Travelers: Dimensional Police released

Various tokusatsu shows besides Kamen Rider and Sentai
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Travelers: Dimensional Police released

Post by takenoko »

Wiki: http://wiki.tvnihon.com/wiki/Travelers: ... nal_Police

Wiki: http://wiki.tvnihon.com/wiki/Rebellions

So it's a decent enough movie. Like Shi15uya, it starts off as confusing at first. It's bizarre enough to keep you interested in the mystery, but not too long that it overstays its welcome. The multiple dimension stuff premise has been done before, but it's fine.

The practical action: Pretty good! Just what you'd expect from Sakamoto Koichi.

The CGI: It's super bad! Guess that's what happens when you don't have Toei funding your special effects, eh? Also there's all this Chinese (Taiwanese?) stuff that's just thrown in there. There's various stuff that looks really cheap, and I'm wondering if that's the Taiwan side of things.

Another Nao shower scene?

It's fun seeing the guest actors who show up. Like Sanae Hitomi or the Metal Dopant guy or Gentle from Kyouryuugers. There's a few bits that annoyed me, but there were also some twists that surprised me. A decent enough action flick for the most part.

Edit:
You know, it's pretty weird when the main cast speak Japanese, and all the extras speak Taiwanese. It's particularly jarring when the dad and the girl with the disabled legs are talking. The dad is talking in Japanese, then the daughter answers back in Taiwanese (with no subtitles). That's super weird!

The TN subtitles are an edited version of the DVD captions. I'm really curious as to who did the translation for these. For the most part, it's pretty spot on. It's not the usual broken English stuff that you get from the rare English subtitles on a Japanese DVD.
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Re: Travelers: Dimensional Police released

Post by PHurricane »

This movie left me feeling rather irritated by the end. I didn't think the action was that great, and the story was entirely predictable. I didn't think the CGI was that bad, though.

It wasn't until the second watch-through that I realized who Gentle and Gunpei were playing. Sakamoto really likes working with certain actors and actresses, doesn't he?

I'm glad you pointed out that the little girl was speaking Taiwanese. Even if I don't always understand the words, I've gotten very good over the years at identifying Japanese by ear, and it was driving me nuts why the girl's responses sounded so strange to me.
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Re: Travelers: Dimensional Police released

Post by ViRGE »

That was, uh, humm. I'm not sure I can sufficiently describe my reaction to Travelers.

On the one hand it was exactly what it said on the tin: a budget action flick with a lot of skin and blood. No more and no less. I agree with Takenoko that the action felt well done - a trademark of Koichi works - with Koichi and Nao Nagasawa being an especially productive combination. She kicks all kinds of ass, figuratively and literally, so it's always fun to see her showing off. Which speaking of Sentai alums, it was cool to see so many in this movie. It was a genuine Toei teamup, right down to the JAE stunties. And Gentle as as the big-bad is outright amusing.

On the other hand the plot was insipid at best; not that I had high expectations here, but Travelers didn't fly very high. "Zordon did it" is funny enough, though why he created the robot at all is a mystery to me given the obvious risk of backfiring. The CGI was also amazingly weak, as has been noted. It's merely functional, rather than seamless with the world and capable of engrossing the audience.

I'm hung up on the amount of skin though. It admittedly was exactly as advertised, so I can't say it was unexpected. Still, it's Nao Nagasawa wearing practically nothing and slathered in oil for the sake of having her wearing practically nothing while slathered in oil (or soap, or blood as the case may be). It's uncomfortably low brow and a bit awkward (especially since the other female characters all wore more clothing).

Anyhow, for what it was it was okay. If indeed this was originally going to be a Toei project then it's a shame we didn't get to see that instead. Toei's hardly perfect, but having their backing would have almost certainly brought up the quality a notch or two.
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Re: Travelers: Dimensional Police released

Post by gh0stwrit3r »

I did not know that Rinko (from Wizard) was the witch until halfway through. Her makeup kinda made it hard to tell. It was a great nod to KR Wizard. Gunpei was all serious and stuff, he was really good and I had some trouble figuring out which toku I saw him from. Hitomi Sanae, 1/3 of the wipeout trio and veteran stunt actress had speaking lines! cool. Nao is, well, Nao. Ayumi-san must have felt overshadowed somewhat by Nao's brand of kickassery, but she had her moments. Gentle is a pretty prominent bad guy actor in the B-movie category of films (e.g.: Machine Girl), so it was not surprising that he'd be the bad guy here too.

All in all, it was a great toku film filled with great toku stars and totally deserves a watch.
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Re: Travelers: Dimensional Police released

Post by takenoko »

>Anyhow, for what it was it was okay. If indeed this was originally going to be a Toei project then it's a shame we didn't get to see that instead. Toei's hardly perfect, but having their backing would have almost certainly brought up the quality a notch or two.

