Search - Gatchaman Collector's Box 1 (Vols. 1-2) on DVD

Gatchaman Collection 1 (Vol. 1 & 2) !

Servo | Atlanta, GA USA | 05/21/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Thanks to the Battle of the Planets DVDs (Volumes 1-6 and Ultimate Boxed Set) released thru Rhino Home Video, I finally got to see some uncut Gatchaman episodes. But not all of them, with Rhino no longer having rights to the series.

Enter ADV Films, which will release the entire Gatchaman series (on 7 collector's boxes) for the first time ever in North America. Collectively, the seven-volume collector's edition will contain all 105 episodes of the original uncut Japanese series, including 20 episodes never before seen in the U.S. Each set features stunning original artwork by Alex Ross.

This Gatchaman Collector's Box Volume 1 is a three-disc release containing two sub-volumes (The Legend Begins and Meteors and Monsters, each available separately) with 12 episodes presented in English 2.0 and Japanese 2.0 with English subtitles. Extras include: clean opening and closing animation, episode commentary, Gatchaman Karaoke, and previews. The bonus extras DVD includes: Ken, the Eagle profile, character sketches: Ken, episode sketches, interviews with the English staff and cast, and audition footage.

Episodes:
"Gatchaman VS. Turtle King"
"The Evil Ghostly Aircraft Carrier"
"The Giant Mummy That Calls Storms"
"Revenge of the Iron Monster Mechadegon"
"The Ghost Fleet from Hell"
"The Grand Mini-Robot Operation"
"Galactor's Grand Airshow"
"The Secret of the Crescent Coral Reef Operations"
"A Demon From The Moon"
"The Big Battle of the Underground"
"The Mysterious Red Impulse"
"The Greedy Monster Ibukuron"
"

Good stuff

G. Saunders | 07/16/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This is something I thought I'd never see, the planned release of every Gatchaman episode unedited.

I watched the first few episodes in Japanese but I decided to get lazy and switch to the dubbed version, which isn't that bad. I think the worst voiceover is for Berg Katse, the main bad guy. They make him sound almost like Paul Lynde. I think the idea was to riff on his sexual ambiguity or something but it comes off sounding too 60s Batman style campy. But I will always remember Keye Luke's vocal performance in Battle of the Planets as definitive.

The extras on these DVDs focus around the english voiceacting. More thought and effort went into that than I thought.

The translation seems okay, but they throw in some slang every now and then "dynomite!!". At one point Ken says "I'm going to take it to the next level" which is a little too hip-hop for a 70s show. If they play around with that stuff too much it edges it closer to MST3K level.

There really are only a few truly good shows on this collection for an adult audience. The rest are formulaic. There are a couple shows that explore the aftermath of the death that Galactor causes which I thought was well done. And there are some elements here and there that hint at an overall "arc" like Red Impulse.

If you dissect the plots, they are full of holes because the story wants to somehow get the characters into an infiltration scenario (to allow them to do Ninja type stuff) so the godphoenix usually just creeps up into the enemy ship and leaves it sitting there unprotected. The enemy does a lot of "monologuing" as it is called in The Incredibles, or insisting on capturing the team first instead of just offing them directly. If you look at it more as a comic book and not hold it up to a realistic standard then it's okay.

I think Yamato (Starblazers) is the king of 70s Anime, so Gatchaman has to come second.

I've really forgotten a lot of the old Battle of the Planets shows so that, plus watching it unedited with a new voice cast makes it feel almost like a new show.

Since there are over 100 episodes it will be costly to collect the entire set but I'm going to do it. There are a lot of episodes that were never even shown on Battle of the Planets so I'm eager to see the story unfold in order to its completion.



"

If you watched Battle of the Planets, you'll LOVE Gatchaman!

Thomas D. Feeps | Virginia Beach, VA | 05/30/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I can remember catching the odd episode of Battle of the Planets (BOTP) as a very young kid and thinking it was great. At the time, I was oblivious to the abrupt, heavy handed editing that put 7-Zark-7 and a poorly animated Jason and Princess in place of the original action.

