In the far future, Humanity has reached the stars and is
thriving all across the galaxy. The
peace that comes with this is shattered when they encounter the Gavanas Empire,
which quickly enslaves the Humans inhabiting the 15th Solar
System. Hope remains in the form of a small
band of freedom fighters. Among them is
Hayato, a rookie pilot with latent psychic powers. Aided by his mentor, Ryu and eager Alien
Warrior Balu, Hayato begins his journey to free the 15th Solar
System from the Gavanas Empire and confront his own mysterious destiny.
When Power Rangers In Space first aired back in 1999, one
could think of it as the Rangers finally getting their own Star Trek/Star Wars
style adventure to close out their first era which began in Mighty Morphin’
Power Rangers. Well as many know, Power
Rangers is adapted from a plethora of Japanese Super Sentai series from the
70’s to the present. I mention all of
this because from the episode I glimpsed of 1978’s Message from Space: Galactic
Wars, this show could be your old school answer to Power Rangers meets Star
Wars…though in hindsight it might have more in common with the Tokusatsu genre,
aka Kamen Rider.
From the fight choreography to the visual effects,
everything about this show screams space age Tokusatsu adventure without the heroes
sporting masks. More so it looks like
lead characters Hayato and Ryu are more like Space Ninjas, with Ryu acting as
the Obi Wan Kenobi to Hayato’s Luke Skywalker.
For added Star Wars flair, they even have an adorable robot mascot and
an Ape man named Balu, who is clearly meant to be a sort of Wookie counterpart
for the team, and I was actually impressed with his make up too. There was a pretty equal mix of space and
hand to hand combat and it definitely invoked that nostalgia of this era of
Japanese TV that inspired so much today.
The choreography and dog fights in space were all very well paced and
pretty exciting.
While I’m not sure if prior knowledge of the original
Message from Space movie that came out just prior to the series is necessary,
Galactic Wars looks like a show id still want to track down and give a proper
watch if I could. It’s a nice mix of
silliness, nostalgia and just plain fun that makes me wish id watched more
Japanese Television beyond Anime growing up.
Oh and this series features one of the first starring roles for one of
my favorite Japanese actors, Hiroyuki Sanada (The Last Samurai, The Wolverine,
Avengers: Endgame). I didn’t even
recognize him, he looked so young. That
alone is def worth giving this series a shot.
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