Wonder of Frontier (Snark)

 

Wonder of Frontier (Snark)

 

If you’re gonna review fake Korean anime, at some point you have to go for the one with the worst title.

The opening credits play over the same parade of sci-fi images you saw before Solar Adventure, and none of these things show up in this movie, either. Part of the music sure does sound like the theme song of Dai Sentai Goggle V. It won’t take the movie long to reference that show a second time.

A train flies through space. One with a great big 999 on the front. And that conductor sure does look familiar…

 

An unfriendly spaceship comes out of nowhere and fires missiles at them. After the train’s computer, which for some reason looks like roiling yellow clouds, spends an extremely long time telling the conductor they’re boned, they do indeed get blown up.

 

Not that this has a lot to do with the rest of the movie, or even the next scene. A thug sneaks into a house and breaks into the bedroom of a little boy and starts going through drawers, but he’s caught in the act by a woman with a giant ponytail. She proves to be a martial arts badass and gets the upper hand until he shoots some kind of energy out of his fists to distract her long enough for him to jump out the window.

 

What the hell just happened?

Next scene, it’s day, and Giant Ponytail Lady’s driving the kid (Teddy) down the road, having promised he’ll soon be reunited with his father. Apparently Giant Ponytail Lady’s the kid’s aunt. They stop outside a building probably from some real mecha anime.

A portly dude’s roused from his slumber by his phone ringing. At first indignant, whoever’s calling says a beautiful woman’s there to see him. Portly Dude ignores the giant books shelved behind his bed to get ready to meet her.

 

Portly Dude meets with Auntie, but she informs him, “I’m looking for a tall, dark and handsome man, and I guess that can’t be you.” A more conventionally attractive anime protagonist comes in, who I’m calling Hero Boy. These movies are garbage at both establishing important characters’ names, and audio mixing. It’s not uncommon for the hero not to be called by his name until you’re a third of the way into the movie, and even when you think you’ve heard it you have to replay the line two or three times to be kind of sure what you heard.

Hero Boy ascertains that Auntie’s here to meet someone named Dr. Kahn. He leads her through a door he starts walking through before it’s opened all the way.

 

Suddenly a quartet of security guards surround them, who Auntie somehow intuits are “spies for the Red Star Army”. Through a combination of martial arts and the spies hurting each other through their own ineptitude, the villains completely fail to be a threat, and beat a hasty retreat when an apparently real security guard blows the whistle on the fight. This one guy goes after them while Hero Boy continues escorting Auntie and Teddy.

 

She stays in the air for the whole rotation of this kick.

Finally receiving her audience with this Dr. Kahn luminary (he sure don’t look tall, dark or handsome either), Auntie explains what she thinks the Red Star Army wants with her and Teddy: “What they’re after is the map of the Q star screw.” After stopping and thinking for a second, that was probably meant to be “stars group”, but it didn’t sound like it. She goes on, “And also the computer program for making the extreme nuclear light rocket.” Ah, right. That.

Just as confusingly, Auntie refers to Teddy as her cousin, but in the next sentence out of her mouth, says Teddy’s father is her brother. The one who somehow left these macguffins with Teddy.

Anyway, this Dr. Samson was on a scientific expedition to someplace called “Anda Romanda.” I realize she must’ve meant Andromeda, but every time that place is mentioned, by her or someone else, it’s as “Anda Romanda”. Anyway, Dr. Samson was doing whatever scientific exploration he was doing by flying around in space in a mecha named “Tie-Tan 7”, which is totally just the giant mecha from Goggle V.

 

He was attacked by a squadron of robots, one assumes from the Red Star Army. Despite declaring that “These robots are hard to deal with!”, the doctor bravely entered battle.

 

They do take a few liberties with the weaponry, though.

Auntie goes on, explaining that Tie-Tan 7 had to descend to the icy planet below, Anda Romanda I guess. Even though Auntie also calls it “the unknown star”. There, Tie-Tan 7 fought a legion of enemy tanks and jets. The robot’s name gets somewhat confusing, because just like in the show it was stolen from, it combines from three vehicles, not seven. A jet, a truck and a wheeled tank.

