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

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.