ANI-MOVIES, *Raiders Of Galaxy

No! Your eyes don't deceive you. The title of this Korean schlock movie is in fact Raiders Of Galaxy, completely leaving out the "The", even though there are some physical releases that have the proper sentence structure. Originally called Super Majingga 3, this unauthorized 1982 Super Mazinger rip-off falls into the same ranks of Johnny Destiny: Space Ninja and Defenders Of Space as it takes existing Japanese anime and mixes them into a one big sham meant to swindle money from hungry fans of giant robots. Written and directed by Seung-Cheol Park, this was one in a series of mecha bootleg movies like Space Transformers and Solar Adventure by Korean studios trying to appeal to those who got really thirsty for the Shogun Warriors toy line. A dub for it was picked up by Joesph Lai and his crew at IFD Films who are famous for releasing several Asian martial arts movies with the word "Ninja" in the title like Bionic Ninja, Cobra Against Ninja, and various incarnations of the endless Golden Ninja franchise. This film is plagued with bad dubbing, terrible animation, and flagrantly terrible dialogue like "I'm dying! I'm dying! The great Dr. Or is dying! It's such a genius as I am dying! This is what a genius deserves!"

An evil alien armada is planning on taking over the Solar System and specifically Earth. Fortunately, we already had a giant robot ready to counter this called Mazinga which is a humanoid mecha with a pair of detachable jets and rocket punches. The aliens have their own Transformer flying saucer and a giant red mecha canine for Mazinga to fight. The crew is made up of three male pilots and two females, but they're all dubbed by women, so the two teenage boys in it sound like they haven't gone through puberty yet. The movie is mostly dragged out spaceship battles and long takes of the robot just flying through the galaxy with the nothing but the crappy musical score playing.

Raiders Of Galaxy is one of the better efforts at Korea's attempts to crack into the toy robot market with their knockoff animation instead of just coming out with their own original creations. It's no Johnny Ninja, but it does have some laughable segments in it like a blue skinned alien commander with derpy eyes. Ultimately, you would be better off just playing one of those old broken Engrish video games with terrible translations.

ANI-MOVIES, *Fantastic Planet

What originally translated into "Savage Planet", Fantastic Planet was the English title given to this groundbreaking 1973 sci-fi movie which was also one of the first animated flicks done for mature audiences. Based on a Stefan Wul novel, animator Rene Laloux directed this in the Czech Republic which became an international hit with an odd cast used for the dub. The English-language edition of this surrealistic trip had classic cartoon voice actors like Hal Smith and Janet Waldo getting roped into playing the parts of bizarre aliens. This movie is animated like a cross between Yellow Submarine and one of Terry Gilliam's old segues from Monty Python Flying Circus. It was way ahead of its time as far as content was concerned but panned out like a Dr. Seuss daymare.

Way off in the way out future, a large sample of humans from Earth are captured by giant blue alien humanoids called Draags to their planet of Ygam where they raise their humans as pets that they've named Oms. Oms are given little education, but still retain some of their Earth-based intelligence. One particular Om is adopted by a young female Draag who gives names him Terr and he starts to pick up on some of the telepathic signals that the Draag's learning computer gives its children. Terr eventually escapes with the teaching headset and finds a rogue group of Oms as they all learn how to advance their civilization in an abandoned rocket factory. The Om create their own spaceships and head to Ygam's moon where the Draaga's minds go to when they're meditating. The Draags are suddenly at risk as the Oms start shooting down their statue bodies they use for psychic sex, so they negotiate a peace treaty with the Om. The humans get their own artificial moon to live on while some stay on Ygam sharing mental trips with the Draags.

Fantastic Planet is considered a rite of passage among animation and science-fiction fans, so if you're into Disney or Ralph Bakshi, Star Trek or Asimov, you're pretty much required to give it a look at least once in your life. Anime fans will find it a different change of pace from their steady diet of giant robots and magical girls, although whether they're willing to get a little cerebral is another thing. The animation might seem somewhat stiff and there are some lengthy scenes in this without much going on in it, however it's a scant 71-minutes long so you shouldn't feel the pressure from old school fans to get through out.

ANI-MOVIES, *Techno Police

When Techno Police 21C first came out in 1982, it was one of the first anime titles to coin the "fighting crime in a future time" trope several years before the C.O.P.S. animated series was made. Animated by Studio Nue along with Wiz Corporation which would later become the anime staple studio Artmic, this film was of course made to sell a line of toys. The sci-fi action hustle was retitled Techno Police in several English markets as it was one of the earliest 80s anime films that got a dub done in Hong Kong along with several ninja movies, so there were numerous different distributors. The screenplay was by former-Godzilla director Yoshimitsu Banno who also went on to be an executive producer in the Monsterverse franchise, and at the same time this film premiered he wrote the script for The Wizard Of Oz anime movie. Upon first watch, modern day viewers might think that Techno Police was just using a bunch of cyberpunk cliches, but it does in fact set up much of those commonplace pinpoints that would flood the market through the late 80s-90s.