Yeah, totally agreed. Speaking of which, Next Media Animation were the guys who were doing the Taiwanese CGI news clips for a bit. I used to follow their stuff till their site became difficult to navigate. Their CGI was never exactly mind blowing quality to begin with. This certainly was no Rebellions.
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Re: Travelers: Dimensional Police released

Post by Revorse »

It wasn't bad. Something nice to watch with if you have an hour to kill.
Nothing confusing or particularly bad about the movie.
Maybe something I just wasn't paying attention to or something but after the first Generator died The Street was opened. So why did digital face need to keep killing them? If it was too keep The Street open then why are Yui and Other Ai still dimension police in the end?
Also why did Yui act as if Other Ai were her bestie when her real friend died only 5 mins ago? That's just stuff I thought was weird.
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Re: Travelers: Dimensional Police released

Post by takenoko »

It was because the Generators had the power to go through dimensions, thus being able to go after Brain to stop him (Which is what the Fairy World girl does at the end)
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Re: Travelers: Dimensional Police released

Post by Phoenix512 »

As for why Yui treats the other Ai as her best friend is because she has the memories of the original and also she has been with her for some time now. It would be very weird not to treat her as your best friend because she's just a replacement.
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Re: Travelers: Dimensional Police released

Post by JujinSan »

I thought the movie was okay. i immediately picked out Gunpei as Ken (the smile gave him away lol) but did not notice that Kouta(HurricaneYellow) was the informant or that Gentle was the bad guy (the glasses make his head thinner). there is a comparison with I,Robot: Chief Brain = VIKI. Both needed to eliminate someone to cover up what they were doing. its a shame we didnt get Rebellions as that trailer looked awesome.
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Re: Travelers: Dimensional Police released

Post by Revorse »

Phoenix512 wrote:As for why Yui treats the other Ai as her best friend is because she has the memories of the original and also she has been with her for some time now. It would be very weird not to treat her as your best friend because she's just a replacement.
Really? interesting. I felt like it'd be the opposite. Knowing you're just someone else replacement would suck. Even if you are identical in just about everything.
Then on the other hand. Memories and shared experiences are part of what makes someone a friend anyhow. So if all the memories are there what's to stop them from essentially just picking up the friendship. Which is what they did in this case.

this got my brain stirring a little bit.
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Re: Travelers: Dimensional Police released

Post by jolly_old_saint »

Are you sure this isn't zebra city miniskirt police?
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Re: Travelers: Dimensional Police released

Post by Lunchboxx »

I canot verify if my name is still in the credits or not seeing as how I cant watch the movie at this time. But I just wanna say that this is was first project to help QC with, and I'm glad I could help crank this out as soon as we could. Once I can get a new power supply for my computer (using a windows 98 atm, yikes it's old and slow), I'm hoping to get back to Qc'ng.

As for the movie, I rather enjoyed it. Any form of media that stars Ayumi Kinoshita is always a plus in my book seein as how it was her who got me into liking asian girls in the first place.

CGI was kinda bad, but that is to be expepcted for these kinds of things.

For some reason the whole movie reminded me of the Marvel comics Exiles series in regards to alternate dimensions and such.

Only part about the movie I kinda felt was uneeded was her semi-stay in Retro world when the pet stre family found her. Felt to much like a scene for a amnesia person, not for a person who's recovering from a injury. But maybe that's just me.

Overall I really liked it, and it hold a nice place with me as being the first thing I helped work on.
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Re: Travelers: Dimensional Police released

Post by novem15er »

I really wanted to see this movie since I first saw the trailer. Because Ayumi Kinoshita and Nao Nagasawa is <3

The movie somewhat reminded me of one season of Doctor Who because of the concepts of Dimensional Travel, Other selves from other dimensions etc. The first toku actor I noticed was Metal Dopant. The visual effects are very different than those in the Rebellions trailer but it was worth a watch especially for fans of Nao and Ayumi :)
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Re: Travelers: Dimensional Police released

Post by Kamen Rider Gumo »

Just got around to watching this, and I really enjoyed it. A few of the plot twists (like the connection between the informant, the missing investigator and the robot) you can see coming from a certain point, but the story is pretty good and the acting and fight scenes are Sakamoto's usual top-notch work. The CG is pretty bad, yes, but still better than "Texas Chainsaw 3D", which had a much bigger budget. Overall, 8/10.
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Re: Travelers: Dimensional Police released

Post by ViRGE »

http://www.tvnihon.com/node/2302

Well that's unexpected. I'm quite surprised someone licensed this. It's niche (and late) to the point that I'm not sure how they expect it to sell well. Unless they got the rights for dirt cheap.
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