 

After some more fighting, the vehicles combined into a robot again, but were completely frozen by a blizzard.

 How Auntie knows any of this isn’t explained, but she’s determined to get to “the unknown star” and reunite Teddy with his father. Dr. Kahn sympathizes, but since the expedition was a personal one, he can’t officially help.

Officially.

In response to Dr. Kahn’s promise to help, we see another Galaxy Express getting ready to launch, this one with a 777 on the front, because that’s pretty close to a 9, you know? Between this and Protectors of Universe, these Korean ripoff anime sure do like spaceships that are trains.

 

Thing is, the people on this train aren’t even refugees heading into territory occupied by evil space warriors; they’re just tourists!

You wouldn’t be wrong to think the people who dispatch the Galaxy Expresses must be completely useless bloody idiots to send another passenger transport into a warzone after one was already destroyed, except this time Vehicle Voltron’s being sent along. Not sure how that ties back to Dr. Kahn promising covert help, but it must, because its pilots include Hero Boy and Portly Dude.

 

Since this is the Korean ripoff anime with the most random title, its featured mecha should have the most random name too, and it does. Meet Superior Falcon, everybody. The pieces attach to the top of the train cars, and the engine car forms the head.

Incidentally, according to the distributor's web site, this robot's full name is Superior Falcon 7 (although I don't remember ever hearing the seven in the actual movie). These guys really liked naming things "7".

 

A weedy conductor welcomes everybody aboard, and I didn’t quite catch his name (Hun Sang Yun?) but it sounded authentically Korean to my uneducated ears. Kind of strange it wasn’t anglicized.

 

Anyway, yeah, they’re on “the space rail system”. Pretty convenient that this “unknown star” that’s apparently a frozen wasteland gets interplanetary train service!

There’s some…humor? When a minute's spent on Teddy being afraid he lost his ticket until he remembers he put it in his sock.

 

Also, do not watch the cockpit scene if you’re sensitive to flashing lights. Dayum!

 

There’s more…humor? When the train’s computer sends the conductor to check on the passengers, then immediately calls him back to warn him there’s an inbound space fighter. The conductor alerts “Mr. Tan” (Hero Boy). The mecha pilots, reassuringly, already noticed and are on alert in case it’s hostile.

It is, of course, because there’s an action scene quota in these movies that comes before anything, even coherence. Some Red Star Army soldiers slide down a rope from the incoming ship, while inside three shady guys pull guns on the other passengers.

 

Portly Dude pulls a rifle and starts fighting the soldiers. In the vacuum of space. At least they’re wearing helmets. 

 

Inside the train, one of the hijackers seemingly lets himself be distracted by the battle going badly for his side on top of the train. This gives Auntie the opening she needs to grab his gun and shoot his accomplices.

(To be fair, I think he’s supposed to be seeing one of the bodies go flying away, but you have to stop and stare to tell with how urgently the shot zooms in on the opposite corner. If I wasn’t pausing incessantly to get screencaps, I wouldn’t have noticed).

 

More fighters show up, prompting Hero Boy, Portly Dude, and a female pilot who didn’t even warrant being established before now to launch their ships and combine into Superior Falcon. After a bit of flying around, shooting lasers from its big robot fingers, the Red Star Army’s repelled for the moment.

 

The conductor assures the (surviving) passengers, “The trouble was caused by the Red Star Army attacking us. We’re sorry if you got frightened, but don’t worry. I can assure you that everything is under control and back to normal.” Glad my life’s in the hands of someone making an attack by armed terrorists sound just as serious my steak coming out of the microwave too early.

“Hopefully things will stay this calm so you can have a happy trip,” indeed!

It would seem not, though, as there’s some more…humor? With the conductor immediately being called to the control room to be informed that the Red Star battle fleet’s right in their path. Galaxy Express 777 and Superior Falcon manage to lose them by taking a dangerous, but of course successful, path through “the swirling point of the galaxy”.

 

They land on a jungle planet to recover energy used escaping “the galaxy swirl”. Again the conductor plays everything down, and even lets Teddy go outside to explore, even though they were literally just attacked twice.

