ANI-MOVIES, *One Miliion Year Trip-Bander Book

Being the first ever made-for-television anime movie, Osamu Tezuka's Bander Book is a spawling space saga spanning eons done in the spirit of Warlords Of Mars and other sci-fi pulp stories. This was released over the Japanese airways in the late 1970s during a telethon, and was one of the most popular anime movie of its time. It was Tezuka's open ticket for taking his panache of transforming humans into animals all the way up to 11.

Sometime in an alternate future, Earthling Bander is sent off by his parents after their interstellar flight is targeted by assassins. Bander is recieved by an alien race of humanoids who all have the ability to turn into animals, but can only maintain their human form thanks to a special control ring. Their peace is disrrupted by invading space gangsters arriving in a ship modeled after the Nautilus from 20,000 League Under The Sea, and run by none other than Black Jack. This is not however the Black Jack from his own manga series where he is a superhuman doctor, but a different version of the character as numerous other Tezuka characters appear as well, including Don Dracula and Astro Boy, and Tezuka himself can be briefly seen in the background of one shot. Black Jack is secretly Bander's brother whose parents were assassinated by a corrupted Earth government, which was the result of them accidently releasing a huge dose of fear gas into the planet's atmosphere through a time warp going back millions of years. On his quest, Bander tries to save his family, and an alien plant princess, all while realizes that his time/space trek can't change mankind's destiny as the future is already in set, despite the fact that all the humans were turned violent due to their own time travel dealings.

This was only recently made available for North America through various streaming services, so it might turn off some non-old school otaku being in Japanese only with subtitles. It was also one of Tezuka's more experimental anime mixing in psychedelic imagery with quick animated sight gags. It can be difficult keeping up with the ever-shifting pace of the plot, but pans out to be a bizarre and still stunning spectacle of an anime viewing.