Reviews

If you've ever said to yourself, "Gee, I've always wanted a Hong-Kong-produced kung-fu flick with untalented actors, illegally-used music tracks, and poor dubbing", then this film is for you. Beginning with an opening song or sorts, which seems to be based on the Madonna's hit song "Like a Virgin", accompanied by a montage of ninja kid fighting scenes. But wait! this video gets even worse. The voice-over actors sound like rejects from a Saturday-morning cartoon, and the plot is about as deep and as an average episode of "Full House". Suitable only for MST3k-style viewing.

Perhaps the greatest anime movie of all time, this film blows the competition out of the water. Some people complain about the violence in this movie, but compared to other titles like Fist of the North Star and Urotsukidoji, it's almost tame by comparison. To add to this, in Canada this only obtained the "14a" rating, which is supposed to be equivalent to the USA's PG-13. Hurrah for the liberal Canucks!

I used to watch Heathcliff & co. on the local networks back in the mid 80's. What I didn't know at the time (and most people still don't know this) Is that DIC's version of Heathcliff was actually an anime! more precisely, it was a France/Japan co-production based on an american cartoon Icon. the Tokyo Movie Shinsha animated it, and many anime legends worked on this, such as Tetsuo Katayama & Shigeru Akagawa(Space Cobra, Lupin III), Shingo Araki(Saint Seiya, Versailles no Bara) and Michi Himeno (Amon Saga, Sukeban Deka). on the French side of the Production were Jean Chalopin, Bruno Bianchi, and Bernard Diyrese. The English dub was recorded in Canada with the late(but great) voice actor Mel Blanc playing the title role. The storyline was pretty stereotypical, but then again, weren't most cartoons of this genre? I recommend this series to the young, the young-at-heart, and collectors of Retro-anime.

Great movie, though VERY steeped in the 80's. "The Matrix" borrowed a lot of ideas from this 1985 classic. in the US, there are at least 2 different dubs of this film. the first was made by Carl Macek under commission from Cannon films & Harmony Gold USA, and is very bad. 25% of the movie was edited out, the storyline was entirely re-written, footage from the series "Space calvalry Southern Cross" was edited in, and a 12 minute "happy ending" was animated in Japan for American tastes. It was christened "Robotech the movie: The Untold Story" during the 1985 holiday season. as expected by most, this version was a total flop in US theatres, and barely made it out of the test-markets. Only a decade later, after Macek had left Harmony Gold and was co-running Streamline Pictures with Jerry Beck, was Megazone 23 part I released semi-properly(footage & Storyline now intact). but now Streamine is bankrupt and the OVA appears to be floating in public-domain limbo. oh well......

As a TV series, this is pretty good. Not Great, but not Really bad either. I Guess the reason I'm so jaded is due to the fact that the first time I saw this, it was 1992, and the convention I was at screened a Pilot episode for this (With incredibly bad dubbing) under the title "Lamu the invader girl". Luckily, the Japanese version is much better, but let's not forget that it was originally intended for Japanese Grade-schoolers, so don't expect too much (maybe with the exception of movie no.4) Anyway, this is an alright series, with typical early 80's production values, and a charming cast of characters that you won't soon forget.