Comments on: Battle of the Planets Card Game

By: Tim H

Tim H — Sat, 16 Apr 2016 19:21:51 +0000

Funky Japanese English loan word names (Gatchaman, Go-Lion, et al.) are funny.

I guess you could say "Shogun Warriors" was America doing the same, but "shogun" was already a known word in English, and "warrior" explained all we needed to know.

It would be the same if "Thunder Cats" had been "Kaminari Neko", and nobody particularly cared what that meant.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 05 Feb 2015 01:47:10 +0000

Japanese has three seperate alphabets.

Kanji - which are the complex symbols that can mean entire words or concepts

Katakana - which is a phonetic alphabet that is designated for foreign/non-Japanese words only

And Hiragana which is a phonetic alphabet for all Japanese words.

The larger symbols appear to be Katakana, with their Hiragana counterparts in smaller text beside it.

So the upper left card, reads from top to bottom, GaTsuChiYaMaN, or Gatchaman. The Next word is Japanese as it's in Hiragana and reads WaReRaNo, which I'm not sure what it means. Then the third word is IKuZo.

The second lower card reads GiYaRaKuTa, then SeMaRu, then UShiRoNi. These are all Hirigana so they're Japanese words.

By: F-ZeroOne

F-ZeroOne — Wed, 04 Feb 2015 19:07:44 +0000

Heh, Zoltar confused the hell out of me as well when I first saw the infamous episode where his flowing blonde locks are revealed – it was literally decades before I found out the answer to that one!

I think the cards are intended as a game of sorts as well, I guess like modern-day "educational" software…?

By: Plaidstallions

Plaidstallions — Tue, 03 Feb 2015 13:46:39 +0000

Yeah, I just don't know what I'd call Zoltar otherwise.

Thanks on the intell, I've seen other versions of these cards but just largely assumed they were a game of sorts.

By: F-ZeroOne

F-ZeroOne — Tue, 03 Feb 2015 13:40:55 +0000

Hi – I'm not an expert but I believe what you have here is a Japanese-vocabulary training card set for young children, to help teach them the Japanese language. A similar set can be seen here:

http://blog.beforemario.com/2013/11/nintendo-iroha-karuta-part-1.html

I'd also just like to point out that I'm not certain Zoltar *strictly* counts as transgendered; in the original "Gatchaman" (spoiler alert!) he could actually change gender at will…!