Monday, July 27, 2009

Will the real G-Force please stand up?

I'm sure I'm not the first person to whine about this, but, on this matter, I think there can be no objection too loud.

This is NOT
G-Force:


THIS is G-Force:

AKA Battle of the Planets AKA Gatchaman

One of Tatsunoko's finest, Gatchaman was a 1972 television anime that was adapted for American audiences in 1978 as Battle of the Planets. For many American children of the time, this fondly remembered series was their introduction to anime. In 1986, the same material was then adapted into English a second time as the lesser-known G-Force.

Battle of the Planets was well before my time, and I only ever saw a handful of G-Force episodes, which I did not enjoy. But I did always find the costumes to be some of the coolest and most original in any cartoon or comic. Seeing some more recent Alex Ross interpretations, I was amazed at how well the designs had aged, how well-suited they seemed to Ross's realistic style, which has often made the spandex-wearing DC and Marvel superheroes look sad and ridiculous.


I don't know where Disney gets off trying to take over a title that was already attached these last twenty-three years to an established and well-liked property. But this isn't about Disney stealing the hardly protectable least known, least necessary of Gatchaman's three names. It's about that first time I had to hear some marketing hype about some mysterious "G-Force" trailer, leading me to excitedly picture a new theatrical Gatchaman production, only to find myself subjected to lame jokes about CG gerbils defecating on live-action humans. Unforgivable.

4 comments:

Czardoz said...

That's kind of how I felt during today's episode of Gundam, when they kept talking about "Trans Am" as though it were some kind of device or system. That is NOT Trans Am.

Trans Am is an awesome, souped-up Pontiac Firebird that had its heyday in the 1980s, and was probably best known as the Knight Rider car, KITT (and KARR, for that matter). Also, it was my favorite car of all time, God rest its soul!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontiac_Trans_Am#Trans_Am

How do you do hyperlinks in comments?

Riyuu said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontiac_Trans_Am#Trans_Am

OHOHO, WHO'S THE HTML EXPERT HERE? ME.

<*a href="link">random text here<*/a>

without the *

Henry said...

Why did you tell him?!

Alternatively, comments mostly use the same HTML tags as full blog entries, so, when composing a new post, you can click on the "Edit HTML" tab to see what these codes look like. Or just type your comment using full post mode with the usual link buttons, then copy and paste it into the comment box. The HTML tags will survive the pasting process.

That said, I would ask that you not abuse it.

Czardoz said...

So, "without the *" - that means don't type the two * in that formula? Then why did you put them into the formula? Oh, right, so that your demonstration formula would not itself turn into a hyperlink? I see.

And how on earth would I abuse it? I barely ever put URL links into these comments anyway.