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Space Travelers: |
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n 2000, popular Japanese director Katsuyuki Motohiro helmed a live-action film called Space Travelers, although it had nothing to do with space. It was a caper movie about a pack of bank robbers who end up in a hostage situation, and bond with their captives by assigning everyone in the bank—criminals and victims alike—alter egos based on one robber's favorite anime, a science-fiction adventure also called Space Travelers.
In that anime—which was produced as a separate project and is now being released in the U.S. by Media Blasters—Earth has been devastated by a mysterious alien civilization that has surrounded the planet with two giant mechanical loops called the Orbital Ring System, or ORS. The aliens use the ORS's mighty weapons to interdict Earth, cutting it off from its space colonies and raining down massive walls of destructive energy at whim. Enter the Space Travelers, a motley crew of smuggler types who used to run a sort of tourist's milk run between the colonies and the planet, but are now among the best black marketers in the business. As the movie opens, they're being hired to deliver a sensitive cargo from space to the Earth's Liberation Army, a group of subversives planning to overthrow the alien menace. But thanks to some early scenes, viewers know that the Travelers' new employer, supposedly a Liberation Army stalwart, was recently captured or killed by some unidentified nasties. Which makes the nature of the Travelers' assignment distinctly suspicious.
But even when the Travelers start to suspect something's wrong, they bull cheerfully ahead. Some of them, like generic leader Hayabusa Jetter and vain, cowardly marketing manager Hoi, are just inherently cocky. Many of the others, like space samurai Dragon Attack, heavy weapons expert Crush Bomber, seductive vamp Gold Papillon, engineer par excellence Electric Sunny and quiet robot Karl Hendrix, are well aware of their superlative competence. And the others—drooling gun freak Irene Bear and battle-happy brat Black Cat—apparently don't care what kind of trouble they get into, as long as they get to blow stuff up.
A simple showcase for stereotypes
Like the bank-heist movie of the same name, the anime Space Travelers came out in 2000; live-action director Katsuyuki Motohiro is credited as having developed the original story and supervised the project. Whether the anime should be considered a tie-in, a spinoff or just an in-joke is a matter of perspective. Either way, it's a cute bit of fluff whose joke origins show clearly in its large cast and small story ambitions. Plotwise, Space Travelers fits a very familiar mode. It speeds through a pretty conventional tale of Star Wars-like rebellion, sometimes taking corners on two wheels in its haste: Not all of the plot developments make a lot of sense, and thanks to the story structure, which all but gives away the movie's one twist in the opening scenes, there's very little tension to be had.
Presumably, the true point of Space Travelers was to establish the many characters whose descriptions would become plot points in the live-action movie. To that end, the anime gives its cast just enough room to establish its existence; everyone has a few prototypical lines in which they establish their prototypical characters, by espousing their love of guns, their desire for safer jobs or more competent partners, their blasé attitude toward danger, etc. Beyond the one-note concepts, they don't need to be fleshed out for the story's meager purposes.
In effect, Space Travelers is a charmingly basic, almost comedically generic adventure. It consists of chase scene after chase scene and space battle after space battle, as the Travelers fight their unnamed alien foes in order to escape a colony, then again to gain access to Earth, all so they can head back into space to fight some more. The animation is redundant but reasonably flashy, with iconic character design that almost has to be interesting, since it has to carry about half the weight of establishing the many characters. Space Travelers doesn't require any thought; nutritionally speaking, it's the intellectual equivalent of a bag of potato chips. But junk food can be fun once in a while. Just keep in mind that this is essentially a movie prop, built to look and act like anime in a limited sort of way, but not necessarily designed to stand on its own.
Now I'd really like to see the live-action Space Travelers, just because the plot sounds interesting, and I'd like to see these real-life characters who supposedly match up with this movie's distinctly familiar anime stereotypes. Unfortunately, the live-action movie hasn't been imported yet. — Tasha
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