Spectrum of Madness: Captain of Cosmos (aka Johnny Destiny Space Ninja, Snark)

Guess it’s time to take on this one. Little heads up before we get started: I’m not much of a Gundam guy. When it comes to Real Robots, I’m pretty much strictly BattleTech. If you’re hoping for scathing comparisons to the real Char, fraid they ain’t coming, but feel free to supply your own.

Open on credits over the same random sci-fi images from many another Joseph Lai mecha anime, way over-promising on what we’ll see in this one.

Over a green moonscape, a narrator putting too much effort into his delivery informs us: “Due to the innate desire of human beings to develop new scientific techniques, space seems to be much smaller than ever before. The interaction of various civilizations throughout the galaxies has resulted in disharmony and a series of space wars.”

That bastard, Amaris!

“Fortunately, there exists a group of honorable warriors sworn to fight for peace. They are called—”

The Eridani Light Horse!

“—the Cosmos Warriors!”

Or them, I guess.

One guy’s being chased through space, by another guy, who’s shooting at the first guy. The second guy’s obviously evil, so is the first guy a Cosmos Warrior? He seems to be more worried about paperwork than the threat to his life, I think, shouting to no-one, “Okay! It’s unbelievable! How can I ever make my report?!”

The space dogfight gets so intense, yellow designs suddenly appear on his uniform!

Soon Evil Green Guy shoots down his target, and finds that so hilarious he turns transparent.

Evil Green Guy confronts the pilot on the planetoid where he crashed. With a knife, despite the futuristic space battle that just took place. Before he can stop savoring the kill, Victim’s fried by a laser blast from a space queen and her army of centaurs. Who Evil Green Guy never once noticed.

My name for him proves slightly prescient, as apparently our bad guys for this movie will be “the Green Empire”, as that’s what the queen calls it when she congratulates his skill in battle.

Cut to what appears to be a space cruise ship, where a nice attendant is telling the passengers some meaningless factoids about a lifeless planet. At least these guys don’t seem like they’re headed into a warzone for no reason!

One gets excited and runs down the aisle playing superhero, only to trip over the foot of a slumbering wizard. The wizard suddenly wakes up, screaming portents of doom after receiving a vision of the Green Queen. Nobody listens to him, and he runs to the cockpit to demand the pilots alter course. It’s a dumb movie so of course a mystic prediction’s true, and they spot Green Queen in the flesh outside the window.

To be fair to what I just said about going into a warzone, the movie’s actually made a point nobody outside the Green Empire knows it exists. That was why the pilot from before was attacked, and the pilots don’t know what it is when Green Queen announces herself.

Wonder what real anime this ship's from!

Although the pilots were unworried by the centaurs’ “simple weapons”, this confidence was ill-placed, as one of them devastates the ship with a single crossbow bolt. Wizard Guy breaks open a window (into the vacuum of space) then stands there and shoots a blast from his wand. This does a number on her centaurs, but Green Queen himself is too clever for such tricks, and blasts the life out of him with her scepter.

The pilots try to escape in a smaller ship to get help. Following Green Queen’s orders to “give ‘em a good treat”, one of her centaurs destroys the fleeing craft with his javelin. Green Queen captures the main ship and its passengers.

waaaaaaaaaugh

Cut to another random spaceship zipping around. Inside we see the kid/short guy all these movies seem to have, who’s so bored he starts barking like a dog and bucking like a donkey to alleviate his pathetic condition. No, really.

He gets so bored, he decides to go watch the rest of the crew have fight practice, and we’re introduced to our main characters. Well, more like they’re dropped on your head and you’re expected to sink or swim, as no names are given. Typical Joseph Lai fake anime movie.

Our hero (he must be, right?) is having “attacking practice”, which involves much sword twirling and vaulting off the walls. And his sparring partner’s helmet being knocked off, reappearing on her head, and being gone again with no explanation.

She’s supposed to standing on his sword, by the way.

Having, I guess, proven himself a Most Great Warrior, our hero’s attacked by a masked weirdo who’s obviously the bored short kid. Bored Kid, not being a Most Great Warrior, takes himself out when he doesn’t look where he’s going, and runs into the wall.

