G-Force: Guardians of Space


G-Force: Guardians of Space is the second American animated television adaptation of the Japanese anime series Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, following Sandy Frank Entertainment's initial 1978 effort Battle of the Planets and preceding ADV Films' 2005 attempt, known merely as Gatchaman. With G-Force, Sandy Frank Entertainment collaborated with Turner Broadcasting to create a newer, more faithful translation of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman for a new audience, and such a translation was made possible with the relaxed television standards of the 1980s, a luxury that the more Star Wars-themed Battle of the Planets did not enjoy.
In the show, five teenagers—Ace Goodheart, Dirk Daring, Agatha June, Pee Wee and Hoot Owl—battle the aliens Galactor and Computor for the fate of the planet Earth.

Overview

During the early-to-mid 1980s, Sandy Frank Entertainment's Battle of the Planets was gradually being phased off the air after a successful number of years in syndication. Television stations began relegating the show to early morning time slots before dispensing of it altogether. During this period Ted Turner's cable network TBS also aired the show on their channel, and by 1984, WTBS was more or less the exclusive home of BotP before they too dispensed of it around 1985, effectively ending the lengthy run of Battle of the Planets on U.S television.
With Battle of the Planets having run its course, Sandy Frank, still holding the domestic rights to the first Gatchaman series, continued to market BotP wherever they could while seeking ways to continue making use of their license. Interest came from the part of Turner Broadcasting in creating a newer, more faithful adaptation of Gatchaman, which would be easier to accomplish with the newly relaxed television standards of the Reagan era-1980s. Turner executives believed that the series still had potential, and in turn acquired the rights from Sandy Frank to begin work on what would come to be known as G-Force.
To develop this project, Turner enlisted the help of Fred Ladd, a pioneer in the field of translating and distributing Japanese animation in the U.S to produce the adaptation. Ladd had previously been offered to produce Battle of the Planets by Sandy Frank himself a few years before, but passed on the offer due to location conflicts; Ladd was working out of New York City at the time, while BotP was being produced in California. Ladd, through his production company "Sparklin' Entertainment", put together two "test" pilot episodes chosen by Turner, and sent them in for approval. Within days, Ladd and his company were given the greenlight to produce the adaptation, and work on G-Force began in the fall of 1986. Despite it being handled by Turner & Fred Ladd, Sandy Frank ultimately held the copyrights to the show, while Turner, through its subsidiary Turner Program Services, and King Features Entertainment held limited distribution and syndication rights.

Changes and additions in the adaptation

Content editing

For Turner's G-Force, none of Battle of the Planets' original elements were retained, preferably replaced with a more accurate translation of the original Gatchaman series with far fewer alterations. Most of the plot, backstories, violence and deaths remained intact, only edited or "softened" with added dialogue where it was too explicit.

Music

An all-new music score was composed for G-Force. The score retained some of the original, 1970s Gatchaman score.
The silent parts of the Gatchaman soundtrack were filled in with additional music, also composed by Dean Andre. This was a relatively common practice, purportedly to maintain the pace of the show and prevent the audience from losing interest during a lull in action. Battle of the Planets had used this practice, composing new scores as well as reusing the existing Gatchaman music, during silent moments such as mecha transformations and the completely musicless scenes where Katse talked with Sosai X. G-Force: Guardians of Space opted to use a sole, repetitive synth instrumental that would play on and off as the Gatchaman score faded in and out. This synth instrumental is actually a stripped-down rendition of the show's opening/ending theme and is played throughout every episode of the series.

