Jerry Bruckheimer producing....

[JsARCLIGHT]

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.

Edited December 22, 2004 by JsARCLIGHT

[bsu legato]

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.

Are you speaking from recent experience, or are you going from memory? I ask because I made the mistake of downloading acouple of episodes of BOTP and I can't say that I enjoyed them anymore.

[JsARCLIGHT]

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.

[Jemstone]

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.

You do realize that is the same rationale of a Robotech fan prefering Robotech over Macross, RIGHT?

EDIT: BTW the main bad guy in Gatchaman, Berg Katz, is still a hermie as that's part of a plot point as to how s/he came to be and to why s/he's a "master of disguise". BOTP didn't make that up in editing so I'm not sure where you're goign with that as an example.....

Edited December 22, 2004 by Jemstone

[EXO]

I didn't mind Robotech as a kid. But BotP was so hard to watch because of 7-Zark-7 and kreeeeeeptup Keeyop. I still haven't seen all of Gatchaman and I don't know if I ever will, but I wouldn't mind seeing a movie based on the Japanese storyline.

The airing in L.A. didn't help either, they kept cancelling it and then re-airing the same damn episodes.

[JsARCLIGHT]

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.

[Jemstone]

But that was only so he could cash in on the Star Wars craze by adding an R2 rip off. That's not originality beyond the call of duty in my book (tho he spent 5 mill on it). That's just unabashed greed. Anyways, it sounds like your love for it comes fromt he fact it was so bad. The "It's so bad it's good" kind of way.

EDIT: PS I don't need to hear about the nostalgia excuse. A bastardization is still a bastardization no matter it's packaging and extras.

Edited December 22, 2004 by Jemstone

[JsARCLIGHT]

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!

[bsu legato]

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.

That was horrible! The exact second the bird-shuriken hits them, Zark is in there assuring us kiddies that they were just "knocked out by the sonic boom." Or there was another episode where G-Force ostensibly rescued some astronauts (who, from what I can tell from the footage alone, seem to have been tortured) then are seen leaving by themselves. Yet 7-Zark-7 chimes in to reassure us that they did indeed rescue the now-invisible astronauts. They would have been better off if they had assumed that kids would have forgotten the astronauts even existed by that point.

Besides, everybody knows it was all about 1-Rover-1

[bsu legato]

And those interminable scenes of 7-Zark-7 hitting on that other computer via the intercom just made me feel dirty.

Seriously....wtf?

[JsARCLIGHT]

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

[bsu legato]

Actually, I got the feeling that 7-Zark-7 was this micromanaging, overbearing Big Brother figure. He seems to monitor the G-Force gang 24/7 and comments on everything they do.

"Princess, don't you have a hair appointment at 2:00? Don't dawdle! And stop slouching, Keyop!"

G-Force aren't superheros. They're prisoners!

[EXO]

I wonder if the Gatchaman team can swing their arms when they're running out of costume...

[JsARCLIGHT]

G-Force aren't superheros. They're prisoners!

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.

[Jemstone]

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...

A joke, huh? That long running joke is the only reason super sentai teams existed in the first place! You don't "respect" the series and the mock make up of that series (BOTP) makes you respect it less. Only this time you enjoy the mock up more because you think so little of it. I thought you that you thought more of the shows from your generation than that.

[JsARCLIGHT]

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.

[Jemstone]

I don't like "Sentai" shows. To me, they are all dumb.

There ya go. So long as you think it's a dumb anime then it's A-OK in your book to chop it up and even throw in new home made crap. Those first two lines say it all. I'm done and this discussion is over.

[JsARCLIGHT]

Nice.

I like it when my personal opinions and tastes piss people off.

I learnt it from watching Agent One.

[Jemstone]

Nice.

I like it when my personal opinions and tastes piss people off.

I learnt it from watching Agent One. 

You are a Sandy Frank Apologists yet condemning Robotech. Translation HYPOCRITE!!!

I spelled it out for you since your laughter at BTOP had apparently made you DAFT! After this I see no reason to take your said opinions on how you are so against Robotech, the treatment of Macross, Southern Cross and Mospeada seriously. You are just like any typical Robotech fan that could justify it's existence but wosre because:

YOU

ARE

A

HYPOCRITE!

EDIT: I'm not sure anybody should even botehr with your opinions at this point if you can sit there and damn Robotech and Macek but justify Sandy Frank.

Edited December 22, 2004 by Jemstone

[JsARCLIGHT]

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.

[EXO]

So yeah... anyway....

animal movie... not superheroes...

[Sundown]

Personal ability to enjoy something does not necessarily denote one's particular political stance.

I mean, I can enjoy Robotech. I know that makes me a little daffy. But at the same time, I abhor HG and their business practices. Macek is, yes, a hack, amongst other things... although he probably doesn't deserve the character assasinations he receives on a regular basis. Let's get some perspective: He. Made(?). A. TV. Show.

But it doesn't turn us into horrid people if we happen to like it on some level. Or Battle of the Planets-- for reasons that were totally unintended-- for that matter.

The only thing that makes us guilty of is bad taste.

-Al

Edited December 23, 2004 by Sundown

[JsARCLIGHT]

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.