Loonatics Unleashed – A Creep in the Deep (Snark)

Well let’s see, there’s a cruise ship, and there’s the Loonatics test-driving Wile E.’s new superboat so they’ll conveniently be on hand when something bad happens…what?

And I have to ask, does he build every single weapon, vehicle, device and computer they use? All of them? All by himself? With his two hands alone? Everything? Really? Really. Must be, nobody ever knows about his inventions before they’re unveiled. I know the most common joke out there’s for the resident science geek to have no life, but if I’m going to believe Wile E. builds all that I might as well believe he built their entire building.

When Wile E. says how many knots an hour this thing can pull, Roadrunner launches into a tirade wondering why the measure of speed for boats is knots and what it has to do with knots you tie. And I’m so ashamed for not noticing this before, but evidently Rob Paulsen decided to play this character as just an even more hyper version of his character from Channel Umptee-3.

What else? Daffy’s digging being out on the water but Lexi’s comedically about to toss her cookies. Don’t know if that’s more of her one-dimensional female stereotype-ness, or a comical reversal of expectations showing how a tough chick like her can still be delicate. This little innovation called “fleshing out your characters” would’ve helped to figure out which. And boy if any of these supposedly familiar but new characters could’ve used it, it was Miss One Major Previous Appearance, Generic Empowered Female here.

Some dolphins ram the boat and knock Daffy overboard. He sees one of them swimming toward him and tries to zap it with one of his energy eggs, but he actually produces a big energy beam instead he’s never had before and doesn’t know how to control.

Above, the other Loonatics see they’re about to crash into the cruise ship and Wile E. calls for “Engines full reverse!” Even though they actually just stop before hitting it. Which is good, because then a whirlpool suddenly forms underneath the cruise ship and starts pulling it underwater. Daffy comes back up and tries to tell the others about his new power, but Bugs and  Lexi yell at him (with Taz glaring at him too) for not focusing on the fact that an ocean liner’s being sucked underwater.

And while you morons are giving him the stinkeye, a ship's sinking behind you.

Allow me to return the favor. Why are you idiots just standing there?! It’s completely perpendicular to how it’s supposed to be! Who knows how many people are being injured or crushed from being tossed around like that?!! You guys are supposed to be superheroes, DO SOMETHING YOU IDIOTS!!!!

But no! Look at those pictures! The Loonatics actually retreated to safety! They sit there and watch as the ship goes down the toilet!

Reimagined theme song sequence, go! As you can see, they’re trying to play up the links to the original shorts. Both with the rippling background and showing the Loonatics fighting versions of the rest of the classic cast. More on those guys as they appear, but for now, with the bouncier music and weird “jive” announcer (I don’t think what he’s doing quite qualifies as “singing”), it’s safe to say the show officially gave up on its original ambition of playing to the anime crowd.

By the power of hopeless show premises!

Yes, that's who you think it is.

Where were we? Oh yeah, cruise ship being drawn into mysterious whirlpool, Loonatics no help. But it’s okay because the show manages to have even less balls than last season, because all the passengers float to the surface in handy escape pods.

Recsue pods?

Aren't we looking inordinately proud of our contribution here.

“Good thing we were here!” Bugs points out. Yes, how convenient, and how glad those people must be the Loonatics sprang into action to save them.

The captain comes up screaming that the ship sank because of “them!” and clutching his ears in a vain attempt to drown out “The squeals! THE SQUEALS!!!” Bugs writes this off as the guy having swallowed too much sea water. Because that makes you have ‘Nam flashbacks even if ‘Nam was hundreds of years ago. And being seasick makes you hear voices, because Lexi can hear the dolphins badmouthing those filthy anthropoids but ignores it to go throw up.

After everybody else is gone, one of the dolphins monsters out in front of Daffy before diving underwater again, but nobody believes him about it being “a sea monster with huge fangs and shoulder pads or something!” Nice trust in your teammates there, Loonatics. Nice open minds there, Loonatics.

Holy crap.