Yes, this does turn out to be a bad idea. Not only does the conductor openly admit the planet’s “still unexplored,” but because Teddy, of course, gets lost, then found by pirates with bad table manners, and locked in with an alien captive. With night setting in, Hero Boy decides they’ll wait for daylight to go looking for the little twerp. “Alright, okay. I guess we can do it that way,” indeed.

 

As night sets in, Galaxy Express 777 finds itself surrounded by crudely-drawn purple aliens. Apparently, the alien locked up with Teddy’s their prince, and he proves not to know what “pirates” are. Since to him, all humans are cruel bastards. An idea shaken when Teddy threatens him to shut up and stop saying such slanderous things about humans. Seriously.

The layering mistakes in this movie are getting kind of glaring.

As the sun arrives, so do the pirates in their tank column.

 

Some alien slaves come to deliver food for the prisoners. The first serving is for the prince. The second’s for Teddy. The third serving’s for the unfortunate stereotype guarding the prisoners. So’s the club the fourth guy brought.

 

Okay, I admit, that was actually sort of funny.

The aliens rush out and try to seize control of the pirates’ aquatic dreadnaught. They attack and several are shot by the crew, but in the end a pair of hard-bitten pirates are no match for a 10-year-old kid.

 

Once “all the evil men are taken care of,” the aliens make to join the battle. I’d ask how they think the boat will help, but the area around where the Galaxy Express landed has gone from jungle to dry plains since the day before. There might well suddenly be an ocean close to the train, now that it’d be narratively convenient!

Actually, I don’t even know what to think anymore, since in the next scene, Teddy, the prince and his buddies sneak up behind the pirate tanks. Before the pirates can attack, the aliens do, climbing the battle machines and clubbing the exposed pilots over the heads. Captain Conehead's not so easily taken, shoots the alien coming for him, and orders his troops into battle.

With the pirates doing so, the Superior Falcon crew finally decide to do likewise. They launch their armada of ships, and combine them into the same three component vehicles that Voltron could.

 

Although the animators have a hard time remembering where things are. Like if the fighters are in space or inside an underground base. Or which side they’re shooting at, for that matter, because at one point the Superior Falcon team seriously save a pirate by shooting one of the purple aliens!

 

A bunch of the aliens are waiting in the pirates’ ship to ambush the retreating baddies, so maybe that was the point of taking the ship. It doesn’t do any good, because the pirates easily slaughter them and sail away. They don’t get far, because one of the vehicles submerges and torpedoes them from below.

 

The aliens are grateful. Probably especially that these two vehicles managed not to crash into each other and rain fiery shrapnel down on them.

 

With Teddy recovered, the Galaxy Express departs with all haste. Yes, please. After flying through some clouds of thick space flatulence, the train’s up in the big black again.

Y'all come back now, ya hear? (Alien scum).

 

As soon as they’re off the planet, though, they’re immediately picked up by the same Red Star guys who chased them into the “galaxy swirl” in the first place. So, I can’t help feeling like not a lot was actually accomplished in the whole quarter of the movie the adventure with the pirates and purple aliens represents.

 

For some reason the underling who tried to break into Teddy’s room from the beginning is important enough to be in the general’s presence. He’s given a chance to redeem himself when the Galaxy Express stops again, but a female underling, White Fox, is sent along to supervise him.

 

Soon the train makes a stop on a planet named “Black Star”. Which isn’t confusing at all in a movie whose bad guys are the “Red Star”.

 

Auntie and Teddy get off to get some sleep at a hotel, not noticing Home Invader and White Fox sitting in the lobby. Auntie prophetically declares, “This place feels foreboding to me. It’s as if something bad is about to happen,” just before the spies enter, guns drawn.

 

Without much success, Auntie tries to protest they don’t have the macguffins the Red Star Army wants. And I don’t blame them for not buying it. “The computer program that you’re looking for is not on us. Do you understand? We don’t have it. Can’t you see that you’re only wasting your time? Don’t you see? Don’t you understand?” Not as good with a concise reply as she is with those flying kicks, is she?

 She even tries to convince the spies that there’s nothing weird about making a casual visit to Teddy’s father. Who’s frozen alive in a giant robot on a planet in the apparent ass end of space. Wonder if even the movie remembers that plot point anymore.

