ANI-MOVIES, *Starchaser: The Legend Of Orin

Hoping to capitalize on the success of the original Star Wars trilogy, this foreign movie was put together as one of the first ever animated films to blend computer & standard animation. It was also one of the very first animated 3-D movies.

Set in the far off future, a society of humans is subjegated by an underground cult who use them as slaves for mining. The youthful Orin finds a sword one day while mining, and a vision appears from it of an old man claiming that there is a world beyond there own, and once the blade of the sword is found, then their people will be free. The blade then disappears, and Orin sets out to look at the world above. In the escape, his lover Elan is killed by the cult leader, the super-strong Zygon. Orin makes it to the surface, and is almost cannibalized by some Mandroids, but uses the sword to get away, as it creates a blade of pure energy when needed(aka: a Lightsaber!). He is rescued by Dagg, a space smuggler and this movie’s obligatory Han Solo character. Dagg takes him to a military station, but Zaigon’s robots are after them, so Dagg makes off with a bootylicious fembot called Silica, who he reprograms to be more agreeable. After a pitstop at a smugglers’ city, the crew gets shot down by Zygon’s robot goons, and Dagg gets captured. Orin is found by Avaiana(a buxom clone of Teela from He-Man)who is the daughter of the planet’s governor. She revives him and helps him learn about the history of his mysterious sword. It was an ancient deus ex machina used to free the galaxy time and again from evil overlords, the last of which was a tyrant known as Nexus. Aviana then leads Orin to the head of the mining operation, which she thought was completely run by robots. The one running it is in fact Zygon, who reveals himself to be the long-thought dead Nexus in a robot body. He has been infiltrating the entire galaxy with his loyal robots and androids for years, and is planning on making his final push to take over the galaxy. Through some major “use the Force” mojo, Orin manages to pull his crap together along with Dagg and Aviana to stop Zygon, and liberate his people.

Starchaser was done with a little bit of the same treatment as Heavy Metal as it was mostly intended for older audiences. Sorta like if you had grown up on Star Wars and wanted to see something a little more mature in a sci-fi/adventure. The animation is actually pretty good for the mid-80s. It’s not Akira, but around the same quality as Transformers: The Movie. I’d say that this one is at least a rental for fans of cheesy space flicks like Barbarella or Flash Gordon(but which are actually good!).