This article explores this period in anime’s pre-cult history, when anime shows were subject to sometimes brutal economic and commercial applications of transnational adaptation and mutation, or to borrow a phrase from Battle of the Planets, “transmutation.” 1978 saw Gatchaman removed from its high-tech ninja roots and colonized – or, as this paper will argue, given the ongoing transnational movement of the show in an already globalized animation market, recolonized – localized into a culturally digestible American space-opera franchise. The show also revealed a pre-teen market for anime to the world (Kelts 2006), fostering fans who would become consumers of anime a decade later, leading to a re-identification and revaluing of Japanese animation in America. Battle of the Planets, colonized by local cultural tastes whilst retaining an innocuous injection of Japanese otherness, presented a digestible package of national and transnational anime conventions that inculcated a “first generation wave of anime fans with indelible childhood memories” of anime (Kelts 2006, p.16). This article will demonstrate how adaptation, through deliberate cross-cultural transmutations, can re-create franchises under new domestic banners. Through the localization of Gatchaman into Battle of the Planets, already-transnational content from Japan was appropriated and then relocated for new local and then, later, for global (re-)distribution. The focus on space-driven science-fiction tapped into the space-fantasy popularity of the recently released Star Wars (1977). ![]() Flying their transformative space-ship, the Phoenix, G-Force had each been modified with cerebonic implants that bestowed them super-powers. Where Gatchaman told the tale of five techno-ninjas defending Earth from the alien invasion of Galactor, Battle of the Planets Americanised the five orphan heroes (and re-located their base to the West coast of America), code-named them G-Force, and had their fight against the alien forces of Spectre span across the galaxy. ![]() This article argues that Sandy Frank Entertainment’s unconventional adaptation practices for transforming Tatsunoko Productions’ anime Science Ninja Team Gatchaman ( Kagaku ninjatai Gatchaman, 1972) into the American television show Battle of the Planets (1978) responded to cultural, political, and industrial tensions surrounding American children’s cartoons, and in doing so, paved the way towards a broader acceptance of anime in America. ![]() Anime franchises were not imported for the value found in their Japaneseness, but to be domesticated - transmutated and (re-)colonized- so to fit local cultural, political, and economic standards. Prior to this, throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, the transnational flow of Japanese animation to the West and specifically to the United States had met barriers, both industrial and cultural. ![]() While anime is usually produced predominantly for the country’s domestic market, international markets have developed a taste for Japanese anime over time, increasingly now in its subtitled, Japanese-language form (Pellitteri 20 Daliot-Bul 2014). Japan has enjoyed a market for animation that extends far beyond its country’s borders since the beginnings of anime.
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