White Fox evidently does have two brain cells to rub together, because she doesn’t buy any of this. She makes the further leap that the macguffins her bosses are after are hidden in Teddy’s subconscious mind, or something.

Although she hasn't got the brains to shut the door when holding someone at gunpoint...

Have to notice that despite assigning a giant combining battle robot to this trip specifically to protect Teddy, nobody’s keeping an eye on him but his unarmed aunt. Hell, with Home Invader and White Fox, now he’s been freely menaced on both planets where they’ve ended up.

The Red Army spies decide to “bring that little rascal back with us.” Auntie’s pistol-whipped and knocked out. A green-skinned bellhop comes in and makes sure Auntie’s okay, before informing her the territory’s totally under the control of the Red Star Army, who’ve enslaved a lot of his people.

 

Gee, openly stopping in enemy territory, after they’ve attacked you multiple times already, was kind of dumb, wasn’t it? But Auntie honestly seems unaware, so let’s just roll with it. Still got nearly 20 minutes to make it through.

Tanks have surrounded the Galaxy Express (again), and a group of alien resistance fighters make to infiltrate the fort where Teddy’s being held prisoner by the bad guys who own the tanks (again).

 

The alien kid does a bird call and a weird pointing dance to signal his co-conspirators. They respond by rolling a burning hay cart down the street that crashes into a completely unresponsive tank.

 

Auntie makes a break for it, then she’s suddenly still in the alley with the alien kid, who tells her to make a break for it. And for the first time in the movie, we hear her name’s Mandy. Too late to change it now. La Resistance continue to hold off the tanks by rolling barrels of gasoline and burning hay carts at them.

 Hope it was worth setting their whole town on fire.

 

Surprisingly late (again), considering the train's surrounded by enemy tanks (again), the Superior Falcon team decides it’s time to deploy, but the movie can’t seem to decide if they’re in an atmosphere or in space as the ships detach from Galaxy Express. Or if it’s day when it’d been night just a minute ago.

 

 

Elsewhere, the alien guerillas decide to “give them a heart attack” and blow the doors of the Red Star fort with a bazooka. A couple minutes are spent of them charging the fort, shooting their guns, without seeing who’s being shot at. There apparently is someone there, though, with how some of the guerillas do go down from return fire.

 

Superior Falcon combines to go hand-to-hand with the Red Star tank mecha, defeating them one after another with gratuitous slo-mo shots. Then it splits up again, and it’s day all of a sudden.

 

Then they combine again and it’s night again, and previously used shots are reused to pad the fight scene.

Meanwhile, the alien resistance fighters blow open the gate to the Red Star fort (again) and charge the entrance (again). White Fox and Home Invader are just standing right inside the gates with Teddy. They try to escape in a spaceship, but are scared off by Auntie shooting mustard at them.

(Okay, not really, the lasers are just badly drawn).

 

Home Invader’s death face is pretty hilarious for the same reason, though.

 

The Red Star Army command ship shows up and joins the mecha battle, but the once-again segmented Superior Falcon ships manage to outmaneuver its big guns. In response to the damage he’s sustained, the general orders their secret weapon, the robot Helicross, be unleashed.

 

Once again Superior Falcon combines, and once again the forces are so unleashed the time of day flips. Since he’s the final boss, Helicross proves to be a formidable foe, even in spite of a strange tendency to repeatedly swing his sword at nothing.

 

 

The leader of the alien resistance fighters and the kid who helped Auntie before commandeer a ship. His girlfriend seems to know his plans.

 

Indeed, they kamikaze their ship into the reactor of the Red Star mothership, which the commanders find very unsettling. While Superior Falcon manages to finish off Helicross with its blazing sword.

 

The Red Star Army’s finished, and a new day dawns. In the light of that new day, Superior Falcon combines, even though it just was.

 

And that’s it! Did the tourists on Galaxy Express get to Anda Romanda? Did they save Teddy’s dad and Goggle Robo from its tomb of ice? Did they have a snowball fight with the weedy conductor?

The world will never know.

Or care, I'm betting.