Seemingly determined to make me like Daffy more and the rest of these clowns less, they take a sub (or maybe it’s the boat they were already in in a submarine mode, I don’t know) to Zadavia’s little underwater base to find out if she knows anything about what’s going on. Indeed she does: “There have been several reports of mysterious attacks at sea.” And you haven’t brought this to their attention…why? And they haven’t heard about these…how?? Don’t superheroes usually pay attention to current events so they can react as soon as they’re needed???

Oh it gets better, because we find out what those incidents were! “Disappearing oil rigs, lighthouses ships, oceanography stations, and even small land masses. The size or weight of the structure doesn’t seem to matter.” !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Were you planning on telling them soon, Big Z, or did you assume they already knew? ‘Cause you sure ain’t acting like it!

But wait, there’s more! In the videos they’re watching, Bugs notices what’s causing these larcenous whirlpools: lots of whales are swimming in formation really fast to cause them. Ah whales, the speed demons of the deep. He even notices a bunch of dolphins looking on in most instances, but fails to notice the dolphins are evil mutant ones like the kind Daffy said attacked him.

Here's regular dolphins! You can see the differences!

Seriously. They bring up the secondary indicators of aquatic mammals and their abilities, like Lexi thinking she overheard them insulting landlubbers, and dolphins’ intelligence and communication abilities. And the hyper-advanced weaponry they use to protect their dearest friends, electricians. Nothing about how they looked in the video.

It would be a little less bad if this season didn’t seem to be trying to make Bugs cooler by giving him Batman-esque powers of deduction in later episodes.

Bugs asks Wile E. to invent something to let them talk to dolphins, and Wile E. asks Zadavia’s permission to go ahead and create this invention to facilitate them putting an end to these horrific disasters. Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Somewhat mitigating the pain, Daffy tries out his new power again and manages to blast Bugs in the face with a glass of water.

The Loonatics leave to try to talk to the dolphins from the sinkings, or evidently any dolphins they can find. After finding some dolphins near the wreck of an old (but still futuristic) battleship, Wile E. and Roadrunner stay in the boat while the others go out in little color-coded minisubs. Daffy asks what they’re doing again and gets an annoyed groan from Bugs, but again, Our Great Leader’s the one who failed to notice a bunch of freaking monsters.

Screw you, show.

As we already know, the dolphins are evil and monster out as soon as they get behind Taz and Lexi’s subs. And Taz opens the canopy on his so that…the dolphin attacking him can knock him out of it. He grabs two of them by the tail and spins really fast before throwing them away, actually making something akin to that buzzsaw noise he did in the old shorts.

Realizing Daffy was right all along, Lexi opens up her canopy as well to let the dolphins have it with her ear lasers. But being down there somehow amps up her powers too, causing the shot to rebound off some rocks and knock her out.

Bugs and Daffy aren’t doing much better, but after Daffy crashes he uses his new super blast (Aqua Dense, as he dubs it. Okay, that sounds like an anime attack) to take out the two dolphins hassling him. Bugs doesn’t fare as well, being carried off by a single dolphin. Daffy makes it back to the boat and starts telling the others how he beat off the dolphins with his Aqua Dense, only for Lexi to snap “Dense is right! You let [Bugs] get captured!”

…ex-squeeze me? What does she mean “let”? They got separated during an attack. Is that something she’s not familiar with? A member of a group that gets into battles with evildoers all the time? How was that Daffy’s fault? Besides, Daffy did call out to Bugs after fending off the dolphins and got no answer. I find it hard to believe even he didn’t look even a little. Especially with the way he’s extra-confident this episode with his super-duper new power and everything.

On top of that, all evidence to the contrary, Daffy’s supposed to be the bumbling egomaniac/chew toy of the show. She expected that character to do something right? And if Bugs is the greatest hero of all time (as a later episode asserts), surely his powers and skills would be enough for him not to need anybody, let alone a character like that, watching his back against Flipper.

The, ahem, greatest hero of all time.

Wonder if Bugs even tried to fight back. Did he not laser vision the dolphin? He can use his laser vision through the spacesuit he had in “The Comet Cometh,” but not his dive helmet in this one?

