Time Bokan OVA Review

There's a chance that some of you guys played Tatunoko vs. Capcom, and if you enjoyed playing it, you probably thought to yourself "Wow, these characters belonging to Tatsunoko are pretty interesting, I would like to see the anime they were in". Well... You're results will vary depending on who you're looking for. I would say that the ratio of anime that features the Tatsunoko characters from TVC, that have been licensed in The States, compared to those that aren't available to an english-speaking audience, is about 50/50. Gatchaman has DVD releases for its original 1970's series and 94' OVA. Casshan has its 93' OVA, live-action movie, and the recent reboot licensed over here. And Tekkaman Blade and Karas has their shows released on DVD as well. Also, I did find fan-subs for Space Knight Tekkaman and the original Neo-Human Casshan series (although as of writing, only eight episodes of the latter show have been fan-subbed). Everyone else however.... is going to be more difficult.

I could not find much belonging to the other Tatsunoko characters. I found nothing for an English translation of Gold Lightan and Ippatsu-Man. There seems to have been a VHS release for the Hurricane Polymar OVA according to eBay, but that's about it for that character. And for Yatterman, there is nothing for the original series. There do exist fan-subs for the recent remake, but only the first two episodes were done and the guy who made them seemingly dropped the project altogether. And whether the live-action movie is licensed here or not, is something I have no idea about. However, there is one thing that is related to Yatterman that was sold to the English-speaking world.

This is the DVD shown on Amazon, but the only customer who reviewed it on the site says that the grammar in the subtitles are horrible

Time Bokan: Royal Revival (or just Time Bokan if you went by the North American DVD) is a 2-episode OVA that centers around the main enemies of Yatterman, The Dorombo Gang (who were also in TVC). The two episodes in this OVA are self-contained and don't really have much connection to each other, but one of the episodes here is probably the only anime crossover with characters made by Tatsunoko. Kind of lucky that somebody decided to license this anime and give Americans the chance to experience what these Tatsunoko characters are like. But is it any good? Let's find out.

Now the Tatsunoko crossover is the second episode on this DVD, so I'm not going to look over that one first. The first episode is another crossover, though this one is with characters from Tatsunoko's Time Bokan series. I don't have a clear understanding of what exactly Time Bokan is, but my best guess is that its a string of super hero/mecha/comedy anime (similar to Super Sentai, in that each season follows a different cast and setting) where time travel seems to be a constant theme throughout the shows, and that Yatterman and Ippatsu-Man are part of this series.

Anyways, the story of this episode is that a race is being held to determine who's the best trio of villains from Time Bokan. It basically plays like an episode of Wacky Races, following The Dorombo Gang as they try to compete without the help of their member, Boyacky. Now to me, the best accomplishment a crossover can make, is to have viewers who are not familiar with the characters shown, become interested in them and view the series which they came from. In that regard, this episode doesn't really do a good job. The main problem here is that the set of villains from each of the Time Bokan shows, who are really the only characters here, are all the same and don't really have much distinction between one-another. They're basically Team Rocket with an attractive woman and her two lackeys, one skinny with a weird mustache and the other, fat and muscular. There may be differences between these teams that's noticeable in the anime they're from, but I kind of doubt that. Besides wouldn't it be more sensible to focus on the heroes in a crossover? Not saying that there can't be crossovers centered around villains, but the villains in Time Bokan are all the same. But I'm probably being to harsh here. After all, it really only focuses on The Dorombo gang. Both episodes are very comedic in tone, and there are some stuff in this episode I thought was pretty funny, but most of the jokes are pretty bad, with there being a lot "funny moments" that are either suppose to be in-jokes or Family Guy-esque jokes that are based purely on randomness (or both). Either way, they aren't funny and they just come off as being confusing. There's really nothing more for me to comment on. Like I said, it's really nothing more than an episode of Wacky Races with more of a plot, and less differences between characters.

Anyways, now we get into the episode that's got me interested, The Tatsunoko Crossover. The story in this episode follows The Dorombo Gang as they try to steal "The Basterd Child of Tatsunoko", a statue found in "Tatsunoko Land", but the group has a little trouble as the inhabitants of Tatunoko Land have a bit of a problem with people stealing what's essentially this world's version of The Statue of Liberty. As a jumping on point to Yatterman, this episode does a better job than the first one was at introducing Time Bokan, showing us some of the stuff that's usually done by it's main cast of characters, while also showing a bit of progress in the lives these people to entertain existing fans, such as showing that Yatterman-1 and 2 are married and are now in the list of couples who look more like a pair of siblings, rather than a pair of lovers.

Separated at birth? I certainly hope not.

I have to admit, I went into this with higher expectations than I should've had. I thought that this would reveal and explain that the Tatsunoko characters were living in the same universe and shared the same continuity, but that just shows how much of a comic book dork I am, because its one of those crossovers that has these characters here for fan-appeal, and nothing more really. At least that's what I think, because with what I know about some of the Tatsunoko characters here, and I seriously doubt that Galactor's conquest of Earth, The Robot Uprising, and The Waldarians' invasion of Earth all happened with Gatchaman, Casshan, and Tekkaman living so close to each other and in the same time frame. I suppose you could make an explanation to try and tie all these people and events together to make it resemble what's shown in this episode, but that's just putting more thought into this than the actual creators did. The jokes in this one are a lot better than in the previous episode, with a most of the wacky stuff actually having some context to what's going on in the story, and left me with a few chuckles, even when it came to stuff that was just bat-shit insane, such as when The Dorombo Gang used their "Sailor Mun Mun" mecha to seduce Yatterman's dog mecha.

I've seen worst things that were meant to turn people on

Now to the question of whether Royal Revival is good or not? To me it's just okay. Out of the two episodes on this OVA, the second one is really the only one that's pretty decent, with the first being very 'bleh'. There is a dub, and coming from somebody who doesn't really notice bad dubbing, it means a lot when I say that the dubbing is pretty bad. However, I think the bad dubbing actually makes a lot of the jokes funnier than if you were to watch it through reading the subtitles. The DVD is very cheap, and you can find new copies that costs less than $5 Dollars. So if Royal Revival interests you, you really don't have much to lose.