God I love Korean anime, without it I would have never found The Wonderful Galaxy of Oz! So bad its awesome!

http://www.amazon.com/Space-Thunder-Kids/dp/B000BU1CJC

Amazon listing for this movie, yes this is a real thing that was sold spoony.

Those kids with the flickering eyes? They’re dressed as the characters from Crusher Joe, a precursor to the Dirty Pair…

I’d really like to see some of the professional reviews from when this first hit theaters… something tells me that even asians hate it.

Oh, and not the RED STAR on the goiter-general’s neck. He’s a commie. (Probably implied to be North Korean or something. They really like to propagandize…)

And Macron 1.. this one deserves a nostalgia review… mainly just for the TOP 40 songs that routinely were part of the soundtrack. It’s like you expected the narrator to be Casey Kasem…

Oh, and a nice big .jpg of the OWNED guy… kplzthx…

Given that this involved Joseph Lai, the man behind the Pierre Kirby movies, I think it’s safe to say that Space Thunder Kids is really an amalgam of two or more totally unrelated movies.

it was popular in the 80s to “localise” Japanese cartoons and movies by combining them together unrelated shows and rewriting the story with retarded results: robotec(macross+mospeda+southerncross), macron one (goshogun+Akū Dai Sakusen Srungle), sabre rider…. and so on… haha it’s also funny that when these shows get relocalised back the scripts get rewritten again and become kinda good LOL

it was popular in the 80s to “localise” Japanese cartoons and movies by combining them together unrelated shows and rewriting the story with retarded results: robotec(macross+mospeda+southerncross), macron one (goshogun+Akū Dai Sakusen Srungle), sabre rider…. and so on… haha it’s also funny that when these shows get relocalised back the scripts get rewritten again and become kinda good LOL

Oh, and congrats to Sage for finding a WORKING COPY. All the crappy anime DVDs I bought there wouldn’t just freeze after a few minutes. And I couldn’t advance the movie for some reason.

Spoony, I must say I’m impressed by your Super Robot knowledge. You might even rival me in Super Robot trivia.

To echo what others have said, yes, this is a real movie. In fact my dear sister purchased it for me last Christmas at that high-class boutique known as Dollar General. If I had a working scanner I’d show you a picture of the front of the box. Which has a painted anime picture that has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MOVIE, except that it features a giant robot. That looks like none of the robots featured in the actual movie.

Clearly, as others are saying, this is the result of probably three different anime chopped up and spliced together. By idiots. Honestly my favorite part is the credits, which mention animators and editors with very Anglo names. Which are clearly made up, and a lie. How any of this was done legally I don’t know.

And now the real news, Spoony: my dear sister also gave me, at the same time, another “movie” called Protectors of the Universe, which appears to be another “movie” made up of clips from the same animes butchered for Space Thunder Kids. I fear to watch it, but I assume it can’t be any better.

In case you didn’t see it, here’s a link to an Anime-Meta Review that features a bit of possible insight into where these things came from and…why.

http://amr.nextstudio.net/html/protectors_otu.html

http://www.collectiondx.com/gallery2/gallery/d/14545-6/cover.jpg

DVD cover.

@Macron 1:

Yep. That’s the beast.

Hey Spoony, I hope this isn’t usually what you do, but you very clearly just plugged the facts from http://www.collectiondx.com/node/314 Both you and this page getting Mazinger Z wrong. I certainly hope this is Bennet’s fault >:(

Spoony, you should read or watch Gantz if you didn’t already.It’s nothing like you think it will be.Just do it.
I think even you will enjoy it.
In the case you don’t,there is something new,sci-fi
and anime-themed to rant at, right?

I’d love to see your point of views.As a plan C, you have Gantz Abridged to laugh at too.

It’s just… awesome, from the characters(you WILL disagree on this) to the story.

It’s not Giant Robot anime, it’s not Dragon Ball Z.It’s SCIENCE.It’s bizarre in a good way.It’s nothing that you watched before… or maybe it is, heh.