Episode order

Unlike Battle of the Planets, which bounced around the Gatchaman episode order and adapted them as the producers saw fit, G-Force followed the original Gatchaman episode order for its entire run, only skipping Gatchaman episodes 81 and 86 for a total of 85 dubbed episodes. The final 18 episodes of Gatchaman were not adapted for G-Force either, which resulted in this adaptation lacking a proper conclusion. The reasons behind this decision are not exactly known; some sources claim that only 85 episodes were contracted and bought for this adaptation while others claim that budget constraints or lack of interest in adapting the remaining episodes cut it short. Also to be taken into consideration is the fact that the Gatchaman series became increasingly darker and violent towards its end, which would have made adapting those last episodes difficult, given that G-Force was being marketed towards children. It was not until ADV Films' uncut release of the first Gatchaman series in 2005 that all 105 episodes were adapted and available in English.
Episodes 18 and 87 of G-Force served as the two pilots for the show. They were put together by producer Fred Ladd before he had been given approval to work on the rest of the series, with the purpose being to demonstrate what his work on the show would look and sound like. The two pilots are unique amongst the rest of the episodes for having replaced all of the original Gatchaman music with new music composed by Dean Andre, which was part of the proposed, all-new music score for the show. Due to time constraints, the new pieces of music weren't utilized beyond the pilots and left on the cutting room floor, with the rest of the episodes retaining most of the original Gatchaman score. Incidentally, most of the new music that was exclusively played in the pilots also turned out to be variations of the show's opening/ending theme. There exist earlier, unaired versions of the pilot episodes which contain a radically different music score than even the broadcast versions of the pilots. They also contain an unused opening/closing theme, which along with the aforementioned score was also left on the cutting room floor in favor of the final music selection present in the broadcast episodes. These "pre-production" pilot episodes are only available as extras on the Region 4 Battle of the Planets: Collection 2 DVD set.
Between the efforts of both Battle of the Planets and G-Force, 99 of Gatchaman's 105 episodes were adapted. Incidentally, the last six untranslated episodes were very crucial to the series' overall storyline, serving as the series's finale. They also featured some of the series' most violent, yet memorable moments. As previously mentioned, ADV Film's uncut Gatchaman release finally adapted all 105 episodes into English, more than 30 years after the show first aired and almost 30 years since its first English adaptation.

Character names and terms

On the creative side, the original Gatchaman character names and terms were once-again re-tooled and Americanized in G-Force for the convenience of the English-speaking market, as they first were with Battle of the Planets years earlier. Despite the existence of BotP's set of English names and terms, G-Forces producers came up with their own set in an attempt to stray away from the previous adaptation as much as possible and avoid any potential confusion between the two. From Battle of the Planets to G-Force, the heroes' names were changed to Ace Goodheart, Dirk Daring, Agatha June, Pee Wee, Hoot Owl, and Dr. Brighthead, while the main villains were renamed Galactor and Computor' respectively. The only terms retained from BotP were the name of the group as a collective and the team's ship.

Other changes

  • In G-Force, the Pee Wee character remained mostly identical to his original Gatchaman counterpart Jinpei, as opposed to Battle of the Planets which drastically altered the Jinpei character from a typical 10-year-old to Keyop, an engineered lifeform with a speech impediment.
  • In Gatchaman and Battle of the Planets, the two primary antagonists shared a strictly subordinate/master relationship, which was changed to more of a master/consultant relationship in G-Force, with Galactor becoming the master and Computor now relegated to his consultant. The reasons for this change is due to religious-based criticism disapproving of "The Great Spirit" role that Sosai X had in Battle of the Planets. Scenes with Sosai X were reduced, including ones with Galactor bowing to Sosai X.
  • Unlike its Gatchaman and Battle of the Planets brethren, G-Force did not have title cards at the beginning of its episodes which made following the show and its individual episodes quite difficult. Foreign-language dubs of G-Force attempted to correct this oversight by having the narrator announce the episode title at the start of each episode. Also, episodes which were listed and titled as two-parters in Gatchaman and Battle of the Planets were not titled as such in G-Force, but the plots in those episodes remained more or less intact. The show's episode titles were later revealed and available to the masses via fan clubs and the Internet.

Credits

Owned and distributed by: Sandy Frank Entertainment

Voice cast

Team variations across different versions

The renaming of the various characters and terms in G-Force are highlighted as follows :
  • Although he was obviously the Swallow, Jimmy called himself the Falcon.

Identity change variations across different versions

‡The original Japanese language version of Gatchaman contains a small amount of words in English.