Back in that ship from before, Bugs is trapped inside some kind of big jellyfish. The leader of the dolphins, Adolpho (ooooh, clever) soon shows up and demands respect from Bugs. Landlubbers, after all, polluted their oceans, but even worse, forced them to perform “in your creepy water park shows.”

By the way, thanks for leaving the pollution explanation at that and not deciding emulating Captain Planet’s a good thing, show. Even if it does make the Loonatics look even more like negligent a-holes for doing only the bare minimum to end this threat and doing nothing at all to look into or prevent further malevolent mutations like Adolpho. After all, it's clearly produced other giant marine life too.

“And they make you wear that ugly makeup. Oh, I’m sorry, that would be your face.” New season, if anything Bugs’s witty quip powers have eroded. Check-a-roonie!

As a sidenote, for some reason (okay, I enjoyed The Tick a little too much back in the day), an evil talking dolphin not voiced by Maurice LaMarche sounds wrong. They probably could’ve had him do the role if they’d wanted to, too. Maurice did work on this season.

Just saying.

 

Instead, we’re stuck with Mark Hamill. But, on with the show!

Bugs tries and fails to quip with “I didn’t realize this room came with entertainment,” only to prove to be the entertainment himself when the evil dolphins smack him back and forth. He tries yet again with “You realize this means war” and does fire off his laser vision, only for it bounce off Adolpho’s back and knock him around some more. I repeat, what happened after we cut away from that dolphin inching up on Bugs? It’s getting hard to believe our Great Leader put up a fight before they got him. And because of that it’s getting hard to believe he’s our Great Leader.

The other Loonatics are cruising around trying without success to find Bugs only to see the whales pulling down another island. With that gone, “Now they’re after Acmetropolis City!” Which as you maybe remember IS THE WHOLE PLANET!! Maybe the writers didn’t realize it, but they just said the bad guys are trying to pull the entire planet into a whirlpool.

Clearly something that can destroy the world.

You see maybe why I complain about this show?

Further endearing themselves, Wile E. “We’ve gotta get out of here before that whirlpool gets any bigger!” And leave the boats already trapped in it to fend for themselves, evidently. They’re learning Zadavia’s lessons well.

Oh yes, they showed it. And no escape pods this time! Robot pleasure boat drones, I guess!

They get pulled in as well, but Daffy’s able to push them out with his Aqua Dense. With their own safety assured for the moment, he takes command, with him and Lexi going to find Bugs (what for?) while the others do something about the whirlpool that can totally pull in an entire planet.

The anti-whirlpool team try to stop the whirlpool by having Taz and Roadrunner move really fast in the opposite direction. Adolpho sees what they’re doing and knocks the both of them into the stomach of one of the whales.

Meanwhile, Daffy and Lexi notice the lights are on in one of the old battleship’s rooms. Lexi reminds Daffy her powers backfired big time before, but Daffy pep talks her. “My powers are different down here, so maybe your powers are different too.” Uh…yeah? And what? No, that’s it, that’s the end of his rousing speech to his insecure teammate he’s counting on to cover him.

Daffy goes in and gets grabbed by the jellyfish too, only for Lexi to predictably save the day with one of her bottom-of-the-ocean enhanced ear lasers, allowing Daffy to finish it off with yet another blast of Aqua Dense. Sure it’s cool he’s got a new power, but you’re overusing it, show. And I bet I don’t even have to tell you they never explain why none of this ever came up before, whether it’s being underwater or near water that lets him (and Lexi) do this, and why they hardly ever take advantage of the conditions that boost their powers in the future. “Lexi short-circuited their mind control,” Bugs notes. Uh, she did?

You know what happens after hearing that, but let’s see if there’s any other dumb stuff to talk about. Bugs reminds us how “Adolpho’s gonna take down the city.” Ha ha, in your dreams, show. This season isn’t that cartoony.

