I had heard about this quite a while back and just totally forgot it. I figured it was just some dudes dream and it wouldn’t actually happen. Well, it looks like it truly is happening….just not here. Coming in August, they are releasing a live action Gatchaman movie in Japan!
For me, and most of the cartoon watching children growing up in the late 70′s and early 80′s, Gatchaman is better known as Battle of the Planets. It was the best thing my eyes had ever seen. I would come home from school and would not move from the TV until after BotP went off. I would then grab a towel and head over to by friend Brian’s house and we would then fight over which one of us was Mark and which one was Jason. I even made my own birdrang out of an old toilet paper roll. The show was so far ahead of its time and different than anything else on the air.
I didn’t understand how come I couldn’t find BotP toys in the stores. I looked all the time. Plenty of GI Joe’s to go around, but never a single Mark, Jason, Keyop, Tiny or even Princess figure ever graced my local toy aisle. I’m still mad to this day about it. Heck, in the early 90′s I was recording episodes of Star Trek and mailing them to a guy in Japan in trade for Gatchaman merchandise. They wouldn’t get new Star Trek episodes for a long time and this was before you could get them online in many legal an non-legal forms. Anyways, some of the coolest Gatchaman stuff I have came from that arrangement and he bought some of them out of a bubble gum machine!!
Sorry, I got distracted going down memory lane there for a moment. Back to the upcoming movie. I would love to share some in-depth details with you, but I can’t read Japanese and Google’s attempt to translate the page failed miserably. So, I will leave you with a brief trailer and your imagination.
Oh, and if that dude in Japan with boxes of old Star Trek VHS tapes would be interested in a trade, you can send me the Gatchaman movie and I will be happy to send you some Star Trek DVD’s in exchange. They are state of the art. Deal?
