Gatchaman unedited DVDs now available

[Guest wildpegasus]

For anyone who doesn't know by now Gatchaman is finally available unedited and in its true form on DVD. You can watch it in Japanese with subs or on a brand new English dub with all original footage included. There are 6 eps per DVD and as of now there are two volumes. I believe the price is about $14 per DVD and here in Canada I got my first volume for $18.

 

 

 

From what I've seen so far, the show itself is great. Definitely reccomended. I already talked a little bit about it in my Astroboy thread.

[Guest JMA]

Sounds like good news. I remember watching the edited version on TV back in the day. Being a big anime fan, I've read that the show is MUCH more complex than the watered-down stuff we were shown. Even comic artists like Alex Ross are big fans of the show.

 

I may just have to buy these DVDs when I save up some money.

[SuperJerk 0]

I bought a "Battle of the Planets" DVD a while back. It was pretty fucking unwatchable.

 

I wouldn't mind seeing the unaltered version with an English language track.

 

Did anyone see the 1994 remake?

[Guest wildpegasus]

Sounds like good news. I remember watching the edited version on TV back in the day. Being a big anime fan, I've read that the show is MUCH more complex than the watered-down stuff we were shown. Even comic artists like Alex Ross are big fans of the show.

 

I may just have to buy these DVDs when I save up some money.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

I don't even know who Alex Ross is. It sounds like he is hard to impress?

 

 

Isn't this along with Robotech the most altered/edited show in the history of mankind?

 

 

 

I wouldn't mind seeing the edited stuff now just to see the difference. The show itself seems to be doing a slow burn for its angles and they're not hotshotting anything as of yet (The first 5 eps I've seen) They've set the seeds for a future love angle, have set up some mystery angles, have started exploring Ken's past and I think next episode they maybe doing something with Joe's charactor who is the "opposite" of Ken.

[AndrewTS 0]

"Isn't this along with Robotech the most altered/edited show in the history of mankind?"

 

Didn't Robotech get different seasons randomly spliced together without regard to continuity?

 

So I don't think it would be anywhere near that bad.

 

http://images.google.com/images?q=Gatchaman+Alex+Ross&hl=en

 

Ross made some posters for the series that probably will end up as DVD covers.

[Art Sandusky 0]

What bugged me about G-Force was that every single friggin' villain was a lieutenant.

[SuperJerk 0]

"Isn't this along with Robotech the most altered/edited show in the history of mankind?"

 

Didn't Robotech get different seasons randomly spliced together without regard to continuity?

 

So I don't think it would be anywhere near that bad.

 

http://images.google.com/images?q=Gatchaman+Alex+Ross&hl=en

 

Ross made some posters for the series that probably will end up as DVD covers.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Those were for the Top Cow "Battle of the Planets" mini-series.

 

To answer the earlier question, Alex Ross is a comic book artist who does his work in paints. He illustrated the popular "Marvels" series for Marvel, and "kingdom Come" series for DC, two of the most popular mini-series of the last 15 years.

[teke184 0]

I've gotten this set, in addition to the 1994 remake and the Battle Of The Planets discs from Rhino, as I've been a huge BOTP fan since I was a kid.

 

 

The new sets are a vast improvement over the original set of BOTP DVDs for a few reasons:

 

1. They have new English language tracks recorded for the DVDs that are from a good translation of the original Japanese.

 

2. They appear to have been remastered and are BEAUTIFUL. While I remember the BOTP discs' Gatchaman episodes looking much better than the corresponding BOTP episodes, I don't remember them looking this good.

 

3. This new series of Gatchaman DVDs will include episodes that were skipped for BOTP. These episodes WERE skipped on the BOTP DVDs as a result.

 

4. Compactness. The BOTP DVDs only had 2 distinct episodes per volume, as there were the BOTP version of both episodes, the Gatchaman versions of both episodes, and an Eagle Riders version of one of the episodes.

 

 

 

The only downside is that the first few episodes of Gatchaman aren't some of the better ones. Things will pick up once the second wave of episodes are released, which should include episodes never commercially released in the US before, such as The Red Sand.

 

 

In short, any fan of Gatchaman should pick up this set, although casual fans may want to wait until the next set.

[SuperJerk 0]

How did the 1994 remake compare to the original Japanese "Gatchaman" episodes?

[teke184 0]

How did the 1994 remake compare to the original Japanese "Gatchaman" episodes?

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I'll do the comparison by each of the three 1994 "episodes"

 

 

Part 1 is a very close version of Gatchaman episode 1, "Gatchaman Vs. Turtle King". There were some changes, but it was the same basic "Turtle mecha is destroying buildings to steal rare materials" story.

 

Part 2 is about half-based on one of the early Red Impulse episodes but is mostly original material done in the Gatchaman style.

 

Part 3 is a highly condensed version of the storyline that ended the original Gatchaman series. Some things were changed but everything done was in line with how the original series would have done it.

 

 

 

The only disappointment I had with the 1994 series was that it was only 3 episodes when it could have easily stretched to twice that length. It felt like the jump between episode 2 and episode 3 was pretty abrupt and should have included at least one more episode to transition from "we're fighting but they're gaining ground" to "Oh F*CK, we're completely screwed..."

[Golgo 13 0]

"Isn't this along with Robotech the most altered/edited show in the history of mankind?"

 

Didn't Robotech get different seasons randomly spliced together without regard to continuity?

 

So I don't think it would be anywhere near that bad.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Not just seasons, but rather, different series that had nothing to do with each other. As a means to tie everything together, that's where the whole protoculture plot point comes in.

 

Yeah, Battle of the Planets and G-Force aren't nearly as bad as that, despite a lot of edits (BotP turned Keyop into a babbling idiot, had the more violent scenes removed and replaced with filler and Zark stuff, while G-Force left the deleted scenes intact, but as I understand it, the soundtrack was replaced by some really awful music). Although Eagle Riders was spliced together from two Gatchaman series, much the same way Robotech was... and by most accounts it was terrible.

[JasonX 0]

Eagle Riders was "Gatchaman II" and about the first 15 episodes of "Gatchaman Fighter" tossed in at the end of the series just so they could get the needed 65 episodes. The G2 episodes were decently dubbed (even though they changed the main villain to a guy so they could retroactively declare the G2 villain as the same villian from Fighter.

 

And even though Robotech was butchered, it pales in comparision to Gatchaman, what with the way that it got passed around like a whore and having each character given new, often shitty names each time it got passed around. At least Harmony Gold was consistant with regards to making Macross, Southern Cross, and Mosepeda and Robotech: Macross, The Masters, and New Generation all consistant with one set of name for each version. Also, HG at least left the dark material intact (and then some, given their take on Southern Cross's ultra-ambiguous, ultra-dark ending) while Gatchaman was needlessly castrated right down to them purging the entire "Joe goes batshit suicidal" ending to the series.

[JasonX 0]

while G-Force left the deleted scenes intact, but as I understand it, the soundtrack was replaced by some really awful music)

 

And had cartoon porno-style names for the main characters.

 

That said, I'd still rather watch G-Force than the shit stain that is "Battle of the Planets".

[Guest wildpegasus]

I just finished up volume 1 and watched the preview for volume 2. It hooked me in via the monstors designs plus the mystery of Red Impulse so much for the next volume that I almost had to run in town tonight to buy it. This is really good stuff.

 

Love the retro feel to the series combined with the futuristic technology.

[SuperJerk 0]

Love the retro feel to the series combined with the futuristic technology.

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That's a great point.

 

I really dig seeing people of the past's idea of what the future would be like, for some reason.