Saw this once overseas on AFN back in ‘87 Been looking for it ever since. Thought I was nuts when I watched Secret of the Lens and confused the two. Thank you soo much!
I think the whole Lensman animation started as a japanese TV show and was later re-edited as a full length film by Harmony Gold, when they've brought it to western audiences. There were 2 movies in the series, each with its own plot (they aren't sequels): Power of the Lens & Secret of the Lens, both of which you can now watch on youtube. As to how to get it... well, check my other posts here :)
Yes, but the "Power of the Lens" film is basically just a heavily edited & English dubbed compilation of 4 out of the 25 episodes of the "Galactic Patrol Lensman" series aired in Japan. The other episodes never received an English dub.
Thank you for the answer I wanted to ask. This version here isn't like the other movie I watched. How would I be able to find the whole movie? Even subtitles version would be great.
Actually, the first thing to come out in Japan was the movie itself called "SF Shinseki Lensman" (SF New Century Lensman). That film was dubbed by Harmony Gold as "Lensman: Secret of the Lens". A TV series would follow shortly after the 1984 movie under the name "Galactic Patrol Lensman", which several episodes of it were edited together for this compilation film known as "Power of the Lens".
To be fair, the ORIGINAL Green Lantern/Alan Scott preceded the publication of the Lensman novels by a decade. If you're talking about the Silver Age Green Lantern/Hal Jordan (1959), then, yes, that character's mythos was definitely influenced by the Lensmen novels. What's more damning is that the co-creator editor on the original Hal Jordan series, Julius Schwartz, was a literary agent before he became a DC Comics editor and knew a lot of science fiction authors who came into their own in the late 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s so it's extremely unlikely that they DIDN'T borrow ideas from Lensmen for the relaunched Green Lantern comic of the 1960s. DC will NEVER admit that but a couple of the later alien Green Lanterns do share names with characters in the EE Doc Smith novels. I've only the Lensman animated feature prior to today. I didn't care for it in all honesty. It had a wretched dub and although you could watch it in Japanese on laserdisc in the US in the 1990s there were no subtitles! Companies had to pay extra for closed captions and most of them ended up "hard-burning" the subtitles onto video (for laserdisc releases as well as VHS; VHS DID have bandwidth preserved for subs) to save money instead of paying for CC subs. Besides. half the TV's of the time didn't have closed caption decoding. That only became standard after the mid-1990s. The audio and video quality for the movie was not fantastic. The dub audio was awful and sounded like it was recorded in a bathroom -- just absolutely poor quality recording although I'm sure it could run through filters today and cleaned up. My guess i that if anyone relicensed the movie they most likely wouldn't bother getting the old dub and would probably record a new dub. I'm assuming the Lensman feature could have been re-released later on DVD with a clean-up but you don't really hear about the anime feature or TV series much anymore. The estate of EE Doc Smith was NOT happy with any of the adaptations of the novels done so far. I'm presuming the novels are still under copyright protection since Smith has been dead for just over 50 years. They don't seem to be doing much of anything with his works and it's been a long time since I've seen a fresh reprint of any of his novels in stores. In fact, I don't think I've seen any of them since the early 1990s in-store and I've been generally aware of him since the mid-1980s but haven't read any of his books...
E E Doc Smith's are readily available now in cheap digital editions. The whole Lensman series is 6-8 books long. It's a great series although the first book is not nearly as good as the rest, so you should definitely keep reading. The Green Lantern Corp is of course based on the Lensmen. This film strays pretty far from the books but its ok.
