Forgotten Anime: “Lensman”

Distributor: Lumivision/Streamline Pictures (USA)
Original Year of Release: 1984
English Video Release: 1991, Laserdisc, NTSC, Japanese Dialogue with optional English Dub and English “Closed Captioned” Subtitles (English dubbed NTSC and PAL VHS versions also released)
Japanese Title: SF Shinseiki Lensman
Runtime: 107 minutes

Most of Streamline Pictures' catalogue has been reissued over the years, except for a couple of exceptions. The most glaring one is the 1984 anime adaption of American’s sci-fi author E. E. “Doc” Smith’s “Lensman” series. Its absence in the current US anime video market is quite curious considering that many fans still fondly remember the film from its original US theatrical, video and TV broadcast releases. I suspect the film’s lack of a re-release may have to do with the estate of E. E. “Doc” Smith blocking it, but I have no evidence to prove this. I do know that the estate E. E. “Doc” Smith did not receive final script approval for the film and weren’t happy with the finished product. Strangely this did not stop any English language versions of the film being released in the west during the 1990’s.

Through a series of on screen title cards, the film explains that in the 25th century, humanity has spread out into the galaxy and come in contact with various alien civilisations. However not all contact has been peaceful. The Boskone race is currently in midst of conquering the universe, slowly but steadily taking over planets and turning them into colonies. In response to this, the Galactic Patrol has built a new spacecraft, the Britannia, in order to capture plans for top secret weapons built by the Boskone. This mission was carried out by a Lensman; a group of people who are all linked by the mysterious power of a “lens” somewhere on their body. Having successfully captured the Boskone’s plans, the Lensman in the Britannia flees with a fleet of Boskone ships in hot pursuit.

Meanwhile on the planet Mqueie, a young man, Kimball Kinnison, lives with his father, Gary Kinnison along with their robot helper Sol, on a large industrial farm. Kimball, or Kim for short, has decided that the farming life is not for him and plans to head to Earth, hitching a ride with a family friend, the alien humanoid Peter van Buskirk. However when Kim visits Buskirk’s ship in orbit around the planet, he is none too pleased with the rundown state it is in. Regardless, he still decides to leave. Gary invites Buskirk and Kim down for one last meal before they head off, but before they can set off to the planet’s surface Sol advises them that a large spacecraft has come out of hyperspace and is due to crash into the middle of the farm, wiping out everything and killing Gary. Kim immediately sets off to save his father. He flies his small personal craft to the out of control ship, which happens to be the Britannia, and boards. Inside the cockpit he finds a man unconscious and slumped over the controls. With the help of his father, Kim manages to slow the descent of the ship and lands it, albeit a little roughly, in the fields away from the farm.

Kim drags the unconscious and injured man out of the ship who awakes and asks him to relay important information to Admiral Haynes of the Galactic Patrol about the whereabouts of the Boskone’s “Devil Planet” which will determine the fate of the galaxy. The man then somehow transfers the lens on his hand to Kim’s hand and then loses consciousness again. Buskirk and Gary arrive and Kim explains what has happened which has them in disbelief. Buskirk checks on the unconscious man only to discover he has probably been dead for around two hours. Buskirk and Gary are mystified as a Lensman shouldn’t be able to transfer his lens to anyone else. Meanwhile the Boskone have reached the planet and begin to destroy it. Realising that Kim has a very important mission to complete, he orders Buskirk and Kim to board the Britannia and head straight to Galactic Patrol HQ while he acts as decoy in Buskirk’s ship. Kim refuses to obey as he fears his father will die. Gary knocks him out so Buskirk can carry him aboard and escape. The plan is a sucsess and the pair escape. However as Kim feared, his father is killed by the Boskone, who also obliterate the planet.

Later Buskirk tells Kim that his father was instrumental in founding the Galactic Patrol. Buskirk and Kim later discovers they aren’t the only people aboard the ship and mistakenly attack several members of Galactic Patrol who have boarded the Britannia looking for the now dead Lensman. Upon realising that Kim has a lens on his hand, the Galactic Patrol members question him. However they are interrupted by another attack by the Boskone who have caught up with the ship. The Galactic Patrol commander orders his subordinate, Clarissa “Chris” MacDougal to pilot the ship with Buskirk and Kim back to HQ while they fight off the Boskone in their ship. But the Galactic Patrol ship is destroyed. Chris tries to contact HQ but her line of communication is cut off. Chris manages to outrun the Boskone but the Britannia is heavily damaged and they are forced to leave hyperspace.

They land on the planet Delgon where the trio are attacked and abducted by the local plant life. While Chris and Buskirk are spirited away, Kim is saved by a fellow Lensman called Worsel, an alien of the Velantian race who has wings reminiscent of a bat and the ability to fly. Worsel teaches Kim how to use his lens properly. He also explains that the Chris and Buskirk have been abducted by the Overlords of Delgon, a group of snail like creatures who inhabit the planet and have been pacified by the Boskone using an addictive drug called Thionite. With Worsel’s help, Kim plans to free Chris and Buskirk.

