When I was a teen in Canada we didn't get very many decent animated shows on TV so when we found one we treasured it like gold. Gatchaman or Battle of the Planets as we knew it as was an English translated show from Japan about a team of young heroes. Like Astroboy, it was a unique look into that very distinctive Japanese anime style where all the characters have large eyes and other Western features. Long before we had the Power Rangers we had G-FORCE.
In 2013 the live action Gatchaman movie was released and I just watched it with subtitles and it was a lot of fun. Typical teenage ennui mixed with super heroics always hits me right where I live. When I think of all the other movie adaptations of childhood memories that I have seen, this one is better than most and hits all the high points of a cartoon that wasn't all that sophisticated to begin with.
I suppose the first thing most people will want to know about the 2013 live action version of Gatchaman, better known outside of Japan as Battle of the Planets or even G-Force, is “does it make me wish I’d never seen it?”. After all, childhood memories are precious things, and if you were anything like me as a kid growing up in Australia (and you know, if you’re close to my clearly elderly years) you would have been in front of this show on a daily basis with starry eyes and a makeshift bird-cape tied around your shoulders.
No? Maybe that was just me then. Anyway, the English speaking version of the show, by Sandy Frank Entertainment, was fairly heavily “adapted” for American viewing (read: edited). Of course, that sort of thing didn’t really matter when you were a kid; all that mattered was, is it good? Funnily enough, that still matters, and I have to say that while this live action film doesn’t inspire the same level of excited reaction as the cartoon show used to, it’s good enough.
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