Over the years, I'd catch an odd episode here and there, often times the characters would have different names. I won't go into detail here (do an interenet search if interested), but the original series Gatchaman has been translated by Sandy Frank into Battle of the Planets, Ted Turner into G-Force, and Saban Entertainment into Eagle Riders--each with it's own pros and cons.

Eventually, I came upon some fan-produced subtitled episodes of the original Gatchaman series. I was really amazed! The original series was a complex, deep, action-packed serial. There are things that happen and people we meet early in the series that seem trivial at first, but end up having a gigantic effect on the series. The characters care for each other and act with an honest plend of passion and loyalty.

Unfortuneately, I personally don't feel the series really gets going until perhaps episode 30 or so--where Jun (Princess) is presumed dead and we see how the rest of the team reacts. The early episodes are much more episodic, introducing the team, Gallactor, Dr. Nambu, and are fairly formulaic in the sense that 1) Gallactor attacks a city, 2) Gatchaman investigates, 3) the Team fights the monster and wins.

This first volume gets four stars, because I have to save five stars for the rest of the series. If you buy it however, you WILL NOT be disappointed!"

At last, a proper translation and not too embarrassing dub

Donald I. Gillikin Jr. | 06/19/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Finally, ADV's new translation of the Japanese classic, GATCHAMAN, is on the market and rabid Gatchafans can finally weigh in on it.

Contrary to ADV's previous publicity, volumes one and two contain the first twelve episodes of the series, not the first ten. Those of us who had already bought Rhino's BATTLE OF THE PLANETS releases will have already seen those Gatchaman episodes in subtitled form, so the main selling point of this box set is the new dub translation. [The first examples of Gatch material not included on the Rhino discs should show up on Volumes 3 in Collector's Box #2 in a few months.]

How is the new translation? It's not too shabby. I have some reservations about some of the vocal choices, but the final result is often less cringe-worthy than 1978's kiddified BATTLE OF THE PLANETS or the campy re-dub G-FORCE: GUARDIANS OF SPACE Fred Ladd helmed circa 1986.

The dub translation has a good 5.1 stero mix. The Japanese audio track is two-channel mono and strikes me as being a little too quiet in comparison.

Leraldo Anazulda sounds young, earnest and a bit callow as Eagle Ken. Brian Jepson's Condor Joe is reminiscent of G-Force's "Dirk Daring", but without the whine Jimmy Flinders gave Dirk back in '86. Luci Christian is hyper as the Great Swallow Jinpei, but I find her performance bearable. I'm not yet sold on Edwin Neal's performance as the hermaphroditic villain, Berg Katse. He comes across as too nasal and weak and it seems like he does a slightly different voice for the character each appearance. Andy McAvin gives a standard reading for the Dr. Nambu character, sounding like a cross between the guy who voiced his EAGLE RIDERS equivalent, Dr. Thaddeus Keane, and the actor who performed Dr Nambu in Urban Vision's dub translation of the mid-nineties GATCHAMAN OAV. I'm on the fence about Victor Casrud as Ryu, the Great Horned Owl. Sometimes, he sounds a bit too much like Curly from the Three Stooges for my tastes.

So far, performances that send me up the wall as a viewer are Kim Prausse's as Jun, the Swan, and the fellow doing the narration. The narrator is a little too stentorian and he isn't helped by the translation from the Japanese original which captures the florid style of the Japanese narration. Those are, of course, minor quibbles and largely subjective.

On the plus side, this new translation has no repetitive pounding techno backbeat and the characters aren't cursed with names like Ace Goodheart, Dirk Daring, Peewee, and Hooty. Additionally, the episodes haven't been bowdlerized with an R2D2 knockoff telling us that dead characters miraculaously found escape capsules or that everyone was evacuated just in time. Nor do we get the lame comic relief antics of said R2D2 knockoff and his inane robot dog.

We fans have finally got what we've longed wished for, a translation of GATCHAMAN that we won't be too embarrassed to show our friends and loved ones."