Just google it and download a couple episodes or some volumes,it’s a really quick reading,so quick you should get the 10 first volumes before you start reading if you don’t have time for the anime,that follows the manga up to chapter 90 that is in Vol. 8.
I heard people say they read it in one day,but they could have exaggerated or had too much free time.The anime can’t be read in one day or in one sitting because it has over 10 hours of content.

But be prepared to watch at least 10 episodes(20 minutes each,as usual in animes) of the anime regardless of how boring it is in the beginning or else don’t bother downloading it.

It’s supposed to really get you into from episode 13 on,before it may be painfully uninteresting with some melodrama and usual uneventfulness with some humorous parts – and it’s somewhat different humor than the silly humor animes tend to have,believe me and it’s so rare it doesn’t bug you,but you’ll probably get some good laughs from the anime -but trust what you are reading,it gets MUCH better after the beginning.

Be aware that the anime(don’t get mistaken by the characters,gratuituous nudity and violence in the first episode) is short; the characters AND the storyline were modified,but the changes are only significantly big near the end of the anime,and this includes a annoying fake ending AND annoying sidecharacters that never show up more than once in the manga or they are just random cannon fodder.

Also,avoid ANY spoilers,even the synopsis at wikipedia can blow some surprises away.That’s why i’m not giving the most basic clues on what happens in this post.

And when/if you watch the anime,you will notice the first few deaths were stupid(and some unexplicably and unecessarily bloody to an extent that sucks),however,they were SUPPOSED to be stupid.

The anime contains about roughly 25% of the manga.

The manga itself isn’t exactly what you could call sane,but things are FINALLY starting to unfold.There are alot of twists.
Again,I’d love to see you try to make sense of the story or review or maybe vlog this,because it’s really,really good.
By the way,there is going to be a Gantz movie in 2011,so it’s good to know it before you review the movie,and you may find yourself reviewing it a year or more from now.

TL;DR Version :
Gantz is a amazing sci-fi manga and anime franchise.
Watch or read it.
The anime sucks because it has way too many filler bullshit parts,the manga goes on with the story with occasional space filling chapters.
If you watch the anime,tolerate at least 7 episodes.
If you watch the manga,tolerate at least 120 chapters.

Hah, that source material was well-spotted, Nukleon. It’s really the only way I can see that they’d mention Mazinger 7 without pointing out that Mazinger 7 was in itself a Korean bootleg (of Mazinger Z, obviously).

But what I’m most surprised about is that in both the video and written review, they seem to have completely missed the fact that the battleship shown at 1:02 in the review is quite obviously modelled after the White Base from the original Gundam.

at the first scene in this movie is from a completely different movie. my brother bought a dvd from walmart for a dollar called “space transformers” also known as diatron five. and that first scene is definitely from that movie.

Just adding to my post : apparently Gantz has a hideous video game version too.

That movie gives anime a bad name. Saw this video at TGWTG first, but then I saw it here.

Awesome crossover with Sage, Spoony^^. A lot of crossovers with that guy right now.

you should check out Death Note. its the best anime on the internets!

Crudblud is very much right that this is another of Joseph Lai’s practises. Cutting and pasting. Don’t remember if this was pre or post the ninja era where he did the same with old Hong Kong/Korean/Thai movies, often starring Richard Harrison, Stuart Smith, Mike Abbott, Pierre Kirby in the spliced in footage Godfrey Ho often shot. The ninja era meant theatrical exhibition and nowadays bargin bin dvd’s but I imagine his distribution of animated features merely went to video and TV… and nowadays bargain bin dvd’s? :) Have a soft spot for anything Joseph Lai, Godfrey Ho or Tomas Tang (hello, Robo Vampire!) releated even though they were often unbearable and incoherent (it helps to watch them sporadically only). Space Thunder Kids seems to fall into the unbearable and incoherent camp. :) Thanks Sage and Spoony for taking it on though. Much appreciated.

I have never seen an anime that didn’t make me want to vomit. I hate the animation style, so often the story lines are ridiculous, even the “smart” ones like Death Note, and I just hate the whole experience. I am proud of you, Spoony, for not knowing anything about anime, this indicates to me that you have good taste.

Noah —
I broke my foot ten years ago in the EXACT same way you described, so make sure you’re alright. I thought it was a sprain, walked on it for days, got an X-ray, bam! In a cast.

