Space Sheriff Gavan the Movie

[takenoko]

Wiki: http://wiki.tvnihon.com/wiki/Space_Sher ... _the_Movie

I have to say that I appreciated the slightly more serious tone that Toei took with this movie. It felt like the story was more fleshed out, compared to the rush from action scene to action scene that other movies seem to take. In particular, I liked the story of the three main characters and their relationships between them...

...even though it's obvious that Touya Tooya is totally evil. But despite that hamfistedness, and some crammed in levity, I feel like the movie was pretty good overall.

Personally, I would have cut the Makuu Dimension scene. It had some funny moments, but it was a big distraction from the main story. Don't you have a girl that you need saving, Geki?

So why was Tooya's pendant on Earth again? That was... random... I mean, they don't even justify it in any way. Did Witch Kiru drop it? Was it blown back to Earth from Mars? I mean, seriously, how the fuck did that get there? I guess Itsuki needed to find it because of dumb redemption at the end or some bullshit.
Edit: Wouldn't it have made more sense for Itsuki to find the pendant before stumbling upon Brighton? At least Tooya was in that place unlike the other one.

But seriously, I'm glad they brought back Tooya so that they could have a sad moment with him at the end. It was a good moment, plus it let Geki make up for not being able to hold on to him last time.

[Magenta]

I microwaved my cat...

FOR SPACE!

[takenoko]

I remembered thinking this as I was watching the movie, man, it sure seems like Geki is following the Ultraman storyline. Isn't this exactly what happens in the first episode of Ultraman Towards the Future? They're on Mars, they get separated. One guy becomes a silver space man, the other becomes the villain.

Maybe you should have written back to your girlfriend on Earth instead of space training for a year, Geki.

I mean, if I have to nitpick, I guess the dynamics between the characters are pretty shallow. You know they're friends because they laugh once while drinking water, because that's what friends do. Itsuki is obviously the thing that they fight over, and Itsuki never really says whether she prefers Geki or Tooya. So they fight over her, as men are wont to do. Thankfully, this stuff isn't bad enough that it ruins the story, but it's there in the back of my mind when I'm watching.

Also, when your ugly coworker touches your shoulder, you should slap it away. That jerk, trying to comfort you over your dead friends! Good thing he dies horribly a scene later.

Another dumb thing was the scene where it's the "It's time for Itsuki to get kidnapped to progress the story" part. Couldn't they have attacked the ship and kidnapped Itsuki while Geki was away instead of her just putting herself in danger for no reason?

I was really hoping that Satonaka was the space secretary, but I guess not. It would have pleased me if there was a Date/Satonaka reunion in this movie.

I'm glad that at the end, the space police realized that it would be stupid to trust the fate of the universe to this one untested cop. You get Space Sheriffs up the wazoo showing up to help out. Come to think of it, without the Makuu Dimension, Geki and Retsu would really have no scenes together. Geki? Retsu? Gou? Oh yeah, the writer for this worked on GekiRanger. Was that obvious?

[Kuchiri]

To me...the movie was good. Then I think back on it....it was actually not that great all together.

None of the characters felt fleshed out to me and I got really annoyed with all the flashbacks. It felt like it was trying to be a TV series instead of a movie. After the first two I almost knew when the next Flashback was going to happen.

This movie seems to want to take elements from a lot of Toku shows. As you mentioned, Ultraman. They pointed out Amanogawa from Fourze in the same scene that was almost shot for shot Go-Busters.

The Makuu Dimension was silly and probably used to keep people awake after what we thought was the last flashback.

Don Horror didn't need to be in it. It looked like they took the sprite of Ganon of the Zelda 2 Gameover screen and put it there.

The transformed fight scenes followed the same format. Some Sword Fighting + A random jumping side flip + An Interruption + Finishing Slash attack.

Geki looked like he belonged in a special school every time he tried to make a joke. Oh and the 'Geki!' 'HUH?' with the progressively louder 'HUH?' got really annoying, really fast.

Why does it have to be Itsuki that had to be the woman? I mean is it because Tooya wanted to put his overcompensating sword in her wormhole?

The Tooya death scene was supposed to be moving. However it was ruined with the 'Geki! 'HUUUUUUUUUNGH?!?!'