Terrifyingly, we get a bit telling us the writers do know they’re saying this whirlpool’s supposed to doom the entire city planet. Adolpho tells his buddies to speed it up, “We’ve got a world to sink!” Daffy even affirms it with “We’ve got a world to save!” This episode just got five times dumber.

Daffy and Lexi use their souped up powers to blow the whales out of the water and the others net Adolpho. Wile E.’s dolphin translator just so happens to be a whale translator too, letting Bugs ask them to spit Taz and Roadrunner back out. Even though you’d hardly think the strong guy and the fast guy on a superhero team would have trouble pounding their way out of a whale’s mouth, but then again I hardly expect them to be anywhere near as capable as the hero of King’s Quest game.

Ground! That's it! Wonder if it'll be friends with me.

Roadrunner has another of his super-fast tirades about nothing, and everybody else looks to have left to not have to listen. Except they don’t leave, as it cuts to a long shot they’re just gone. As if we were dealing with bad animators or something.

They’ve put the captured Adolpho in a giant fishbowl complete with a fake underwater castle. He continues screaming his hatred of them even though he’s got a power suppression helmet on (well, they don’t say what it is, but what else would it be?).

Oh yeah, and a bunch of villains from the first season are in tiny little niches in this same hallway, but none of them are saying how much they hate the Loonatics because that would mean rounding up all those voice actors again and thinking of things actually worth spending their runtime on.

And wait just one miserable minute here. This is clearly the prison where they were keeping Mastermind with a new paint job.

Yet the season finale said those villains, including her, were being moved to somewhere more high security. Somewhere that required a train to take them there. Yet there's Massive and Weather Vane up there, and this is clearly the same prison with a new sign out front, and less secure because the zappy bars around the perimeter are gone.

I know, I know, they just thought we wouldn't notice. But that's the problem. They're banking on their audience being inattentive morons. Or maybe they didn't notice, and the show was made by inattentive morons.

Adolpho keeps screaming threats of revenge at them, and they respond by mockingly taking off their translator earpieces, reducing him to incoherent squawking again. And I sort of get the sense they came there specifically to do that in front of him. With all the times they screwed up this episode, and they think they’re allowed to waste time taunting the villain after it’s all over.

D-, Loonatics.

Protectors of Universe (Snark)

Unlike any of the other crappy Korean mecha cartoons I've seen, this one actually has a theatrical trailer! Did this thing actually play on the big screen somewhere? Scary thing is I have little doubt it did.

This particular cheap mecha cartoon begins with an assault of pretentious narration. At least it’s vocalized and not in a Star Wars-esque text crawl. Then again, they probably couldn’t afford anything like that.

“In the far reaches of space, many millions of miles out into the galaxy, a new star is forged. As it is compressed and seared into existence, it creates an incredible, roaring shockwave which sweeps across the universe like a hurricane. Leaving in its wake an instant of complete, dead silence. The roaring sounds like a distant howling of helpless millions, on the faraway planet Orion.”

Everybody got that? Good. Because (evidently), the armies of that new star (the armies of the star…? Huh??) are evil and intent on invading the planet Orion (yes, the planet Orion).

Maybe Orion was colonized by people from Earth, but one, the movie never says that and those of you who’ve read through my Loonatics Unleashed recaps know I consider something fairly basic I’m forced to figure out on my own to be a shortcoming of the work. Two, here on Earth we already have something space-y we call Orion. Three, it’s from a myth invented on this planet. I mean, the writers came up with a name for the bad guys’ planet, were they worried about confusing people if they did the same thing to the made-up good guy planet?

Space fighters that sound like bottle rockets fly through space and the opening credits. Then we see some kids on Orion running around playing to let us see just how you know, bucolic or something it is there before the armies of the Bad Guy Planet come to destroy it. The movie doesn’t actually call it Bad Guy Planet, but it doesn’t give it a name until way later, and Bad Guy Planet fits fine with the rest of the cheesy junk in here.

Except we already know they’re coming. And so do the people of Orion because the king I (guess) was warned about the attack before this scene. Even though the king seems surprised when Lieutenant Duncan runs in to warn him the Bad Guy Planet’s armies are on their way, and the king puts the lieutenant in charge of planetary defense. And that's even though one of the movie’s major characters is a general from the same military body.