Take care,
Mattastic

Ahh, Bennett DID write it. No offense Spoony but you didn’t seem like you’d know alot about obscure Japanese fighting robot shows/movies, lol. Well you did both look kind of tired, however the review was hilarious the movie was so stupendously bizarre. And I always love hearing commentary.

As for anime, TV shows could be hard for people to get into but films you might like: Metropolis, Grave of the Fireflies, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.

Of course, you begin to see just how much this movie sucks when you realize that about half of the clips are directly lifted and redubbed from two other Joseph Lai Productions: “Defenders of Space” and “Protectors of Universe”

I hope not to offend anyone, but Bennet tries a lot to be funny! But he can’t! I know he tries, but he looks like an academician who tries to be make teenagers laugh. I’ve seen too many reviews of him being serious, and that’s become a thing that represents him. He makes strange faces, and acts weird. He just can’t make me laugh

ThatGuy crew, blistered thumbs, and spoony; you guys are awesome. Doug posted the donation drive recap vid, and (you)they received thirty-one thousand dollars for the charity. You better show up at the phoenix comic-con…please.

Nah, Noah, it’s sounds like you overstretched a sinew or tore it. That would explain the popping. Go get that checked.

Or a capsular tear … whatever. ;)

You should go and seek a doktor spoony!

A quick google search reveals this review on the very first page of links: http://teleport-city.com/wordpress/?p=803

Surprised that you guys knew this anime was produced by Joseph Lai, but didn’t think about what that would mean. (Considering his modus operandi is splicing a bunch of movies together with some poorly filmed extra scenes and writing a script to try to tie all the disparate parts together.) Basically, he commissioned a handful of animes and after releasing those, spliced them together to create more. This is one of those weird cobbled-together animes.

Basically, from what I can gather, ‘Space Thunder Kids’ seems to be to movies what ‘Limbo of the Lost’ was for games.

Both ripped things off of everything they could get their hands on, and they still suck horribly.

Oh man, your injury is the exact same as I got, hurt like hell and it’s been painful for 2 weeks x.x

About your theory of this movie, could it be that each part was done by a different team, who were told to just rip the hell out of every popular mecha anime of that peroid. And there was no communication between them.

The Dollar Store I used to work at had a ton of these things, including Space Thunder Kids. There was also Defenders of Space, Protectors of Universe, Raiders of Galaxy, Beauty and Warrior, The Wonderful Galaxy of Oz, ect. Joseph Lai and Digiview Entertainment are responsible for most of them.

I dunno about this batch of cross-overs involving Spoony. I feel kinda bad for him really since he seemed to show up to the drive and suddenly everybody’s jumping him with wanting to do cross-overs with him, even with the “Spooning with Spoony 2″ which he didn’t even write and he is the center of it.

And about Bennett- I don’t like him. I don’t like seeing him in these cross-overs, and he looks like he’s almost trying to steal the show in many cases. Sure he’s excited to be doing this stuff but I don’t think he has any of the humility that Spoony, NC, and Linkara sported when they were doing Alone in the Dark and so on. And I really, REALLY didn’t like him taking over in Ask That Guy 44 but that’d be off-topic.

I dunno. When Spoony himself isn’t an anime fan I don’t think he has much reason to be reviewing this. I feel like Bennett just wanted to get Spoony to mooch off of popularity.

Stick to your own game, Spoony. I heavily prefer to watch the videos you’re doing on your own rather than these tie-ins that are being dumped on you. It’s good that you haven’t really caught the cross-overitis yourself that some other reviewers are suffering from.

Hey Noah! That sucks about your foot, I hope you feel better soon. I’m glad you had fun at the charity. People need to have more fun. Set an example for the rest of us! XD

Feel Better Spoony!

Get Well Soon

I’m really going to have to agree to disagree with you MarchHare. I think Bennett is great and I’ve been waiting for a crossover with Bennett and Spoony for a while now. And yeah, that anime does have to be about the worst thing of all-time. It’s funny how something like VR Troopers and the second and third seasons of Power Rangers can take two unrelated Sentai shows and make them work together for the story but this movie can’t. People can bash on the writers of Troopers and MMPR all they want but at least they were able to make a story work with all the unrelated footage.

