Sandy Frank, Sandy Frank, he's the source of all our pain.

[prillalar]

I went out to the living room and found the Boy watching Gatchaman without me! Jeez!

He picked up a DVD which had a couple of the original Gatchaman eps as well as the Sandy Frankenstein Battle of the PLanets versions. I did get to watch one ep in both versions. The ep with the big gold heist and the mini robots.

The bell-bottoms! The striped bell-bottoms! The shaggy hair! Gotta love the 70s.

I had forgotten just how annoying 7-Zark-7 was. Do you suppose 7-Zark-7 is Sandy Frank's Gary Stu? And stuff was all chopped up and re-arranged as well as edited. The gas chamber became an isolation chamber. The gunfire was totally gone. There was strange dialogue about penguins. And there was funky, funky music.

There's a parallel here, too, with the way George keeps fucking with Star Wars. I'm scared that I'll pick up my DVDs this fall and there will be 7-JarJar-7.

But I must say: if I ever get to be ninja, I want to be a science ninja. And then I'll marry Racer X.

Coincidentally, there was a good write-up on Science Ninja Team Gatchaman on crack_van recently.

Takes me back, it does.

Comments

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

The Sandy Frank Song!!! "Sandy Frank, Sandy Frank, these scenes aren't in the film!"

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

Sandy Frank, Sandy Frank, he's the source of all our pain...

Sandy Frankenstein, though?

[otakubot.livejournal.com]

In Australia there were only four side-by-side episodes released. My favourite is the Gatchaman episode that becomes the BotP ep "Rescue of the Astronauts".

In the original, the Gatchaman team break in to rescue the astronauts, but they're being held and menaced by the bad guys, so our heroes surrender. Then they're horrified to see the astronauts' *corpses* drop to the floor. "Even in death, they were useful to me," crows the leader of the bad guys. Fairly gruesome stuff, for a kids' show.

In the BotP episode, the astronauts are "rescued" and spend of the rest of the episode "in the sick bay" or "resting". Hilariously different, and baaaad.