Forgotten Anime: “Voltus 5”

Distributor: Hi-Tops Video (USA)
Original Year of Release: 1977
English Video Release: 1983, NTSC VHS, English Dubbed
Japanese Title: Super Electromagnetic Machine Voltes V (Chodenji Machine Voltes V)
Runtime: 72 mins

 An alien invasion force from the planet Boazainia prepares its attack on planet Earth. Although every single nation on Earth in conjunction with the Space Defence Force bravely tries to fight the invaders off, they are soundly defeated by superior Boazainian weaponry. However at a secret earth base, five young people, Steve, Bert, Little John, Jaime and Mark are in engaged in training using various combat techniques such as shooting from moving motorbikes, martial arts, horse riding, ninja techniques and battle with sharks (very useful when fighting an alien invasion). The leader of the project, Dr Smith along with Mrs Armstrong, Steve, Bert and Little John’s mother, suddenly order them to cease all training. A little miffed at how no one has actually explained what this training was for, nor why it was suddenly cancelled, the five teenagers demand to know what is going on. They are soon taken to an island, which opens up to reveal a secret base. Inside they are shown the Earth’s ultimate weapon; Voltus 5, a huge humanoid robot built in secret from plans by Steve, Bert and Little John’s father, Dr Armstrong, to stop the Boazainian invasion. Much to their surprise, the five teens are quickly ordered on board the giant robot which separates into five separate ships. Though they initially have difficulty pilot their separate craft, they soon are instinctively able to control them as they have apparently had flight simulation training.

The Voltus 5 team’s very first mission is to destroy the Boazainian saucers that are devastating the planet. However the leader of the Boazainian invasion, Prince Zardos, has taken note of the Earth’s fight back with a giant robot, and sends out one of his beast fighter robots to attack Space Defence Force headquarters. The Voltus 5 team responds and after a long fight transforms into their robot form and destroys the beast fighter with their laser sword. This enrages Prince Zardos who vows to search for Voltus 5’s base and attack them. Later as Mrs Armstrong visit’s her husband’s grave site, she recalls back to a time many years ago when her husband took off to contact the planet Boazainia in an attempt to persuade them to not to invade. If he didn’t return, he asked that Dr Smith initiate the Voltus 5 plan. He also told his wife to consider him to be dead. However on the planet Boazainia, Dr Armstrong is actually alive and well. Along with a sympathetic Boazainian general who is against the Emperor’s regime, a resistance force has been formed amongst the slaves on the planet and is gaining momentum. Finally the rebellion is about to take place. At midnight a large group of slaves including Dr Armstrong forcibly take two dozen Boazainian fighter saucers and begin to navigate their way back to Earth.

On Earth, Prince Zardos is ropable with underlings lack of progress at defeating Voltus 5. He sends out a new beast fighter robot, the Super Hornet. Once again the Voltus 5 team fights off the new menace. And although it seems impervious to all attacks, Voltus 5 takes it out with its laser sword. Prince Zardos’s next plan is to take Commander Robinson of the Space Defence Force hostage and to destroy the Voltus 5 base with the Space Defence Force missiles. Cleverly disguised as delivery men, a platoon of Boazainian soldiers manages to infiltrate the headquarters of the Space Defence force telling the guards on duty they have a present for Commander Robinson from his daughter Jamie of the Voltus 5 team. The commander thanks his daughter via telephone for the present just before the Boazainian soldiers begin their attack. However as Commander Robinson is a ninja, just like his daughter, he throws shurikens at his attackers and escapes to an underground floor below via a secret passage under his desk. After the base is under their control, the Boazainian soldiers fire wave after wave of missiles at the Voltus 5 base, only to have Voltus 5 destroy them all. But the attack doesn't stop there. Another beast fighter robot, a falcon, attacks Voltus 5. Knowing that her father is in danger, Jamie takes off to save him leaving her team mates in the lurch. She eventually saves him, but he is angry that she left the battlefield. However he gives her new orders to capture the leader of the Boazainian soldiers who have invaded the base. But the leader escapes and Jamie returns to her team to finish off the Falcon beast robot with an injured leg. She has learned her lesson about teamwork.

Sometime later, Dr Armstrong and their remaining group of rebels from the planet Boazainia arrive in the solar system, headed for Earth. However the Space Defence Force mistakenly identifies the saucers as another Boazainian attack and send out Voltus 5 to deal with them. In the meantime Dr Armstrong and his band of rebels have to deal with a Boazainian fleet that has just arrived. Many of the saucers that escaped are destroyed taking the rebels lives with them. Soon Dr Armstrong is eventually captured by the Boazainians. When Voltus 5 finally arrives on the scene, they are confused to find a beast fighter and a Boazainian mobile base instead of an invasion fleet. While they take down the beast fighter in their usual fashion with the laser sword, the Boazainian mobile base commander throws up more confusion when he uses Dr Armstrong as a hostage. Naturally Dr Armstrong’s sons, Steve, Bert and Little John are quite surprised at the fact their father seems to have survived. However they have doubts as if it just a plot by the Boazainian commander to trick them into surrendering and that the Dr Armstrong is just a robot made to look like their father. They may end up killing their long lost father just to defeat the Boazainian mobile base.

