Lensman [English dub only] [MW]  

First off I have and have practically memorized all of Edward E. Smiths' Lensman series.  Giving deference to the age of this excellent LD  transfer this has got to be once of the worse anime movies I have ever seen.  Cheesy is right,  incoherent story line, flat characters. etc. But having said this if you look at the other stuff coming out of Japan at the time , 1984, they where about the same.  The influence of Heavy Metal (1981) had not yet hit Japan. Heavy Metal was not appreciated in the State's but Japanese animation studios saw it's potential and took umbrage in it for future releases.

My Thanks to ViolentJ for doing such an excellent job of transferring an LD to a digital format not an easy job.

The programmers of Konami's "Gradius" say that this movie was some of the inspiration behind that game.

Please remember that you are watching an Carl Macek "translation"    As always with that guy, TONS of added nonsense dialogue, and huuuuge changes to the script.  I was switching back and forth between the Dubbed track and the Japanese track and just had to roll my eyes at the pathetic difference in the dialogue in the dub.  I watched it in Japanese and liked it a lot.  Still a bit too much story crammed into 2 hours for it to all make perfect sense but I enjoyed it a great deal.

I do take great issue with the statement about movies coming out of Japan in 1984 being rubbish though.  Chou Jikyuu Yousai Macross: Ai Oboete Imasuka? was released in 1984 and it is one of the greatest anime movies ever made and my personal favourite of all time.  Not to mention other classics like Cobra, Future War 19XX, Golgo 13,  Crusher Joe, Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer and of course, Ghibli's first legendary feature film, Nausicaa (!!!!!) were all released in 83/84.  They are only a FEW of the amazing movies that were being produced at the time.

*Ahem*  My nerd side is no settled and clam  

I love this film, and I'm looking for the patrol TV series, but it is true, this film is "based" on lensmen but very lightly. Still very enjoyable, reminds me of StarWars. Thank you.

Does anyone know what English dub this is? There were two English dubs made, one by Harmony Gold and other by another company.
I prefer the Harmony Gold version...I used to have them both but lost them when a HDD died  :'-(

By Harmony Gold, I guess you mean Streamline Pictures?  Streamline was Carl Macek's company after he left Harmony Gold.  His is the only dub I know of.  The Australian and UK VHS releases were the Streamline version too.  I finally bought the Jp LD last week and once it arrives, I plan on making a bi-lingual release using the original 16:9 video from the Japanese LD.  There are still no subs for the movie that I know of.

I would want it!!