I haven't seen a lot of Harmony Gold's adaptations outside of Robotech in stores, period. I was big anime collector back in the early 1990s. A lot of the films were released overseas (Europe) on VHS but they never had official US releases. A few of the lapsed-license films have been relicensed and are streaming now including the Minky Momo OVA HG adapted. Windaria was licensed by Streamline Pictures (defunct now) which was co-founded by Carl Macek, the HG employee who edited Robotech from 3 different series. Windaria got released on VHS and later DVD (by ADV Films under the title "Once Upon a Time") but they never released Windaria with the original Japanese audio track. The original music is intact but not the Japanese vocals. I didn't see the HG adaptation of Minky Momo or this movie until people posted them online! HG never dubbed the original Macross feature film because it was licensed by another home video company (Celebrity/Just for Kids and later Best Video) before they could secure the rights to it. The old story Macek told before he died was that he WANTED to dub Macross:DYRL with the Robotech cast in the 1980s but it didn't happen. Instead, they did that half-assed adaptation of the Megazone 23 Part 1 OVA crossed over with footage from Southern Cross and that became Robotech: The Movie. Heh, funny thing about Megazone 23 Part 1 -- there are AT LEAST 3 English dubs of it that I'm aware of. Robotech: The Movie, the Streamline dub (Part 1 only; released on VHS and DVD), and the ADV Films dub commissioned in the early 2000s done at the same time new dubs were commissioned for Megazone 23 Pt 2 and Part 3. M23 Part 2 has two dubs -- an original dub supervised by Macek (for what company I don't know but probably HG) and the ADV Films dub.
Holy crap!! I've been looking for this for years! I have both versions of the film, but this is the first time seeing the TV series compilation dub. Thank you!
Well, Robotech 3 was produced by Harmony Gold, the same company who produced the Lensman series (the English version). It's possible they shared resources bewtween the two shows...
Been looking hard for it myself... finally I stumbled upon it while filesharing, and since I knew there were many who were looking for it as well, I thought it was best to upload it here.
I was in the same situation but it happend maybe 20 years ago =)) Took until 5 years from now for me to finally remember the name of it. I only had flashes of the movie in my memory so it wasnt easy =)
Same here. Flashes of childhood memories. Been looking for this for years and years. Took it to Reddit and they solved it in 45mins for crying out loud. (tears of joy)
There's always a possibility Lensman might get licensed if they don't charge TOO much for the licensing. I sort of doubt it but it could happen. Lensman is fairly unknown at this point. Like I said in another post, I don't think I've seen any of EE Doc Smith's books recently reprinted and in bookstores for over a decade now. I've never seen Lensman in stories but did see a reprint of one of the Skylark novels. The biggest continuing legacy of the Lensman is arguably Green Lantern, the 1959 version which is HEAVILY influenced by the Lensman books. Of that, I have no doubt. There's been quite a few classic 1970s and 1980s science fiction/adventure anime licensed and released lately on Blu ray and DVD. Mazinger Z, Great Mazinger, Goshogun, Giant Gorg, Super Dimension Century Orguss, Giant Robo, Zillion, and Armored Troopers VOTOMS. Licensing fees for some of the older series are lower than licensing brand-new series.
I remember growing up in a predominately Asian neighborhood and there was a local channel that played Asian shows in their original language + English subtitles. One of the shows was Lensman. If only I knew the Japanese version of the TV series was rare, or I wouldn't have worn out my VHS tapes from multiple viewings. But this will do. It's better than no Lensman series.
Ive never read any of the books or Manga, Ive only seen the other movie. Since thats the extent of my experience, would I enjoy it to an extent or is it still bland or non essential to the other?
Just found this. It bears little resemblance to the books that I remember. Thought I saw a Veritech near the beginning. Harmony Gold reused a fair amount of material & voice actors (expected Saul to start singing "Stagefright".
Yes this is a different version. I read through the comments to better understand what the whole story is about. Would even like to find the original, esp. if it came with subtitles.
well in one of this movie he got the lens from a dead lens man it transferred like the green lanterns ring. in this one he was given the lens. I'm getting bored so I'll return after a bit of music an a nap.
I've been trying to find the three tunes that play from 11:57 'til 16:14 since I was just a kid, but over 20 years later and still no luck. At least now I can timestamp the part afterwards to learn that odd bit i nthe middle. There's a few reprises of what i called "the Boskone theme" as a kid, and I always thought that Basment Jaxx's "Don't Give Up" ripped them off. I'd give a fair amount of rubles to get the whole OST from this, but I fear it's lost to the sands of time... even the official OST has barely anything from this version...
I like suprisingly.Plot seems better the movie.Better background on the dark and light aliens.In Triplanetary the aliens shaped evolution of humans.Ideas of uplift space people were introduced in the lensman books and they were written in the 1930s
Harmony Gold is more interested in real estate now, the only licensed title they have right to and the only one they give a damn about it their Robotech title. Which they hold even if they plan on doing nothing with it, and they'll sue any one that tries to bring any other Macross titles over because they claim international distribution rights to anything titled Macross even if it was made many years after they made a deal for the original. Harmony Gold should be more like Harm Money Gold.