 “Voltus 5”, more commonly known as “Voltes V”, has had a number of adaptations in English and quite a large and faithful following amongst English speaking fans, though mostly those in the Philippines. The original version of “Voltes V” was broadcast during 1977 and into 1978 in Japan and is the second series in the “Robot Romance Trilogy” which also included “Combattler V” and “Daimos”. Like the previous entry in the series, “Combattler V”, its core cast was made up of a five person team. By this point in the 1970’s, the five person team (pioneered by "Gatchaman" in the early 1970's) had become a staple in Japanese pop culture, both in anime and tokusatsu such as Toei’s long running Super Sentai series which began in 1975 with “Gorenger”. Tadao Nagahama, who would go on to direct the first half of “Rose of Versailles”, was the director of “Voltes V”. Supposedly Nagahama’s research into the French revolution for “Versailles” led him to work in elements of revolution into the final few episodes of “Voltes V”. While the TV show never made it in a syndicated format in the US in the 1970’s, its toys did in the form of Mattel's Shogun Warriors toy line.

The show’s first English adaptation was in the very late 1970’s in the Philippines of all places. An incredibly popular show in the Philippines, it spawned a huge array of merchandise exclusive to the region such as comic books and even covers of the show’s main theme song. However its success was also its downfall. President Ferdinand Marcos personally ordered the show off the air in 1978 with the official reason being due to its violent content. However a rumour circulated within the country and fandom of the show that the real reason was the fact the ending had the people of the Boazainian Empire revolting and overthrowing their dictator. Hey, you don’t want to give the public any ideas now! However I’ve read that there is a more realistic reason why it was taken off air. Ferdinand Marcos’ two government owned TV stations were being whipped in the ratings by the privately owned TV station that aired “Voltes V”. This lead Marcos to ban several top rating TV shows such as “Voltes V” and “Charlie’s Angels” with the excuse that he believed that the violent content in the shows had a negative effect on children (a nonsense argument still used by conservative groups today). Well, I suppose you can do whatever you like when you’re a dictator.

The Philippines English dub of this TV show eventually made its way out of the country via tape trading and led to it being viciously flogged as bootleg fodder for a the best part of two decades in the USA. As a result of nostalgia, the show made a return in the 1990’s in the Philippines with a legit VCD release and a follow up compilation movie called “Voltes V: The Liberation” in 1999, which was made up of the final five episodes cut from the original broadcast. “Voltus 5”, the version being reviewed here, is a different kettle of fish altogether. Although it uses exactly the same character names as the Philippines English dub, it is a completely brand new dub seemingly recorded in the US. I suspect that the US production company, 3B Productions (best known for “Tranzor Z”, the 1985 English adaptation of “Mazinger Z”), either sublicensed the dub from the Philippines and weren’t happy with it, and decided to re dub it, or Toei considered the names from the Philippines dub to be the official English names for the cast. This compilation, which runs a short 72 minutes, is edited from four episodes, 1, 2, 9 and 18, of the original 40 episode series. Like a lot of compilation movies this makes the flow of the story a little bit jerky. Also with that many episodes cut, there is a whole lot of story missing which leads to some gaps in logic. For example in a latter part of the tape, Little John suddenly appears with a robot octopus sitting on top of his helmet. It is never explained in this tape the whole back story of the robot Octo-1 (Takko in the Japanese version) which makes his appearance rather perplexing to an audience who have only seen this compilation.

“Adequate” is probably the best way to describe the dub. I've certainly heard a lot worse, though not much worse. Obviously professional actors were used, but I think they were watching the clock a bit rather than concentrating on giving a stellar performance. Let's face really, is some two bit actor going to really put that much effort into dubbing “some Asian kid's cartoon”? Plus this was the early 1980's, not the early 2000's anime boom. The dialogue and scripting isn’t all that great either. In short the dub is functional and listenable. You really can't expect much more than that. The release of this tape was only limited to a VHS release in the US and a highly obscure release by Video Classics in Australia. As a child I do recall seeing a lot of Video Classics releases in my local video store, but I never saw this tape. I have the US tape. Although “Super Robot” shows from the 1970's are deliberately over the top and melodramatic, they sure are a lot of fun. But the editing, while professionally done and mostly seamless, really doesn't help the flow of the story and the acting is only so-so. Though I enjoyed this tape, Discotek Media have recently announced they will be releasing the series as a subtitled only Blu-ray, which I think I will enjoy much more than this badly dubbed and edited compilation.