I get really confused, because the sparring partner lady explains to the kid how “humans” exercise. So is the movie saying Bored Kid isn’t human? He argues robots are better, but if he’s a robot, why don’t they just turn him off when there’s nothing for him to do, so he doesn't get bored? Then he bites the lady on the butt.

Yes, really.

The movie (obliquely) seems to confirm Bored Kid's actually a robot, because Our Hero points out humans cry and sweat, and Bored Kid doesn’t. He then starts throwing a tantrum insisting he can too sweat, you big meanies!

Holy crap, can we get to some incoherent, unending space battles, please?

Fortunately, the writer heard me and granted mercy. An alarm goes off, because someone’s flying around extremely erratically nearby. Our heroes, including Bored Kid for some reason, roll out in their own ship to investigate. The find the ship Green Queen attacked now adrift, despite it sounding like she was really eager to take possession of it.

Aaron flies unprotected through the vacuum of space with his jetpack, and I’m just going to assume typical space tropes, like breathing, don’t apply from here on out.

Aaron finds Wizard Guy’s body, and he was apparently Aaron’s teacher or something. His death causes Aaron to shed Manly Tears, and between sobs, swears vengeance.

Then he ejects the corpse into space.

After another scene about how Bored Kid can’t really cry, despite trying to, given the tragic death of Wizard Guy, Our Heroes fly out again to find those responsible. Despite how they have no idea what they’re looking for, they soon pick up a signal.

Then it looks like the Green Empire commandeered that ship after all, because apparently the centaurs have hauled it to the surface of a barren planetoid and order the passengers out. A few get executed for trying to run away or fight back, which the centaurs find very amusing.

Aaron and his buddies show up before too many casualties can pile up. In the ensuing brawl Aaron gets surrounded by centaurs the exact same way twice, with the cels flipped.

Mandy, Aaron’s female partner, wishes she could join in. Bored Kid wishes he could too, and Mandy expresses her wish for him to do that and die. Not kidding! He balks and doesn’t go, of course. Anyway, the survivors soon retreat, and the passengers are saved, but Aaron has his friends fly the ship to see where the centaurs are running. Unfortunately, the centaurs disappear in a green cloud.

“That’s unbelievable! I can’t believe I saw that!” indeed.

The kids follow Aaron’s “auto chase device” into an asteroid field. When their ship bumps one of the lumps of metal, all the floating debris suddenly combines into a minefield, creating a zone of green fog around them. Which causes the visage of Green Queen to spear, and she thanks them for their treatment of the centaurs, causing Mandy to respond, “Wow, she is tricky! Thanks, that’s really good!”

Green Queen promises them a “most memorable” welcome, but we’ll never get to see it, because Mandy interrupts her with an attack. Green Queen electrifies the mines to shoot green lasers, and in such a crossfire even the Cosmos Warriors apparently stand no chance. Apparently, because their ship spins out of control, and we cut straight to seeing they’re prisoners in Green Queen’s space fortress.

Evil Green Guy demands Aaron bow to the queen, but he staunchly refuses and punches the guy in the face instead. Saving the animators a lot of difficult work, Green Queen cracks her whip and calls off the fight before it has a chance to move beyond threats. When Mandy demands to know what she did with the captured tourists, the queen answers, “That is an outstanding question from a very brave girl!” Yeah, if you say so.

Green Queen explains that her people come from a green planet…

Yes, clearly.

…which was very advanced, but one day it was wiped out by “an accidental atomic explosion”. Yeah, the whole planet. The survivors left to explore the universe and found Earth, but “could not communicate” with humans, even though she’s doing that fairly well at the moment. She plans to enslave humans to rebuild her planet because of this inability to “assimilate” into Earth society. Her own warriors aren’t “patient and considerate” enough to rebuild a civilization, you see.

Lest we start feeling too much sympathy for the queen, she flat-out admits to Aaron’s accusation that she only wants her world rebuilt for her “personal benefit”. Whatever that means. The discussion’s interrupted when a minion runs in and tells the queen her new slaves “have all gone on strike”. Guess her warriors aren’t “competent” enough to keep their enslaved workforce in line, either!

Maybe Strong Bad should let them borrow that "no loafing" sign.

One of the captives says she hasn’t got the right to hold them hostage, and the only right thing to do is let them go. They say they’ll go on strike if Green Queen doesn’t let them go, which…I thought they already were?

