User Reviews

I used to watch G-Force on Cartoon Network and loved it. Unfortunately, it disappeared off of TV for some reason. One Sunday morning, I woke up fairly early and turned on the TV and there they are...with different villains, gear, vehicles, and names? I had not yet discovered Gatchaman or Battle Of The Planets, but I quickly learned that this was not the same show. In fact, even the source material wasn't Gatchaman. This was from the sequel shows, Gatchaman II and Gatchaman Fighter. I got up early every morning to watch it whenever I could, and enjoyed every minute of it. Sadly, we only saw 15 episodes of the 65 episode series... And we never even got into the Fighter storyline. This show is definitely one of Saban's forgotten triumphs that should be revived on Jetix (ABC Family/Toon Disney).

Eagle Riders is an English dub combining the anime series Gatchaman II and Gatchaman Fighters, the two sequels to Gatchaman (which has been dubbed into Battle of The Planets and G-Force: Guardians of Space). This series, which is done by Saban instead of the usual Sandy Frank Productions, sees the Eagle Riders back in action after a new threat arises. Yeah, it still has Joe not part of the team (as the dub lists him missing in action), as the final episode of Gatchaman has him die (the last six episodes being the series' most violent, hence why they were never dubbed until the ADV release). With this series, which aired only 13 episodes in syndication as part of a block with season one of Dragonball Z, however the series has aired in full in Australia. As this is 65 episodes, some episodes of the two series it dubs are either merged with other episodes or cut entirely for various reasons.

As the Gatchaman series is known for being violent at times, the series is edited to make it kid-friendly. The main members of the enemy force (known in this dub as the Vorak) are redone to be androids to soften the violence (as well as allow some of the scenes showing their demise be shown, as well as have one of the villains from Gatchaman II transform into a villain from Gatchaman Fighters). This also affects which episodes are used, as this immediately banned the final eight episodes of Fighter due to them taking the series in a darker turn, resulting in episode 15 of the series being the final episode. Also, like BotP and G-Force before it, the characters are given different names (Ken The Eagle is known as Hunter Harris, to name one). Also, the dubbing can be corny at times.