Don’t worry, you haven’t suddenly leaped several years into the future, this thing isn’t the surely inevitable Hollywood adaptation of SCIENCE NINJA TEAM GATCHAMAN (or BATTLE OF THE PLANETS as it’s best know on these shores), this is a Japanese production that was on very few people’s radars. Check out the trailer below and let us know what you think…

Readers of a certain age will no doubt have very fond memories of BATTLE OF THE PLANETS, which was a heavily edited (read sanitized) version a Japanese animated series that ran 105 episodes from 1972-1974, sold to Western territories in the wake of STAR WARS mania. The story centred around a team of five genius teenagers, who are recruited for their smarts and mad combat skills, to defend the Earth from the space terrorist organization Galactor! (Or something, it was a long time ago and the damn thing is nigh on impossible to pick up on DVD.) Additions to the Western version included a sassy R2-D2 rip-off 7-Zark-7, who the producers threw in to crack wise whenever stuff got a little too edgy and they had to cut it to ribbons.

As poor as this movie looks, at least the trailer definitely put your mind to rest over whether you remembered rightly that Zoltar was revealed to be a woman in those final episodes! That’s been doing my head in since 1979!

GATCHAMAN opens in Japanese cinemas in August. No news as to whether we’ll be getting an official release in the UK or US, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to source should your curiosity be peaked.

Bonus Video:

Take a trip down memory lane with the very first episode of BATTLE OF THE PLANETS, ATTACK OF THE SPACE TERRAPIN! (Yep. Space Terrapin. God bless the seventies.)

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