Thinking about doing Gatchaman/BotP/G-Force comparison video...

Now that classes are finished for the summer, and seeing as I have better hardware and software to work with, I'm resurrecting my idea of doing a Gatchaman/BotP/G-Force comparison video.

I was inspired to do this because of the constant confusion between BotP and G-Force by people on YouTube. I also wanted to highlight the differences between the 3.

I currently have every episode of each adaptation (for "G-Force", all 85 eps on VHS off of first-run Cartoon Network recordings from 1995, the other two.........arr matey!), but I'm def not gonna do an ep-by-ep comparison, more of a general one.

This is where I ask you guys for help/advice:

- Anyone recall any specific Gatch eps with lots of violence, death, or other controversial elements?

- Anyone recall any specific BotP eps where there was a lot of Gatch footage cut, and a lot of U.S produced footage edited in? Or any eps that are drastically different from their Gatch counterparts?

From the former question, I'll be able to determine which G-Force eps to look at (as it cut the most extreme moments of violence and death, as well as nudity and intra-team violence) to highlight its differences from Gatchaman, and from the latter I'll do the same with BotP.

Your help would be greatly appreciated! Hopefully this project won't fall through this time around!

When the Sandy Frank folks adapted The Plan to Assassinate Dr. Nambu, they cut the murder of Joe's parents, and the death of the Devil Star he had unwittingly befriended. They also had the Luminous One go on about Zoltar's sister in a way it had never spoken about anyone else.

In the episodes that became both parts of The Sky is Falling!, they cut G1 being struck by a captain, and much of the big fight scene in the rocket bay (the fight that begins with his stolen goon uniform being riddled with bullets).

Much of the confrontation between the blind old ninja and the Jupiter Mountain ninjas in the Combined Demon Man episode was also removed.

Without heading for Veoh (because I don't have BotP on anything), I can't time the relative amount of Zark/Ready Room/space travel footage for those.

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Benefits, not features; benefits, not features

Episode 70 of Gatch, "Death Girls Unite," got changed a fair bit for BOTP -all the scenes of people (and a dog) being killed by -very unpleasantly!- by being mummified were cut. The fight scenes were edited, the scene of Katse shooting Maya was cut, and biggest of all, the girl Maya (Tyna in BOTP) survives -according to Zark- even though she's never shown leaving the mansion before it all blows up at the end.

I've never seen the GOS version, but this might also be a good episode to use for comparisons.

The moral guardians tried to turn Mark into the boring hero we were supposed to admire. Fortunately, they couldn't do that, since Ken had some baggage.

They just made Jason seem that much cooler with Zark's nonsense about how he's hot-headed.

Yeah, the BotP adaptation of the Jigokiller episode cut out RI's beatdown of G1. If you weren't paying attention to Mark's face, you'd miss it (if you pay attention, you notice mysterious dark spots).

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Benefits, not features; benefits, not features

That's why I like Ken more than Mark, notwithstanding the latter's sweeter character! Mark is too perfect, whilst Ken is more real, having the right stuff that a good Commander should have with all his human defects!

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To be or not to be a gatchamaniac - that's the dilemma!

Aw, thanks for noticing, TJ! Doesn't Springie do great work? I asked her for an illustration for my latest fanfic The Music Class. (Shameless plug alert) It's actually of Jason (albeit a slightly older version) and you can see the full picture in context and read the story here: http://www.gatchfanfic.com/viewstory.php?sid=1290

And now ...

Back on topic ... Which of the characters do you think get the biggest make-over between Gatch and BotP? I was going to say Ken/Mark, but given the swearing turned stuttering of Jinpei/Keyop, the G-4 might actually be more dramatic.

Thoughts?

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"The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing." -- Blaise Pascal

I think the G-4 character is a good choice. There aren't many other differences as vast... unless you count the difference between Pimer and Zark.

Although... Berg Katse became two different people in BOTP, so perhaps there's something to be said for his changes!

As for characters who stayed almost the same... I'd give a nod to Ryu and Tiny.

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So far, my idea is to go through

General differences:

- Name changes across the variations (show clips of the character names being announced for each adaptation back to back)

- Identity change variations ("Bird Go", "Transmute!", "G-Force, Transform!")

Individual differences:

- Show clips demonstrating the differences in violence between the three
- The differences in music between the three
- The differences in editing between the three
- The differences of G-4 between the three

I find that its quite easy to get overwhelmed with ideas for this, with so many episodes to work with, but I'd like to keep it as focused as possible, so that it'll appeal to casual audiences as well.

I'd definitely like to show some Ready Room and Zark/Mark/Princess footage in there too...ha!

Right now I'm stuck trying to convert my Gatch and BotP episodes (which are encoded in mkv. format) to a more compatible format.

Well, after working almost non-stop since Monday night (this would've NEVER been possible if I hadn't had the luxury of having free time), the video is done! It was a BIG headache putting this together w/Sony Vegas, a complex beast of a program that I'm still taking my baby steps with. And my 6 year old PC is barely capable of handling large video projects, so it was pushed to its absolute limit.

A lot of the stuff presented on the vid is already familiar to most of us, as I'm aiming this at the internet folk who are allergic to Google and Wikipedia, and are confused by all of the English adaptations of Gatchaman out there. As for covering the changes in editing, violence, music and G-4...I think I've had a change of heart. It's too much work for what's aimed at a casual, niche audience! Perhaps with this vid, the confusion will subside, and people will compare and contrast by themselves the deeper differences. I MAY put together a smaller video around the Zark, Ready Room and Space segments, to show people what replaced all of the questionable content in BotP!

Here it is, feedback is appreciated!

http://youtu.be/k3_hzxlMEXs

Great job, Dirk!

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