I have to say that I have never seen an episode of Battle of the Planets or Gatchaman, but I have a friend who is very into the property, so I thought I would give a cover featuring them a shot. So I will put the question out there... what is the difference between Gatchaman and BotP? It looks like there is a ton of material covering them - where is the best place for someone new to the characters to start?
Dave sez,
ReplyDeleteHoly Bird of Prey, that's cover kicks, um, butt!!! Totally awesome!
I would so totally read a team-up book that rotated Batman, The Thing, Superman and Spider-Man...
I've only seen Battle of the Planets. Never saw Gatchaman. Alex Ross did a mini-series a few years back that pretty good.
There's also the collected box sets for the series...
Wasn't there a short video floating around YouTube like the start of a TMNT trailer for Gatchaman a while back?
I always thought Voltron was a continuation of the BotP concept...
The difference between Battle of the Planets and Gatchaman was the inclusion of the mechanoids 7-Zark-7 (voiced by Alan Young) and his "dog" 1-Rover-1, added as comic relief, narrators, and filler when a lot of the action/violence was edited out of the original episodes to fall into the childrens' television guidelines of the day.
ReplyDeleteBattle is good if you saw it as a kid or are a kid now, it's very sanitized. Gatchaman plain and simple rocks. good stories, violence and blood, it's awesome.
ReplyDeleteBattle of the Planets is the Americanized version of Gatchaman aka Science Police Task Force or something. BotP was absolutely my childhood in the very late 1970s ('78-'80). The english dubbed version included a Kiop that had a slight hiccup/speech impediment that you will not see in later dubbed versions. I remember the episodes being somewhat hard to follow due to the heavy editing but very dark and quite few stores dealt with threats to the environment. The heavy "pathos" common in Japanese dramas/soap operas was also prevalent. The show was just surreal.
ReplyDeleteHey sorry if you have already done them but can u do a Batman Bruce Lee and or Batman Master of Kung fu?
ReplyDeleteTHanks! you are a genius!
Batman/MOKF has been done, just check the archives!
ReplyDeletei love batman!
ReplyDeleteAt gatchfanfic (.com) there's three lovely ladies who, between them, have reviewed every episode of Gatchaman and Battle of the Planets. Reading those thorough covers with screenshots is a great place to get a handle on the differences.
ReplyDeleteBotP is Gatchaman with a lot of the violence and "controversial topics" (and Jinpei/Keiop's swearing) removed. Where real troops on the "good guys" got killed on Gatchaman, they magically became "robot troops" in BotP. Where Katse (Zoltar) was intersexed in Gatchaman, she was explained away as two separate people in BotP. Not to mention the robots added to BotP as comic relief by Sandy Frank.
ReplyDeleteBasically, BotP sucks. Just watch Gatchaman.
Wow...I would do anything to see this comic!
ReplyDelete