Episodes

  1. The Robot Stegosaur
  2. The Blast at the Bottom of the Sea
  3. The Strange White Shadow
  4. The Giant Centipoid
  5. The Phantom Fleet
  6. The Micro-Robots
  7. The Bad Blue Baron
  8. The Secret of the Reef
  9. The Sting of the Scorpion
  10. The Antoid Army
  11. The Mighty Blue Hawk
  12. The Locustoid
  13. The Deadly Red Sand
  14. The Rainbow Ray
  15. The Giant Jellyfish Lens
  16. The Regenerating Robot
  17. The Beetle Booster
  18. The Whale Submarine
  19. The Racing Inferno
  20. The Mightiest Mole
  21. Race of the Cyborgs
  22. The Fiery Dragon
  23. The Mammoth Iron Ball
  24. The Neon Giant
  25. The Rock Robot
  26. The Secret Sting Ray
  27. The ANIrobot
  28. Invisible Enemy
  29. The Project Called "Rock-E-X"
  30. The Attack of the Mantis
  31. The Sinister STAR-ONE
  32. The Giant Squid
  33. In The Tentacles' Grip
  34. Operation Aurora
  35. The Sun-Bird
  36. The Deadly Sea
  37. The Particle Beam
  38. The Dinosaur Man
  39. The Monster Plants
  40. Those Fatal Flowers
  41. Killer Music
  42. Swan Song Prison
  43. Human Robots
  44. The Shock Waves
  45. The Case of the Kalanite
  46. The Deadly Valley
  47. The Super-z-20
  48. The Camera Weapon
  49. The Mechanical Fang
  50. The Skeleton Curse
  51. Wheel of Destruction
  52. The Secret Red Impulse
  53. The Van Allen Vector
  54. The Vengeance
  55. The Micro-Submarine
  56. The Bird Missile
  57. Battle of the North Pole
  58. The Super-Lazer
  59. Mystery of the Haunted Island
  60. G-Force Agent 6
  61. Dream of Danger
  62. The Snow Devil
  63. The Strange Strike-Out
  64. A Deadly Gift
  65. The Iron Beast
  66. When Fashion Was Fatal
  67. The Proto Monster
  68. Radioactive Island
  69. The Devil's Graveyard
  70. Mummy Mania
  71. The Abominable Snowman Cometh
  72. Plague of Robots
  73. The Mammothodon
  74. Secret of the Power
  75. The Crab Robot
  76. The Reverser Ray
  77. Shock Waves
  78. Battle on the Ocean Bottom
  79. Stolen Identity
  80. The Mind-Control Machine
  81. Force of the Mega-Robots
  82. The Flame Zone
  83. Web of Danger
  84. The Secret of G-4
  85. '''Galactor's Deadly Trap '''

Debut and reception

TBS run (1986)

The revamped G-Force premiered in obscurity on Turner's WTBS network in July 1987 and ran for just a week before mysteriously disappearing afterwards.
The reasons for this brief airing are still unknown. Sources indicate that the purpose behind the WTBS "test run" was to clear a contractual agreement that allowed the rights-holders to list the show as having "aired" in the United States to aid its international syndication sales.
G-Force was syndicated internationally in the following years, while the U.S. was left without any incarnation of Gatchaman for eight years.

Cartoon Network run (1995–1997; 2000; 2004)

During the early 1990s, Cartoon Network, another of Ted Turner's networks, was in need of newer programming. Coupled with the runaway success of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers around the same time, this provided an opportunity for G-Force to make its proper U.S. debut as Turner Program Services still held syndication rights to the series. G-Force premiered on Cartoon Network on January 2, 1995 alongside James Bond Jr. as the newest additions to the channel's Super Adventures programming block. All 85 episodes of the series were finally aired on weekday and weekend rotation.
G-Force was the first anime to air on Cartoon Network, followed later that month by Robot Carnival, Vampire Hunter D, Twilight of the Cockroaches. Along with Speed Racer, these early entries paved the way for Cartoon Network's Toonami which popularized anime on the channel.
By early 1996, Cartoon Network shifted G-Force to late night and weekend airings, where it lingered until it re-ran its last episode on Saturday, July 12, 1997. The following weekend, the show was canceled to make way for a Saturday evening edition of Toonami.
G-Force made brief re-appearances in 2000 and again in 2004, never airing more than a handful of episodes after its 1995-1997 Cartoon Network run.
During its short stint on the weekend "Toonami Midnight Run" block in early 2000, G-Force was featured in a number of on-air promotions for Cartoon Network's Toonami, which continued to air even after the show was canceled from the block.

DVD releases and availability

Due to its relative obscurity, and paired with the fact that ADV's recent uncut Gatchaman release has replaced it as the most accurate English adaptation, G-Force is unlikely to receive a full series or boxset release as its Battle of the Planets brethren has received.
Sandy Frank Entertainment lost their distribution and marketing rights to the original Gatchaman series and its adaptations sometime in 2007. They have since been re-acquired by Sentai Filmworks, which has re-released the ADV Films English dub of Gatchaman on Blu-ray and DVD as well as Battle of the Planets on streaming platforms. While they hold the licensing rights to G-Force, they currently have no plans to re-release the show.
To date only a handful of G-Force episodes have been released on home video, totaling to just 13 of its 85 episodes when adding up all of the ones in the following DVD releases:
  • : A compilation DVD by Rhino Entertainment Company featuring seven random G-Force episodes, all presented uncut, but mostly out of episode order.
  • : Eponymously titled DVD featuring the first three G-Force episodes.
  • : The first six volumes of Rhino's Battle of the Planets release contain one episode of G-Force per volume as "extras". After Volume 6 this practice was stopped.