That is they couldn’t make the three or four unrelated animes work together.

Apparently this series has 2 other DVDs out too. Kinda scary huh?

As everyone has previously noted: this movie is a bunch of Koreanime spliced together, glued to a crappy script and sold as a single animated work. And it sucks.

This was a great review, and dude, you totally need to get your foot check out.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, Spoony!

Ahahahaha. I own this. It’s sold in Walmart. Also sold in Walmart was Beauty And Warrior (which MarzGurl did), and Protectors of Universe.

Never watched them but once I realized what they WERE, I had to have them.

Ahahahahahaha! It exists! Suffer!

I’ve seen this horribly bad (not bad in a good way, not bad but good if you’re drinking … heavily, but purely bad) movie at Anime Nebraskon ’08. It was the MST3K style anime showing with the guest doing their commentary live without previously seeing it. But yeah, Space Thunder Kids is the longest 90 minute movie I’ve ever seen.

It reminds me of the $1 DVD I got at Walmart called Thunder Prince that had the same Korean anime with bad voice acting, and I feel sorry for sitting through that one as well!

We also payed homage to this at Anime Limbo this year at YoumaCon…

Hey spoony love your work man, But your mistaken when you said its the worst anime ever. STK is shitty but take a look at an American Anime called the Doozy Bots… It makes me want to cut myself….

Just so people know, there is at least THREE other movies, all of which share the same scenes off each over, and, the best part is all four are available for free under public domain:
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=Korean%20Anime%20AND%20mediatype:movies

I’ve watched all four and I’m astounded they exist, I really am.

This is for Spoony; to help him try to figure out where this odd movie came from.
At least some of the scenes are also from another movie by the same company (Digiview Entertainment).
If you go to the Korean site for the Movie “Phoenix-bot Phoenix King” (called “Defenders of Space” for the American release) here: http://karaeff.tistory.com/566
You’ll see that an image on that page is the same as the image at 8:55 (namely the image of the cannons being destroyed).
Hope that helps.

Spoony, I can’t say how sorry I am that you had to watch this… cut-and paste frankestain monstrosity. A piece of garbage cobbled together from a dozen shows. Truly, you have my simpathies.

Just don’t let that discourage you from anime. It’s like a hoolywood move – a lot of different styles and themes and a lot of crap to sift trough. But every once and a while you find a jewl in there. I’d list a few animes that appelaed to my snobbish tastes, but I don’t think you’ll have the time to watch them now anyway ;)

Noah,
I know what you mean in terms of stepping on your foot funny-like. I do that every now and then. But I have never heard my foot make a popping sound when doing it. Your health is worth a few dozen bucks in insurance co-pay, especially considering that broken bones tend to heal funny without being properly set in a cast. Go see a doc, man.

When you started this video I swear you were going to review a movie I bought at Wal-mart a wile ago. It appears that allot of people here also bought these cheap videos there. After I watched it I thought it would be hilarious to do an abridged version of it. Sadly, I don’t have the writing skills or equipment to do such a thing. The movie is called “Space Transformers” and from the looks of the cover it has Gundams piloted by Kaneda from Akira! The cover lies!

If you’re interested I’ll donate it to you. I’ll send you Space Transformers as well as another one I have called “Thunder Prince”. That one was so bad I coulden’t even finish it!

11:50 – “…a chance to use my powers for good…” You mean like super-speed, ice-breath, and x-ray-vision?

And I’m quite sure you tore sinew, get better soon! Watch out, you may twist your ankle now more easily.

Space Transformers is freaking brilliant. Although it’s really Innerspace Diaclone.

One thing I found out from the internet is that most of the character models are directly ripped off from Space Runaway Ideon. I kind of get why you’d rip off the giant robots, but how hard is it to draw your own plucky young robot pilot? It’s not like Japan was a font of creativity on that front. Draw your own goofy jumpsuits, Korea!

Oh, there’s another one of these where Reflector from Transformers is the super robot that saves the earth. At the end they all turn into a Camera and a fourth robot uses it to take a picture and destroy the monster.