In the far-off year of 2001, a lesser dystopian future lied in store for Centinel City(yes, that's how it's spelled)which may or may not be in the United States. The major metropolis is the target of several hi-tech criminals, so a new branch of the police has been set up to counter this new breed of bad guy. The Techno Police have specialist officers teamed up with robot counterparts, and newcomer Jo meets his Technoid partner Blade to stop a robbery who literally steal the vault from a brand-new transparent bank that was supposed to be invulnerable to thieves. The same crooks later on get hired by an underground organization to steal a nearly indestructible tank that goes fully automated when its capturers are finally caught. Jo and his crew have to stop the self-driving tank from exploding when it runs out of ammo and has the only female Techno Police officer trapped inside it. The final battle oddly takes place in a submarine when the tank goes automatic again and blows the criminals' setup from the inside.

This movie was conceived by Toshimichi Suzuki who liked the idea of futuristic armored police when he later created the Artmic cyberpunk classic, Bubblegum Crisis, and all its various remakes and spinoffs. Techno Police is an uneventful affair with nothing but chase sequences and massive property damage which in no way would've been made post 9/11. If you wanted to see a little more urban destruction in all those shootout scenes in Transformers or G.I. Joe, then you might find some a tiny fragment of comfort here. Ultimately, this movie is a fragmented mess that might have started several anime action banalities, but they became more profound in later productions.

MISC. MANGA, *Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles X Naruto

While the heroes in a half-shell have crossed over with everyone from Power Rangers, Ghostbusters, and The Archies, this is the first official crossover the TMNT had with an official anime/manga series. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles X Naruto is an original American-created comic from IDW Publishing written by Caleb Goellner and drawn by Hendry Prasetya. This 4-issue mini-series is set in the Naruto universe, most specifically the early days of the first Naruto anime, so somewhere around the first few seasons of the show. Unlike much of the Turtles crossovers, this one actually happens in the Naruto universe instead of their being some interdimensional shenanigans where the Turtles slip into yet another time warp or wormhole. The entire comic is a big experiment trying to see if they could crossover an American property with a Japanese manga which hasn't been tried since the Avengers Vs. Attack On Titan featurette from a decade ago. There have been manga based on American comics like Batman and Spider-Man, but this is a real gamble for IDW to try and combine one of our biggest comic franchises with a worldwide hit mangs.

Lady Tsunade, the current Hokage leader of the Hidden Leaf Village, assigns Team 7 to watch over a visiting reporter from Big Apple Village(New York)named April O'Neil. Team 7, also known as Team Kakashi, consists of Kakashi himself, Sakura, Sasuke, and our knuckelhead title character. April is investigating mad scientist Baxter Stockman who is planning on making an army of animal people through his mutation experiments. Team 7 runs across a band of Foot Clan assassins who are interrupted by five masked strangers which Naruto and Co. mistake for working with the Foot. This leads to a fight between the strangers and Team 7, even though Kakashi ends it by unmasking them and recognizing the short hairy one as Hamato Yoshi, aka: Splinter, hinting that Kakashi and the humanoid rat ninja have some kind of history together.

For the beginning of a limited series, the crossover is getting off on the right foot. The comic manages to highlight all the characters' eccentricities and sets the scene for a sufficient story. Hopefully, this is the beginning of an ongoing trend where we get to see comic book superheroes team up with their manga counterparts.

ANI-MOVIES, *Garaga

Not based on any existing material, Hyper Psychic Geo Garaga(what a title!)was a 1989 movie that was still in the thralls of the "psychics and cyborgs" craze that Akira had nearly finished off from that period. It was released in 2001 initially through Central Park Media under the more simplified titled of Garaga which might have been a little too generic for the anime hungry market that ravaged the rising otaku market which flooded the beginning of the 21st Century. Going into it, your average watcher might think Garaga is just another space romp with weird aliens, but as the film goes on you realize that they tried to get way too ambitious with the script for a full-length feature which might have worked better as an OVA series. The writers kept throwing in more character backstories, sudden but inevitable betrayals, secret identities, hidden civilizations, and a robot revolution that gets tagged on in the final act.

Set sometime in the 2200s, Earthlings have utilized faster than light travel due to wormholes. One of these excursions is a standard transporter taking a pair of cryogenically frozen passengers. The starship called Xebec was also the name of a now defunct Japanese animation studio as it's hard to know if there's any relationship between the studio and the fictional ship. The ship is sabotaged and crashes on a jungle planet known as Garaga where the survivors are attacked by gorilla men that were augmented by an invading Earth military installation. The Xebec crew are revealed to all be government operatives who are on their own missions with the clueless captain being the only one not in it. The rest of the movie is just a endless unravelling of secrets, hidden plots, and conspiracies with various factions trying to take advantage of a tribe of espers on the savage world. The dumbest plot dump is an android hoping to begin a cybernetic uprising against all the human, psychic, and ape mutant forces. With all this going on, it boils down to a rogue robot agent planning to destroy Garaga with an orbiting satellite that laser down the entire population from the planet's surface.

