Anime Profile: Starzinger

Starzinger truly is a classic sci-fi anime show. Made and released in the 70s, it was heavily edited down from 73 episodes to 23 episodes to be part of the Force Five anthology series, a collection of five different sci-fi anime shows that aired in the U.S. during the late 70s and early 80s. Each show of the Force Five series would air on a specific day of the week, and Starzinger, known as Spaceketeers, aired on Wednesdays.

The story follows Princess Aurora and her quest to restore balance to the universe. To do this, she must travel to the great planet in the center of the galaxy, as this planet emanates an energy force which at one time maintained peace throughout the galaxy, but has now grown weak. Without this energy, cells throughout the galaxy become mutated causing peaceful aliens to turn evil and destructive. And only Princess Aurora can restore this energy.

Sounds epic! Before she sets out on her quest she is assigned a guardian, a hot-headed cyborg in named Jan Kugo (Jesse Dart in the Spaceketeers version), and she is told that on her quest she will find two other cyborg guardians that will assist in her journey. These turn out to be Don Haka and Sir Djorgo. Each of the cyborgs has a different color uniform, with Kugo being red, Haka being green, and Djorgo being blue. And then the princess is in pink, of course.

On August 20th, 2013 a heavily edited version of the show was released on DVD as a 3-movie collection called Starzinger: The Movie Collection. This release has different dubbing than that of the Spaceketeers release and uses the original Japanese names rather than the names used for the English-dubbed Spaceketeers.