As I mentioned in the introduction, this film is based upon E. E. “Doc” Smith’s “Lensman” series which originally began as series of short stories, first in the science fiction anthology “Amazing Stories” in 1934 as “Triplanetary” and in the late 1930’s to early 1940’s in “Astounding Stories” magazine. During the 1950’s, Smith retooled the stories into several novels. The series has a wealth of fantastical stories and elements such as Kim Kinnison being a product of a Atlantean eugenics program to create super humans and Chris who becomes his wife, coming from a similar program and has children who become immortal. In light of that, it seems really odd that the script writers chose a rather dull and safe story line for this adaptation. The film only uses elements from the novels and creates a story which bares little resemblance to any of Smith’s Lensman stories. In fact the story feels quite similar to “Star Wars: A New Hope” with Kim relegated to being a son of a farmer who wants to leave his home planet for adventures, Chris becoming a Princess Leia look alike, a R2-D2 like robot called Sol and the evil empire of the Boskone who want to take over the universe and destroy planets with as much ease as a Death Star.

There’s even a completely new character created for the film, DJ Bill, a name taken from the “Gray Lensman” book where Kim goes undercover as a Thionite addict under the name Wild Bill. In the anime version, the DJ Bill character is an aging DJ at a club frequented by aliens who takes in Chris and Kim and hides them from the Boskone forces who are hunting them down. The changes are quite frankly mystifying. Japanese publisher Kodansha was part of the production committee for the film and while they published several manga adaptations of the anime, there is no evidence they requested changes in the plot of the film. While some E. E. “Doc” Smith fan sites claim that the estate tried to sue the Japanese film production committee, I can find no evidence to support this. However Smith’s daughter, Verna Smith Trestrail, did successfully stop one US based comic book company from releasing English translations of Kodansha’s manga adaptation of the film.

The film was co-directed by Kazuyuki Hirokawa (“Arcadia of My Youth: Endless Orbit SSX”) and in his very first directorial role, Yoshiaki Kawajiri (“Wicked City”, “Ninja Scroll”), who also created the film’s storyboards and secondary character designs. The film was produced by Madhouse and for a film made in 1984, the animation still looks pretty good. Most of it is quite fluid and there are some excellent action sequences, mostly choreographed by Kawajiri. The alien designs for the Boskone are also a highlight. In fact most of the alien designs look quite unique, with the exception of some rather generic looking designs in the disco sequences. The film also makes extensive use of computer graphics. The same Cray Supercomputer that was used for effects on “2010: The Year We Make Contact”, also made the same year as this film, was used in this anime adaptation. “Lensman” opens with a rather impressive (for 1984 standards) three minute CG sequence with the Britannia being fired upon by a Boskone fleet. In all, there is approximately 10 or so minutes of computer animation in the film. Though most of it has not aged well, surprisingly the majority of it was created by the Japan Computer Graphics Lab and two other Japanese companies. Additional animation is credited to the Computer Graphic Laboratory at the New York Institute of Technology, who erroneously gets most of the credit for the animation in many reviews and articles about this film.

The film has received two English dubs; one via Harmony Gold in 1987 (released as “Lensman - Secret of the Lens”, which to this day I can’t find any evidence of any English language home video release anywhere) and Streamline Pictures’ 1990 theatrical release which had a subsequent home video release in 1991 in the US and in the UK and Australia in the years following. The version I have is a bilingual laserdisc released by Streamline Pictures through Lumivision. English subtitles for the original Japanese version can be accessed via Closed Captioned subtitles, which I couldn’t use due to the fact the disc was NTSC and I’d need an expensive decoder to see them on my TV (which is primarily made to receive a PAL format TV broadcasts). Instead I watched the English dub. The acting is relatively passable with the usual cast that appears in most Streamline dubs including Kerrigan Mahan, Edie Mirman, Gregory Snegoff, Michael Reynolds, Steve Kramer and Tom Wyner. Surprisingly most of the cast in the Streamline dub played the same roles in the 1987 Harmony Gold dub. Lumivision’s laserdisc is also unusual as the Japanese track is digital stereo while the English dub track has been regulated to the lower quality secondary analogue track.

Summing up, this is quite a mediocre adaptation of such a wild and imaginative science fiction series. The story is pretty bog standard and deviates little from most sci-fi films of the era. While the animation and designs are fantastic, the computer animated scenes have not stood the test of time and look rather creaky. The English adaptation and scripting are also a little bland, though this is probably due to the original script. I know this film does have its fans, however I’m not one of them. Perhaps one day a company like Discotek will re-release the film on DVD or blu-ray, however I suspect the estate of E. E. “Doc” Smith won’t let that happen. If you want to watch the film legitimately, the Streamline Pictures dub of the movie is pretty easy to find on eBay on VHS, in both PAL and NTSC versions. A follow up 25 episode anime TV series (directed by Kazuyuki Hirokawa) was broadcast a few months after this feature film. Harmony Gold made a compilation feature out of four episodes of this series called “Lensman - Power of the Lens” which did get a UK VHS release. I’ll be looking this tape at future date.