Orion fights back with their own fleet of bottle rocket-sounding ships against the army of Bad Guy Planet, but it wouldn’t be a very long movie if they won, and they don’t. They don’t win pretty hard. The bad guys don’t even have to fire their guns; they use their “anti-navigation system” and Orion’s ships just start crashing into each other.

On top of that, the animators can’t decide if the ships or in space or in Orion’s atmosphere already. It’s the concentration camp from Solar Adventure all over again.

Seeing the battle lost already the king sends his kids Siprian and Susan along with the rest of Orion’s children (all of them? On the whole planet? Orion sounds even smaller than Acmetropolis) to Earth for help. They leave aboard a spaceship-train called Super Express.

Bad guys follow but Earth command sends our heroic mech for the movie out to save Super Express. This is Super Mazinga 7, and yeah it looks like they took Mazinger Z’s head and stuck it on the RX-78 Gundam (or if you want to get snippy and point out the horns curve out at the ends, Great Mazinger’s head). And again, cute variation of the original mech’s name, since ya know if you take one line off a Z it turns into a 7. Also, the fact that it’s the 7^th model means it’s hopefully less lame than Mazinga 3 from Raiders of Galaxy.

In any event, the squadron commander flies away claiming they haven’t seen the last of him and Super Express thus lands safely at the base of some "real" giant robot team I don't recognize. Siprian and Susan are greeted by your generic super robot commander/scientist Dr. Howard. Sadly Dr. Fine and Dr. Howard are nowhere to be seen. He calls this the reunion of Mazinga 7 and Super Express. Were they part of a set at some point? Where did they come from? When and why were they split up? And why’s guy in the upper right there thirty feet tall?

Dr. Howard introduces the royal kids to Kent and Mary, Mazinga 7’s pilots. Kent proves to the son of, I swear I’m not making this up, General Larry, the general I mentioned before. Kent asks how he is, and Siprian sneeringly explains General Larry apparently surrendered as Super Express left. I didn’t skip that, so you know. This is the first we’re hearing about the character or his surrender. This sets up a nice little enmity between straight-laced Kent and revenge-obsessed Siprian.

Some guys modify Mazinga 7 to combine with Super Express, and I’m not saying anything about what this looks like. This doesn’t seem to create a more powerful fighting machine, it’s just to keep one from losing the other. And all the Orion kids are still on board as they blast off to retake the planet, meaning the Mazinga crew are taking the kids back with them to the very same conquered planet the kids were sent away from for safety’s sake. I’m starting to wonder if these people are what we generally refer to as “smart.”

Also love how this one kid’s reflection is of a different kid.

Once they’re underway Siprian suggests changing course to turn the tables on the invaders and attack the Bad Guy Planet itself, then go and mop up what’s left of their forces on Orion itself. Kent objects because that’s not the plan. Siprian accuses Kent of being a wuss like his dad but they’re interrupted when Dr. Howard’s son walks into the cockpit. I don’t remember if he doesn’t get a name so I’ll just call him HJ. He tries to look all cool with this wide-brimmed hat as he makes his entrance, but then it turns out he's just this kid with glasses, a big bald head and buck teeth. The others tell him he’s too young to come on this mission, even though they’re taking all the refugee children with them.

Our heroes run into a squadron of Bad Guy Planet ships that look totally from the ones we saw before even though the same bad guy’s in command as the last attack. After Mazinga 7 flies into enough ships with its fist the squadron commander again flies away vowing revenge.

Siprian demands they appoint a leader on this mission, and if this is an official mission you’d think they would’ve established some kind of chain of command. HJ nominates Kent and suggests they draw straws to decide leader. Siprian loses but HJ explains to Kent both of them were short straws so Kent would win, because cheating and deciding your judgement’s better than everyone else’s are good things to teach kids to do.

At Incredibly Implausible But Kinda Cool-Looking Bad Guy Headquarters, Disgraced Squandron Commander reports to his boss that the Earthlings have sent Mazinga 7 to battle them.

