easily faithfully transfered the story intact rather than doing what they did. At least Sandy Frank had the balls to completely throw everything out the window, rewrite and recreate the show in his own little world. All Macek did was some edits and dubbing then tape it all together. Even back in 1979 when watching BOTP on TV I laughed and laughed because it was just... so... awful. I cannot watch the original Gatchaman to this day without giggling and thinking how funny the american version is compared to the heavy handed, monotone dramatics of the real show. BOTP is the retarded clone of Gatchaman that turned out totally different than the original... sort of like if you tried to clone Antonio Banderas and got John Leguizamo. Anyone who tells you BOTP is the "american Gatchaman" is wrong as the show is completely different. Robotech on the other hand is a clone show.

I last saw Sandy Frank's Battle of the Planets a few weeks ago. We have a tape in the office that I watch when I need to smile. Yes the show stinks, the additional footage is horrid and the plots are as thin and choppy as spring rolls but... damn... it's G-Force! For me, it's one show that just does not need all the cussing and nudity and ultra violence that the original jap show has. I mean, fer god's sake the main bad guy is a hermaphrodite! The cannon fodder baddies have bell bottoms. The show is just pure camp. I loves me some good camp. Plus 7-Zark-7's voice is just so soothing and calming... makes me want to sleep.

Nothing is made for my generation anymore. We got our Vice City and our I love the Seventies/Eighties and that was it. Darn kids... Edit: and I'm among the two people on the face of the earth that prefer the american butchered Battle of the Planets to the original Gatchaman. 7-Zark-7 rules the world.

Someone in my office just brought something to my attention: "G-Force" was actually in freaking Trivial Pursuit! We all remember one of the TP Entertainment questions being something like "What is the name of the special team of orphan superheroes who have a ship called the Phoenix?"

So if I'm reading this right the only link to Gatchaman or Battle of the Planets is Boofhiemer's use of the name "G-Force" to describe the team of animals? Lame. If the reaction of us here and the people writing these news stories is one of "it's Battle of the Planets!" then I wonder what the reaction of the rest of America will be when this thing gets let out of it's cage. Say the name "G-Force" to anyone in my generation and a few people after and we instantly say "battle of the planets". The name "G-Force" is an american pop icon... using that name for something totally different is going to confuse a lot of people just as this thread did. Once again, why make a movie called (or with a team named) "G-Force" that is not about the "G-Force"?

This toy is the sh!t. I plan to get one of the US released ones and have it wrestle my cat. (looks around to make sure my use of "the sh!t" does not insult piles of crap anywhere).

We're just doing this to piss you off EXO. Edit: anyway who in their right mind makes a movie called "Battle of the Planets" for an american audience and does not make it about G-Force/Gatchaman? That is like me making a movie called "Speed Racer" about really fast birds in the amazon.

Well... this animal G-Force could still have a hemaphrodite bad guy.

Awwwww.... but Sandy Frank recast the hemaphrodite bad guy as two people!

The thought of seeing a live action Princess has me interested... but then the thought of a live action Keeyop and 7-Zark-7 has me shuddering.

Not sure where you are getting this from... I've served on the juries for two civil suits here in missouri since coming here. It's the dumbass juries that award these high dollar settlements.

I might have a weird perspective on this but living in Saint Louis... the infamous home of the Blues, the bulk of Tony Twist's hockey career when all this started and the venue of the court case all I can say is this: Saint Louis is a hockey town. A white bread, po-dunk, buck-toothed, bud drinkin' hockey town. I remember seeing several news stories about the "Twist case" over the years it has been going on and for the most part the locals treat Tony Twist like some sort of Baron or Count of the land. All the dumb sh!t does is go out on the ice, hit a few people, earn his rep as a loudmouthed fighting bastard then retire to the lush life of hot-tub company commercials and making appearances at local clubs with radio stations. The guy is a grade A tool... yet all the hillbillies in this town adore the man. The local spin that was put on this whole thing was that poor old defenseless Tony was blind-sided by McFarlane, the nasty out of towner comic book geek, who used Tony's good name without his approval to name a violent, pigheaded, brutish villian in his kiddie picture books. Well that sert a' thang di'int play well in these here parts. My guess is not finding a jury that did not know Tony Twist, watch him play with the Blues or like the douche bag was about as easy as shooting dead fish taped to the end of your gun. All you have to do is look at the cases settled or taken to court in Saint Louis... "them dern outa towners" loose almost every case. Now I'm not saying that the gene pool here in the midwest is so polluted that they automatically award damages to any local boy bringing a case against out of town "big city coasters"... but let's just say that this little land-locked burg has a large chip on it's shoulder about those "outa towners" comin' in here and takin' our local boys for a ride. Gee, can you see through my hate of this city to the point beneath? What I am saying is this was a nothing case brought by a punk against a jerk, neither one really had super duper proof positive one way or the other. The whole thing was a cosmic coincidence that a local jury found in favor of the local boy on. If the venue would have been in McFarlane's town then chances are he would have won. This is a case of the kangaroo court bouncing higher than the bullsh!t.

Heck, I'm still impressed when I see kevlar body armor work. Having seen what kinds of damage even small bullets can do I find things like this interesting. At it's core it is nothing more than an exercise in simple physics yet it is simply amazing.

I always knew a good japanese sword was strong but to see it proven is even more impressive.

Well, she is current military, I'm ex-military, she loves dolls, I love toys... it's a match made in heaven!