From the Archives: Science Ninja Team Gatchaman Review

	Title	Science Ninja Team Gatchaman
	Episodes	105
	Released	October, 1972
	Genre(s)	Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
	Studio	Tatsunoko Production
	Reviewer	Danny
	AniDB
	MyAnimeList
	Kitsu

NB: This is a review that has been ported over from the old blog for posterity purposes. The original publish date of this review was 7th April, 2013. The writing style and depth of detail may have changed a lot since this time, and a revisit is always possible.

Alright, here’s the first of my old school anime reviews! I grew up enjoying the Americanised edit of this show (known as Battle of the Planets) on ABC in the mornings before school. While I really enjoyed it, I later came to know of the original Japanese version which blew it away. As sometimes happens the English edit removed much of the fighting, violence and general darker themes of the show. The good news is that in more recent years subs and a good English dub of the original have become available and that original show is what I a reviewing here.

Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (translates to ‘birdman’ but that sounds ridiculous in English) centers around a group of 5 highly trained youths working for the International Science Organisation. Trained in a unique style of martial arts and employing a variety of technological weaponry and vehicles, the are tasked with opposing a group of technologically advanced terrorists known as Galactor from capturing or controlling Earth’s natural resources. While this show has some environmentalist concepts it is far from the tree hugging of later shows such as Captain Planet and these resources are mostly used for energy or manipulation of an area and are important plot points rather than trying to tell you to recycle.

Each of the 5 team members has a particular bird motif that they can transmute into a super hero style outfit from their civilian ‘disguise’ as well their own preferred weapon. Additionally they each have a vehicle that also has a more mundane mode and can enter a more powerful battle mode. Four of these vehicles are able to dock with the fifth much larger air craft known as the God Phoenix which the team use to get around in most of the time. This craft is quite powerful with a large supply of missiles and is able to enter a ‘fire bird’ mode where it resembles the mythological phoenix, losing any resemblance  of a vehicle and becoming a mass of fire, at a cost to the occupants though.

Their enemy, Galactor, is lead by Bergu Kattse who wears a mask resembling a lynx (a good enemy of birds I guess) and seems to have a few psychological issues at times. Kattse receives his orders from Sosai X, a disembodied head from another planet that appears mostly on a view screen. The bulk of Galactor consists of the masked and uniformed troops who fight on foot as well as manning a variety of massive and sometime improbably mecha such as a giant robotic terrapin that they terrorise the world with. While these mecha prove to be quite a formidable challenge for the team to overcome the troops generally don’t fare that well on foot and prove a good target for the Gatchaman team to demonstrate their fighting skills on.

The big draw for most people who watch Gatchaman is the fairly violent fighting, great variety of giant mecha, as well as many darker adult themes that include depression, suicide and death. Many of these subjects were deemed to ‘adult’ and didn’t make it into the 80s English re-edit and that’s why I feel that the original is much better. In fact so much content (including much of the fighting) was removed that they had to add in new (poorly animated scenes) involving a robot helper known as 7-Zark-7 (a rip-off of R2D2 from Star Wars).

Now a lot of this may remind you of a show called Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers and for good reason. Power Rangers is a re-edit of the Japanese series Super Sentai (starting from it’s 16th season) which was heavily influenced by Gatchaman.

I rank this as one of my all time favourite animes and not only because I grew up with it. In fact it is often ranked among the best in opinion polls. So if you are looking for something which plenty of action that is a bit different from more recent offerings then this show should entertain you as well as introduce you to an important bit of anime history.

From the Archives: Binbougami ga! Review

	Title	Binbougami ga!
	Episodes	13
	Released	July, 2012
	Genre(s)	Comedy, Parody, Supernatural
	Studio	Sunrise
	Reviewer	Chris
	AniDB
	MyAnimeList
	Kitsu

NB: This is a review that has been ported over from the old blog for posterity purposes. The original publish date of this review was 5th April, 2013. The writing style and depth of detail may have changed a lot since this time, and a revisit is always possible.

Now here is an anime that went under the radar, unfortunately so, because it is actually a very enjoyable watch. The story begins with a young woman by the name of Sakura Ichiko, who just so happens to have un-natural levels of good fortune, so much so that it is upsetting the balance of fortune, and she is unintentionally sucking all the good fortune from people around her.

This brings me to the second character, the antagonist of the series, a god of misfortune called Binbada Momiji, she has been sent to earth to restore the balance of fortune, by forcibly withdrawing Sakura’s fortune. With a giant needle of all things. And so begins the fight to the death between Sakura and Binbada!

MORTAAAL COMBAAAT!!!

Not really, but it might as well have been, they have the typical over the top brawls that would outright kill a normal person, but hey, anime.

Surprisingly enough this action and comedy is occasionally broken up by some pretty serious stuff, mostly for plot and character development, but it is very well done, unfortunately these scenes are few and far between, it could have really used more.

 

Hang on, wasn’t this a comedy?

Luckily the series knows what it wants to be, it is a comedy at heart and it nails it. It introduces some extra characters pretty early on including a perverted holy man, and a masochistic dog god. The interactions between these two are great.

There are a lot of references and parodies of other anime, including some of the greats like Dragon Ball Z, One Piece, and Naruto. I guarantee you the one piece one will at the very least put a giant grin on your face.

 

Ah, there’s the comedy.

Being only 12 episodes, this is a perfect weekend show, the dedicated can get through it in one sitting. I definitely recommend giving it a shot, it was one of the ones that surprised me, I went into it with low expectations and even the first episode had me hooked, it is actually pretty damn good.

In summary, a very impressive and well done comedy, I enjoyed it greatly.

From the Archives: Samurai Champloo Review

	Title	Samurai Champloo
	Episodes	26
	Released	May, 2004
	Genre(s)	Action, Adventure, Comedy, Historical
	Studio	Mangalobe
	Reviewer	Daniel
	AniDB
	MyAnimeList
	Kitsu

NB: This is a review that has been ported over from the old blog for posterity purposes. The original publish date of this review was 3rd April, 2013. The writing style and depth of detail may have changed a lot since this time, and a revisit is always possible.

Samurai Champloo is a fantastic blend of pop culture and the Edo period. The characters dynamics are very finely balanced and the writers did an excellent job at developing the relationships between them. The two leads are a unique take on a classic tale of the cold and calculating mixing with the hot headed and rash.

Samurai Champloo’s storyline is paced maturely and there’s only one or two fillers, but they liven it up so effectively that you tend to not mind. I found a really nice meld of humour and drama that’s topped off with a garnish of hip-hop/pop. There are lots of comparisons online between this and Cowboy Bebop for a reason.

I highly recommend this to everyone, especially those who want to see the second best English voice acting I’ve ever seen in an anime.