We now meet the Supreme Bad Guy, whose name, I’m not kidding, is Alfred (although the same character’s called Albert and Edward in a few places, too). And who has this annoyingly muffled voice that makes it a pain to understand anything he says. Alfred orders his minions to take his disgraced officer to Detroit. I mean, the Waste Disposal Plant (of the whole planet), where they’ll throw him into the water and all the “engines in his body” will rust up in five minutes. That was presumably to establish that the bad guys are androids or cyborgs or something, since it seems far more likely the giant dinosaur monster lurking at the bottom of the plant (what the hell is that there for??) would get him first.

Alfred even calls his minion a “lizard,”as in Disgraced Squadron Leader and not the dinosaur monster, even though he doesn’t look reptilian and we just heard they’re androids or something. Alfred decides to give the sniveling little puke another chance, putting him in control of a giant battle robot of their own. It has a name, but it’s hard to pick out and this thing’s just a recolored Raideen anyway.

Armed with this mighty engine of war Disgraced Squadron Leader flies up to Mazinga 7 and demands another fight. After what actually is kind of a cool battle for a super robot anime, Mazinga 7 destroys Knockoff Raideen by impaling it with a trident, while Disgraced Squadron Commander once again survives, once again swearing revenge.

Even though the axe is tied up by a chain, they can still spin it...

We return again to Bad Guy Planet, and who should be starring in this scene but Kent’s dad, General Larry! He didn’t just surrender to the bad guys, he’s a complete turncoat who’s now a low-ranking officer in the bad guy hierarchy! But wait! He tries to butter up Alfred’s masked femme fatale officer, Helen, by praising her beauty and trying to get her drunk. Keep it in your pants, boys. He’s actually trying to pump her for military secrets, but she doesn’t fall for it. Rather than exposing him to Alfred (as a traitor, pervs!), she instead steers him back toward telling her how beautiful she is. Boy these bad guys seem all, what’s the word, dangerous, don’t they?

Gotta love how even in the movie they say that's wine, but it looks like it was censored into water...

General Larry tries this trick again with some random guard with more success. Minus the telling him he’s beautiful in exchange for telling the guard he’s next in line for a command position. Of course.

The drunk guard explains Bad Guy Planet and its Evil Inhabitants didn’t just appear out of thin air as the opening narration implied, but were created by some generic Highly Advanced Alien Race (from Cassiopeia, again after an Earth legend). They created a “central motivation system” for some reason and the Bad Guy Planet people to peacefully unify the galaxy. But Alfred rebelled, and well, you know the rest. General Larry tries to find out where the motivation system is, but only the top brass knows.

Alfred and Helen find out Knockoff Raideen was destroyed, and Helen proposes a plan to shoot toxic waste missiles at Earth. It’ll turn into poisonous rain and wipe out the human race. Oh look, an ecological Aesop. Sort of.

Mazinga 7 runs into another squadron of Bad Guy Planet ships, which surprises them, but Siprian changed their course to Bad Guy Planet when nobody was looking. Which evidently is something they’d only notice if they were specifically checking for that. The bad guy ships tie Mazinga 7 up with cables but HJ pushes a convenient button that electrifies the robot and makes the bad guy ships explode.

The bad guys prepare to fire their toxic waste barrage from a big cheesy cannon that looks like a cheesy robot skull from behind. General Larry bursts in and stops the bombardment, but is captured when reinforcements show up. Helen shows her kinky side.

Disgraced Squadron Leader sneaks into Mazinga 7’s bridge but is easily defeated and completely forgotten for the rest of the movie.

Mazinga 7 reaches the Bad Guy Planet and Siprian reveals his duplicity, but Alfred’s waiting for them. Though the mighty robot lays waste one lone pilot eventually shoots it down with a KBJ (?) missile.

Still our heroes fight on, revealing Mazinga 7’s ability to transform into a giant tank that squishes and blows up Alfred’s tanks with impunity. But that's okay because the bad guys are mechanoids. Mechanoids with enough free will to be ambitious, enjoy sporting events and classical music, and who can get drunk and sexually aroused.