I’ve unfortunately got a lot of personal experience with broken feet (I’ve broken three bones in my feet over the past three years and I’m just getting over my most recent break). You can still walk on a foot if it’s broken, you can still flex your toes and overall move the foot if it’s broken. The first time I broke my foot I used roughly the same logic you were using and I walked around on a broken foot for about a week and a half before I finally saw a doctor because the pain of putting pressure on the foot was just not going away. I imagine in the states you’d be even more reluctant than I was because I’m sure you have to pay to have your foot X-Rayed, but if it’s still hurting you, you really should. If your foot is broken than, as far as I know, it’s going to heal much slower if you don’t wear a walking cast (it looks kind of like a ski boot). You’re probably also leaving yourself open to further injury.

That thing with your foot reminded me of something that happened to me Spoony, we had an teamwork exercise and my group with all except me where ladies and something happened that I still feel from time to time.
We where all hooked to a very long skies and I was in front making the phase for everybody and someone lost their balance, all the 7 girls in the group fell on top of me and I had a sudden pain in my feet.
I soon realized that while my knees where in the grass my feet where still in the fucking skies, amazingly my feet didn’t broke but I have NEVER felt pain like that before and I even feel it from time to time now.

Space Thunder Kids was edited together with bits of animation from other shows and movies. I actually have a couple of the movies that they took footage from. All of the shows and movies were Korean rip-offs of actual Japanese animations as far as I can tell.

The movies that I have that they took the footage from make A LOT more sense . . . but they still suck. xD

Space Thunder Kids … this is one of those things that makes you go “What were they THINKING?”

Honestly, this film … or rather, what appears to be a badly done copy-and-paste of other anime films … is just incredible in how the producers just didn’t care. They don’t care if the story’s an incoherent mess. They don’t care if none of the characters are on-screen long enough for you to care about them, or if the same characters even look the same from shot to shot. All they seem to care about is just putting together a cheap knockoff of giant robot anime.

It seems to me that different people worked on different segments of the film, and didn’t speak to each other at all. And apparently the producers chose to save money by not hiring anything even remotely resembling a continuity editor. I don’t really know, but from seeing this, that’s the impression I get.

As for the ‘dear air’ at the beginning and the ‘two minutes of the same scene of tanks’, one has to wonder if they were told explicitly that they had to go 80 minutes, but they only had about 75 or less minutes’ worth of material, and therefore needed to pad it out somehow. And since they’re clearly not clever or creative enough to come up with something that might qualify as a Big Lipped Alligator Moment in a movie more cohesive than this, we instead get endless tanks.

And maybe it’s me, but even Titanic: The Legend Goes On had better animation than this.

Addendum to my previous post:

Well, it doesn’t surprise me to learn that this IS a ‘cut and paste’ of other movies. But really, that is NO excuse for the lack of continuity in this film. Honestly, did the makers of this film expect us to care at all about the story or the characters?

Not really. They were probably just after money. It doesn’t surprise me to find that it’s in the ‘one-dollar’ bins along with Beauty and Warrior, because I don’t see how one would want to pay more than one dollar for this, even if they like to collect really bad movies.

i know that sound.

most of the bones in my body can crack, but when i heard that noise, it was an o fuck no, i have no insurance, PLEASE let that not be bad.

i walk on the outside of my foot alot, for comfort reasons, my body sucks. and i can tell you for me it took close to a month to heal to the point i felt nothing after 2 weeks it was walkable though.

Wow, that must have been one hell of a shit.

I found a dvd case!

http://www.collectiondx.com/gallery/FeatureImag…

wow there is more story on the back of the box than in the actual movie!

A copy-and-paste of already shitty movies… and dubbed to be even worse…

HOW DO SOMEONE EVEN DO THAT?!? WHY WOULD SOMEONE DO THAT?!? GLARGH!!! MY BRAIN!!!

I Actually own a copy of this dvd and I didn’t actively search it out or anything. One day my mom saw it in the Dollar tree’s little movie bargain bin. I had never even bother to put it in the dvd player till I saw this review. I can’t believe it turned out to be the best worst movie I didn’t know I owned.

I don’t know what they’re called in Japan, but I think I see some “Battle Of The Planets” and “Starblazers” in there.