I will compare this movie to a bottle of Jones soda. It tastes good when you have your first drink of it, however near the end of the bottle it all tastes blah.

[the_imposter]

Having not watched much Gavan I don't really know if I'm that justified in my opinions but either way here goes. I thought the movie was OK but no better than that really, the fight scenes were fairly standard and the plot in a similar manner, I liked some of the character interactions and there were quite a few good scenes but the whole thing was just distinctly average and felt quite old hat. It didn't succumb to the problem I've had with some of the Rider movies whereby if I haven't seen the series I don't understand the movie which I guess is good for newcomers but is this supposed to be a set up for a newly revived series? That's kind of what the end felt like I guess and it sort of robbed the movie of a conclusion which was a disappointment.

[Lunagel]

Where is all the music? There were several fight scenes and other dramatic scenes that were completely silent except for dialogue and sound effects. Music is necessary to draw out the emotions of the viewer and to accentuate the action. Why is there such a lack of music in this movie? It's really a huge omission.


LOL ALL THE LIGHTS WENT OUT BUT MY COMPUTER STAYED ON, THAT IS TOTALLY HOW AN UNINTERRUPTABLE POWER SUPPLY WORKS RIGHT?

START THE CAR AND GET OUT OF THERE YOU HAD LIKE A WHOLE MINUTE TO GET A HEAD START AND OH MY GOD ARE YOU SERIOUSLY RUNNING AWAY ON FOOT YOU DUMBASS I HOPE YOU DIE.

The shiny suit is all well and good, but in HD there's such a clear difference between the fighting suit and the posing suit it's kinda jarring.

Why is the secretary wearing hotpants? Why am I questioning this?


Those are the most ridiculous shoes I've ever seen. What is this, an evil organization for clowns?


Itsuki's taking this all remarkably well. I would have had, well, questions. Such as "Why didn't you call?", "What the hell is going on?", "Why didn't you contact me?", "When did you become a space sheriff", and possibly "YOU ASSHOLE WHY COULDN'T YOU PICK UP THE SPACE PHONE ONE TIME THIS WHOLE FUCKING YEAR TO TELL ME YOU WEREN'T DEAD." And don't tell me he couldn't because of orders, we clearly see that he contacts her with no permission or warning from the Director, so if he don't give a fuck, why hasn't Geki contacted her before this?

Geki, in what universe is Shelly's outfit okay for undercover snooping? Are you high?

Why would you start by trying to send a cat? Start small! Send an ant or a cockroach or something!

The Makuu cannon fodder only get ninja outfits and hair color? What a ripoff, I'd go work for Shocker.

OMG KENJI OHBA THE MOVIE CAN START NOW.

I would totally be okay with old Gavan finishing up the movie and new Gavan sitting out on the sidelines. I'm sure I'm not supposed to feel like that but I do.

Oh. No. Tooya was actually the bad guy all along. I totally didn't see that coming. What a twist. </sarcasm>

Well those restraints weren't tied very tight. You really just didn't feel like struggling at all, did you Itsuki? I have a real problem with her, she's just so much extra baggage. Her part could be played by an excitable dog as long as it didn't start to pee on everything. I'm all for giving the hero a love interest, but at least make her interesting and relatable, not the generic backstory/exposition/mcguffin person.

Yeah, sorry, can't feel anything for Tooya. Most of the time he was a jerk and a bit of a prick, and there really wasn't enough characterization for me to think of him as anything more than the generic villain. I can't even feel sorry for Geki or Fluffers there either since neither of them got too much backstory either. Honestly, the most interesting people in this movie were Shaidar, Sharivan and original Gavan, and they had like 10 minutes total.

I'm glad I watched it but I'm more glad I didn't pay 1800 yen to see it in theaters.

[PHurricane]

Witch Kiru looked like she belongs in Kyouryuuger with that white mask on her headdress.

Biggest fake out for me - given how creepy he was around Itsuki, I thought that guy at the beginning was a villain or (when his reflection doesn’t move) that he’s going to be possessed or something. Nope, he just gets killed.

