Maybe this is just the boomer in me, but I remember my initial shock when I learned that the anime I watched as a kid was drastically different from Japan’s originals. One of those shows in question was G-Force Guardians of Space.
Oh, the history of G-Force / Gatchaman is a messy one. So many hands in the pie of its Westernized releases in America. Many, many sticky hands. That’s not to say what we got wasn’t good, but we wouldn’t know the full scope of the origins of G-Force for years. Then the internet came along, and we could finally see what we’d been missing.
Regardless, I’m still going to call the show G-Force because it sounds cool. Funko is going to refer to it as Gatchaman, as shown in their upcoming release Pops. We spotted these over at Entertainment Earth.
This initial release won’t feature all five champions but the more prevalent trio of Ken the Eagle, Joe the Condor, and Jun the Swan. Expect Jinpei the Swallow and Ryu the Owl at a later date, probably. Maybe Ryu and Jinpei will come packaged together since they’re both of different proportions to the other three in the Science Ninja Squad.
If Gatchaman doesn’t found familiar, but G-Force does, that’s not surprising. Like many anime that hit the American shores in the ’80s and ’90s, the shows were rebranded, companies even changing the entire series in the process. Shows would air out of sequence, even skipping a season. The dubs would also make major deviations in the storylines or a character’s portrayal.
Check out the video from Toy Galaxy below for more background on the original series and its Westernized counterpart.
For those Gatchaman fans out there, what did you think of the live-action film?
Let us know in the comments your opinions on the anime, its various dubs, and the 2013 movie.
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