Turns out simplistic moral arguments don’t work on supervillains, and Green Queen electrocutes some of the protestors to make an example of them. Aaron’s shocked too (metaphorically speaking) that the person he accused of enslaving people for her own benefit could be so cruel as to kill the ones who won’t do what she wants!

Bored Kid turns traitor and swears allegiance to Green Queen. Because, “Well, you see, they still think that I’m a robot, and you see, and that makes me very annoyed, you understand?”

He doesn’t seem too satisfied when he’s made a janitor, but meets this huge scary guy, and actually befriends him by complaining about his shitty life. Become brothers for life, in fact. Wow, the queen really is shit at keeping her subordinates in line!

I guess the scary guy’s a robot too, although I certainly didn’t get that from looking at him! They then discuss who’s in charge based on age, with Bored Kid stating since he was manufactured 39 years ago, then he’s the boss.

Oh lord, give me some relief from this “comedy”!

Huge Scary Guy sees Aaron trying to comfort a dying captive, but backtracks on everything we just about his kind side by whipping him and Mandy without mercy. Aaron and Mandy try to fight back but get nowhere, until Evil Green Guy interrupts the fight.

Apparently his name is either “General”, or the generals of the Green Empire military personally fly around and shoot down enemy pilots.

Anyway, he offers the slaves the opportunity to fight the empire’s “first grade soldiers”. To spare the other slaves, Aaron volunteers himself for the arena. He proves how determined he is by punching out his fellow slaves.

The queen promises “Captain Leo” (not changing his name at this point) that if he wins, she’ll abolish the gladiatorial games. First, he’ll have to defeat a quartet of opponents plundered from, not real anime, but Marvel Comics!

Let’s see here, we have Mr. Hyde, King Cobra, the Jester, and most obscurely of all, the Gladiator!

Although they have the upper hand at first, a couple of comic book villains so obscure only the absolute nerdiest among us will have ever heard of them are no match for a protagonist. His foe's vanquished, suddenly Aaron’s holding a sword he didn’t have once during his battle.

Somehow the heroes are still shocked when Green Queen refuses to honor her promise, and is about to have them killed. Fortunately, Bored Kid found their ship and rescues Aaron and Mandy. Turns out his real name’s Paul. Glad we found that out with only fifteen minutes left!

Anyway, the queen’s incensed that the guy who betrayed his teammates is now betraying her. She commands her troops to their fighter ships.

Mandy admonishes Aaron to call their command ship. He agrees, because, as he states, “We can’t escape on our own!” Nice legendary warrior, there! The call gets through, and previously completely unseen platoon of Cosmos Warriors reports to battle stations on the ship, to do battle with the Green Empire’s “wolf fleet”.

Yeah, I give up.

They easily fight off the “wolf fleet”, then land in a part of the space fortress with strangely rustic buildings to rescue the captives.

Meanwhile, Aaron finds the queen and duels with her. General tries to attack him from behind, but thanks to an inexplicable animation error, General’s suddenly caught in a sandstorm that leaves him easy prey for Aaron’s sword.

The queen refuses to surrender, calling to someone named “Tongs” to save her, and hell if I know who that’s supposed to be! Apparently that’s Huge Guy’s name, though, and he comes crashing through a wall to intervene. Aaron’s blade snaps when he tries to smite his foe, and he's quickly at the giant’s mercy.

Mandy flies the ship through the window then, crashes into Tongs and carries him into the air, drops him, then crashes into him again for some reason, making him explode.

Good lord, this movie just won’t end. Aaron pursues Green Queen (whose name might actually be “Evil Queen” with the way he keeps saying it, which is really messing with the lore of another of my writing projects), into an underground cavern (weird thing to put in your space fortress). They duel on the side of a river of lava, and she of course goes over the side, finally ending her evil reign.

Suddenly Aaron’s all appreciative of her good qualities, though: “Queen, it is true that no-one is all bad. There’s always some good in everyone, and your dream of a new life for your planet may one day come true! May it rise from the ashes of destruction like a new flower in spring time.”

That doesn’t come close to making up for the previous hour and fifteen minutes of complete nonsense, but thanks for the poetic imagery!

The space fortress that took the Green Empire’s people to safety from their destroyed planet is now supposed to actually be that planet, I guess, because the caves start flooding with lava. Mandy and Bored Kid save Aaron and fly away just in time, of course.