Space Warriors

Original Title: 超人ロック ロ−ドレオン
Romanized: Choujin Rokku - Lord Leon
Literal: Superman Locke

Plot Synopsis

Locke is a mysterious super-powerful psychic who has come to the aid of humanity in times of need before. He's living the quiet life on some quiet planet these days, apparently courting the pretty, blind schoolteacher Flora. Somewhere far away, another powerful psychic, Lord Leon, is busy being a pirate and thoroughly enraging The Great Zog (yes, seriously), head of the rather wealthy Astro, Inc. When a government agent shows up to convince Locke to maybe stop some sort of interplanetary war between Lord and Great, he reluctantly agrees, but there's all manner of melodrama awaiting once he gets caught up in a generation-long interfamily feud.

Quick Review

Rating: 0.5 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2006-09-03

Space Warriors is the rough anime equivalent of a can of SPAM. Start with raw material--Locke the Superman: Lord Leon in this case--that is of debatable quality to begin with. Then chop it up and mash it together into an almost unrecognizable and entirely unpalatable blob of mysterymeat. Finally, serve with a big, thick slice of cheese. The crude, old-school animation and wild-yet-generic sci-fi/psychic supermen plot would've made the series hard enough to stomach in its original form, but the hack-job of a dub called Space Warriors is so bad it hurts to watch--grade-school scriptwriting and positively butchered sound editing abound. There are a few blatant rip-offs (sorry, homages) of classic sci-fi that might get a chuckle if you catch them, but that's the extent of it.

If you ever run across it, you can hold up Space Warriors as a prime example of what anime used to be in the US: Mediocre source material made far worse by choppy editing, random script changes, and terrible dubbing. The only thing this abomination is good for is prime material for mockery with friends.

US DVD Review

There is (thankfully) no DVD available, nor will there ever be, as USM's license has expired.

Content Guide

It's moderately violent, but some of the goofy dialogue changes try to hide it. I'd call it 10-up.

Violence: 2 - There's actually a lot of destruction, but its largely offscreen.

Nudity: 1 - Nothing of note.

Sex/Mature Themes: 1 - Some vague mature themes, but nothing notable made it through translation.

Language: 1 - Nothing significant.

Notes and Trivia

Note that Space Warriors is based on the 3-part OAV series Locke the Superman: Lord Leon, not the original Locke the Superman film. The movie version was, however, available in the US (titled either Locke the Superman or Locke the Superpowered) from Best Film and Video, though the treatment was just as poor.

Availability

Was available in the US from US Manga Corps on dubbed VHS, but has been out of print for a long time.

Looking to buy? Try these stores: RightStuf (search) | AnimeNation | Akemi's a(nime)Store