Garaga has no real point to it with zero coherency when it comes to figuring out who the real enemy is as there was one horrible protagonist after the other. This started out as a reasonable sci-fi idea with a spaceship crew getting stranded on a hostile world, but bad decision made it have more turncoats than the mind can comfortably keep up with. It is a bewildering experience trying to comprehend all the characters' motivations and what they're all fighting for when each of them is secretly being manipulated by a rogue Terminator rip-off. With a terrible dub and lackluster score, even hardcore fans of the Alien movies will yawn at this wannabe space marine saga.

ANI-MOVIES, *God Mars: The Movie

Gigantor creator Mitsuteru Yokoyama also created another mecha manga in the mid-70s titled Mars. This was adapted into a 64-episode anime TV series in 1981 titled God Mars that was slightly successful, which in turn was edited into a compilation film called God Mars: The Movie in 1982. How do you fit a 64-episode TV series into a 97-minute long movie? You chop it to bits! The film quickly shifts from one scene to the other usually with no transition at all, and at the same time concludes with the plot left dangling replaced by a semi-original ending. The movie had first been given more than one release in America on VHS, but only recently got put on streaming and Blu-Ray along with the entire TV series, although every version is in Japanese with subtitles. You might get a better experience with the full TV series, but you should make up your own mind on this film.

Set in the far-off year of 1999, mankind is just branching out into the universe because of advances in their technology. This doesn't set well with the evil Emperor Zul, ruler of the planet Gishin and its forces. Years ago, Zul had sent a child to Earth to become the pilot of a giant robot named Gaia whose anti-proton bomb could destroy the planet if humans got too far in space exploration that it might upset the aliens' plans for galactic domination. The baby was Mars, the son of the Gishin scientist who created Gaia but was killed by Zul for opposing his plans for conquest. Mars grew up as a regular human and only learns of his alien heritage after the Gishin started attacking Earth, which is convenient as he's already on a special military team known as the Crusher Squad. Mars is bonded with Gaia which is a bright red mecha with the dopiest grin on its face that is piloted by Mars' newly-awakened psychic powers. A good portion of the film from this point on has Mars fighting against the Gishin forces while his twin brother Marg keeps get sent to confront him, even after Zul has Marg's memory wiped, making Marg this anime's version of Tuxedo Mask. Marg eventually dies for real but keeps showing up as a Force ghost giving Mars spiritual advise. Zul himself eventually shows up on Earth as a giant mental projection that Mars in Gaia has trouble taking down. Fortunately, Mars discovers from a recording by his father that there were five other mecha stashed around the world which would have been more helpful before this climax. Mars is able to psychically pilot all the other mechas into combining with Gaia to create a larger gestalt robot called God Mars, and takes Zul into space and disperses all the anti-proton energy into the emperor's body causing a huge explosion. Zul's real form is revealed as a tremendous space tumor whose essence is now spread throughout the universe just waiting to eventually come back together. Mars brings Gaia and the other mecha back to Earth where its hinted that each of them will be piloted by the other members of the Crusher Squad as they await Zul's return in a sequel that never got made.

God Mars: The Movie does a reasonable enough job showcasing the original anime series condensed into a feature-length film, even though it is terribly obvious that much of the content was left out and that there was more story to come after the finale. The major drawback for this is that an anime movie about a giant robot barely shows the actual robot in it and only saves the bigger combiner robot form in the last few minutes of the film. If the intent for coming out with this theatrical cut was to draw more attention towards any toys in Japan that might have still been out at the time. It was easy for American distributors in the 90s to gain the license for the movie version of this on VHS, even though you're still better off by watching the complete series.

MISC. MANGA, *Cthulhu Cat

After doing three manga titles about cats, creator Pandania continues his funny feline theme with Cthulhu Cat. This full-color one-shot special is Garfield meets Dagon as the book takes the H.P. Lovecraft mythos and bonds it with slice-of-life comedy. Even though the real-life Lovecraft had a cat he gave a racist name to, the enigmatic author had several stories where cats were secretly controlling the world, so combining the idea with his most popular elder gods seems like a winner of a dinner.

A regular Japanese guy finds an abandoned cat in a cardboard box, even though this one is green and has some small tentacles around his mouth. The Cthulhu kitty's new owner tries to buddy him with his current housecat which is largely ignorant to the Ancient One's background. After the man starts showing videos of his stray online, the meowing monster starts getting visits from various cults and churches looking to worship the hideous thing, while at the same time they all encounter cat versions of other Lovecraft entities like Yog-Sothoth who also stop by to chat with their fellow demonic deity. There's a reason why the tentacled tabby has been reborn as a semi-adorable cat, but that is largely inconsequential compared to the laughs it brings.

Cthulhu Cat embraces the madness of Lovecraftian horror and perfectly fuses it with Sanrio-themed adorableness. Despite the adult source material, the manga successfully manages to enchant all ages in a sensational stand-alone special.