They’re fooled into following Alfred up a mountain where he starts an avalanche. With the tank upended our heroes are easily captured. Along with the surviving kids on Super Express. Good job, idiots.

Who should turn out to be their new cellmate but General Larry himself. He tearfully explains to the kids that Alfred’s forces were so strong he thought if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, then beat ‘em, so that he could learn Bad Guy Planet’s weaknesses. General Larry tells the kids destroying the Central Motivation System will destroy Bad Guy Planet (how does he know it works like that?), but then his BDSM session proves to be too much for him and he expires. Everyone’s appropriately tearful, especially Siprian.

 With Mazinga 7 defeated Alfred throws a premature victory celebration, announcing that with Mazinga 7 conquering Earth and Orion will be easy. Um, didn’t he already conquer Orion? In any case there’s fireworks, dancers, and a boxing match. And aliens not only name their planets after our legends, they know who Muhammad Ali is.

Don't ask.

But after everyone’s gone back to the barracks to sleep it off, Helen pulls a gun on Alfred and tells him she’s taking over. He gets away, but not before being shot several times.

You've got to be kidding me! They didn't even change the colors!

Which all would be pretty surprising but for how the trailer showed that part.

Our heroes escape their cell, of course, by suckering a guard. They split up, with Kent and Mary distracting the bad guys guarding Mazinga 7 while the others board the robot and set out to destroy another bad guy robot they somehow know about. Once they’ve smashed their way out of the base, though, what do you know but they are attacked by another big robot with a big sickle for a hand. After fighting it for hours if the sunset’s any indication, they finally finish it off.

Meanwhile the others find Alfred who repents his evil ways as he dies in Mary’s arms, and tells them the Central Motivation System’s under the Waste Disposal Plant. Somehow they find it, only to be attacked by the giant dinosaur thing living there. Their dinky little laser guns prove useless, but Mary (somehow) gets a message through to Mazinga 7 and it shows up in the nick of time to fight the dinosaur thing. Kent tells Siprian to use its bladed backpack weapon, then somehow he’s in the cockpit launching the weapon himself. This decapitates the dinosaur, and I’d say I’m surprised, but then again the first Joseph Lai movie I ever saw was the one with that “capitalist bastards” thing.

The rest of the movie’s just wrapping loose threads. Kent swims down to the control center and bombs it. The whole base floods and drowns the remaining bad guys and Helen with them. All the refugee kids are conveniently still in Super Express which is conveniently on a launch platform just as our heroes find it. They fly to safety as Bad Guy Planet blows up and…that’s that.

Like the other Joseph Lai movies I’ve recapped, Protectors of Universe is cheaply animated, poorly acted and most of the mecha designs are stolen.

And honestly? It’s pretty good considering whose name’s on it. Certainly I’m not saying Protectors of Universe is high quality cinema, but it’s about what you’d get if you were to watch one of those old “movies” they made by editing a bunch of episodes of a giant robot anime together. Or hell, one of those new movies they make by editing a bunch of episodes of a giant robot anime together.

  

The plot’s nothing great but at least it’s not too hard to make out in this one, and there’s no preachy political agenda. The robot gets to kick butt in this one, and there are just enough fights with monsters and other robots to keep things cool for people who are fans of that kind of thing.

In the end, I think the best way I can describe Protectors of Universe is it’s like watching a kid play with robot toys from a bunch of different lines, rather than a bunch of lazy filmmakers stealing other people’s work to cash in on something popular. It’s a cute, endearing kind of cheese rather than the boring, head-scratching kind of cheese so prevalent in other Lai cartoons. And honestly, how can any movie expect to be taken seriously when it has a villain named Alfred and a major character named General Larry?

Besides, this movie’s the source of Spoony’s favorite scene from Space Thunder Kids.

A Joseph Lai movie can’t hope for a bigger recommendation than that.

Next time, season two of Loonatics Unleashed.