ANI-MOVIES, *Time Stranger

In 1981, the Super Robot craze was dying down in anime, and mechas was turning a little more toward realism as a machine of war like in Macross and Gundam. One of these anime caught in the middle of the transition was GoShogun, a 26-episode TV series that initially was released in America as part of the Macron-1 series which was glued to a completely unrelated mecha series similar to Voltron except that both shows were rewritten to be in the same universe. GoShogun was about three separate combat experts who become pilots of a combiner robot to fight a group of villains called Docooga vying for control over a new element called Beamier which could be used to conquer the world. The leader of the bad guys was Neoneros whose trio of generals would fight the GoShogun crew as they protected the human race, but he was so evil that his generals leave him and join forces with the goody guys to overthrow their boss. Four years after the series ended, an anime conclusion was made titled GoShogun: The Time Etranger which in many English markets has been renamed Time Stranger(no relation to the Time Stranger Kyoko manga). This took the sextet of heroes and former baddies into a totally different series which combines mysterious elements of Night Of The Living Dead and Jacob's Ladder and merged it with an 80s action romp normally starring Chuck Norris. The movie removes the mecha fighters and puts them in an otherworldly adventure like something out of The Twilight Zone but armed with a stockade of weapons the A-Team would have. This is a shocking turn when a sentai show ditches the robots and puts the Power Rangers in Carnival Of Souls.

Remy is the only female member of the GoShogun team and hasn't seen her commrades in forty years. On her way to a reunion with her two co-pilots, Remy stops a gang of terrorists in a high speed aircar chase, causing her to crash. All of her teammates converge at the hospital she was taken to and none of them seemed to have aged much in the last few decades, despite the fact that one of them is a big mutant clone. While her colleagues try to save her life, Remy is tied between flashbacks of her when she was an orphan trapped in a hole and a bizarre dream realm where she and all five of her mates are caught in a desert town infested by Muslim zombies, some of which attack on bicycles. In this hellscape, Remy is told by a childlike prophet that she will die\ in a few days from being torn apart by the rowdy locals. Deciding to fight against her death ticket, Remy and the rest of the GoShogun crew go totally commando on the whole town and their battle escalates to fighting a giant demon cat in an epic climax in a dusty graveyard. Whether or not any of this is really happening on some other level of consciousness or it's just a vision Remy is having before her final breath is never completely revealed.

Time Stranger is a departure from the main anime series that deconstructs the former hero trope when you take away all their sci-fi toys and have them fighting a radically opposite new foe. The real strange part is that there is no head bad dude for the heroes' confront, but simply the inevitable end that all mortals must face, whether it be in real life or an imaginary counterforce. The animation can shift from standard to monumental, particularly in the battle scenes where a small team of seasoned specialists have an arsenal that can take on an entire city of undead opponents. It is entirely possible to enjoy this solo movie on its own without seeing anything of the original TV series, although it gives you a bigger insight into the heroes' relationships and how the single female character was the centerpiece of their lives who was very capable of holding her own in a fight.