It was a fun way to pass an hour-or-so of time, but nothing spectacular. It was at least more enjoyable than the two episodes of Go-Busters that I pretend don’t exist. Like a lot of the earlier comments, I have very little exposure to Metal Hero anything, so there were a bunch of points that felt like references to past works, but I couldn’t enjoy them because I had no frame of reference.

The Makuu Dimension part confused me, though. When did Geki and original Gavan get out of it? They kept falling into the red hole, and then all of a sudden Kotoha was there. Did Lizard Doubler just drop them back in the real world after he boasted he was three times stronger in the Dimension?

[Yaiba]

I'd have prefer Kenji Ohba personally trained Geki and pass the mantle to Geki, rather than having him randomly pop up in the middle of the movie and acted like they've known each other for a long time. There is no reason for Geki to be assigned the "Gavan" suit and codename if the original Gavan is still pretty much active as a special agent.

That said, I was real happy when Kenji Ohba finally busted in with the car

So before entering the Makuu Dimension, they tell Shelly to run for it. Four minutes later exiting the Makuu Dimension, they tell Shelly to run for it. So why is she even there?

Still, it was still quite an enjoyable movie, better that a lot of plot-less action movies

Side note, I was half expecting Sharivan and Shaidar to transform into GekiViolet and Birth

[takenoko]

I might be wrong about this, but I think the term special duty (tokumu 特務) is used for guys who are called in on occasion, not regular duty officers. So it's probably reasonable to assume that old Gavan is around, but maybe not doing the same job on a regular basis the way he was in his prime.

I kind of thought about this as I was translating it. I think the police knew that Tooya was the new Makuu guy. So by offering Geki the chance to be a space sheriff, they're giving him a chance to deal with his former friend.

But I guess Geki doesn't know that Tooya was the villain, so the whole thing ended up as one big coincidence anyway? It's Toei, I guess I shouldn't be scrutinizing the plot too much.

[zeta_gundam]

I microwaved my cat...

FOR SPACE!

XD

LOL ALL THE LIGHTS WENT OUT BUT MY COMPUTER STAYED ON, THAT IS TOTALLY HOW AN UNINTERRUPTABLE POWER SUPPLY WORKS RIGHT?

Because these days, the internet is more important than anything else!!

I liked the movie in general. But was it meant to be a dark movie for adults? There was like fake blood, and the ending wasn't the happiest with Tooya dying. (I would presume it's targeted at the older generation since the Metal Heroes Series has been off the air for quite some time now.) What was the rating of it in Japan when it was screening? PG-13?

My only complaint: not enough Ohba Kenji screen-time. =/

[DekaBreak]

I didn't watch this yet, But I'm strongly inclined to grab this just for KOTOHA. I don't care who she is in this - she's ShinkenYellow, Hanaori Kotoha, and that's all I need. Any Shinkenger will immediately get my attention, because the six of them won my heart back in 2009/2010.

[ViRGE]

FYI, the wrong Wiki link is on the front page. It's linking to Gokaiger vs. Gavan, rather than Gavan the Movie.

http://wiki.tvnihon.com/wiki/Kaizoku_Se ... _The_Movie

http://wiki.tvnihon.com/wiki/Space_Sher ... _the_Movie

[Barim]

Only seen the live music video with it yet so far, but one thing has me confused now.

Is it pronounced gyavan or gavan? I think Akira sings "ga", but the kana and subs say "giya/gya".

[maybetoby]

I microwaved my cat...

FOR SPACE!

Best quote ever! I liked the darker tone, it was a nice change of pace. And as always, thanks for putting this out. I know you kinda went out of your way with this one. No rest for the wicked.

[Phoenix512]

I liked the movie overall but I didn't like Dorugilan fighting the bland space fighters. They made Brighton's ship with very nice CGI but Dorugilan looks like complete crap. That maybe from the 80s but I wouldn't mind if they redesigned Dorugilan into something a bit more modern. It's clearly that the Gavan suits meant to look best in night time or dark scenery since they don't look so good in pure daylight. Apparently the silliness in the Makuu Dimension was quite common in the original series but again they could have keep the Makuu Dimension part but without the huge swords and rolling rock parts.

I felt that the original Gavan had the right amount of screen time. It's not Old Gavan's movie but the new Gavan's movie.

One more thing, Shelly must taking advice from Youko on how to dress.