S Roberts Poo Gold is more like it. Mono audio post 1985 and voices that match for every charactor they voice. They were InterSounds budget animation option though so we also gotta give them a bit of leaway. They at least tried to be the best in a pile of stinkers Channel 5 knock off Disney, Goodtimes knock off Disney ect were some of their also cheap low budget VHS/TV rivals.
The really good part is when Gorge Lucas invented Star Wars he borrowed heavily from two book series one was Frank Herberts Dune the other was the Lensmen series of books!
Holy crap dude, where the heck did you get this?!? I havn't seen this since I was like a toddler! I have long memories, I've been trolling the Internet for years looking for this version.
Same, I reckon I've been looking for this on and off for 10 years. All I could remember was the cliff and vine bat things and him swimming into the fortress. No idea of name until today when 'something'man came to mind, went through clingsman, clansman until I randomly saw lensman and woila, found the bastard! Funny thing is I remember it being a lot darker/blue in colour, so I just have really been remembering the swimming/fortress part!
+Wil Newman that's ok. no scifi fan is ever going to mistake this for The Lensman and nobody who likes this tripe is ever going to make it through the books. In a Venn Diagram it's 0 0
Filesharing? We should thank that guy if we ever find who it was. And this is pretty good quality, kind of makes me wonder if the uploader stumbled upon this himself. In either case, thanks for uploading this on TH-cam!
I had to watch the new Dune series and read the book properly to finally put two and two together about "force speed" to be NOTHING else then a pure copy of the Bene Gesserit power like just about everything in Star Wars and "Let the force flow through you" as oposed to "Let the lens work through you"! Though Lucas DID take up the fight against big corporations(even though his became one itself ironically)!
this is a different EDIT of the footage from the original TV series from Japan. The Series was called Galactic Patrol Lensman, based on a series of pulp SciFi novels written in the 30s-40s by E.E. 'Doc' Smith. The Series didn't last very long, only a few episodes, and has never officially been translated into English. This Dub and its Counterpart are the closest you will find to being able to watch the series in its entirety. The 2 movies were also produced by 2 different American Anime studios, Harmony Gold and Streamline pictures. I have toyed with the Idea of trying to cobble together footage from both of these films and make one 'supercut' of this great SCIFI classic. Hasn't Happened yet, tho.....
My point exactly! As I said above here Mr Lucas got ideas from two major book series Dune and Lensmen! I guess the only other "originals" might be Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers maybe most of everything else seems to have been ripoffs from other sources!
True..Sad but true! But still Star Wars have it´s own charm though most of it thank´s to the expanded universe(including ALL the games etc etc) really it would NEVER have been as popular any other way! I also suspect that Star Trek And Andromeda have similar backgrounds!
This is a good anime because the anime is not as detailed and uses dialogue to make up the difference. However, to make any Harmony Gold into reboot movie of the 21st century, we need to get rid of dialogue of the obvious. They also have to use non verbal cues as well as the technology of high definition cameras and animation techniques.
Call me an old man but I grew up during the "robot era" in Sweden you know Robo Tech Gobots Transformers Battletech and a whole lot off other franchises during the early to late 80:ies!
Because Harmony Gold apparently couldn't use the original music for some reason (at least part of it was some of it had Japanese vocal lyrics, which was a no-no for Harmony Gold) and was too cheap to commission original music.
They were notoriously cheap. Bad "original" score (probably played in a broom closet on a Casio keyboard in the HG basement), BAD voice acting by recycled Robotech actors... HG was infamous in the anime fandom for ripping otherwise decent anime to pieces and claiming "They made this".
To really see how bad they were, look at the hack job that was "Robotech the Untold Story: The Movie", a co-production with B-movie studio Cannon Films (before they started hemorrhaging money). It was a very heavily edited Megazone 23, with replaced soundtrack, rewritten script, and spliced-in bits from Robotech episodes. Their history of ruining anime is known far and wide, and any Con unlucky enough to allow them to have a panel will only see maybe 1 or 2 Robotech fans in the room. Carl Macek created Robotech, and oversaw production on HG and Streamline's different anime chimeras. Before his death, he had been literally BANNED from Cons because fans hated him for what he did. Even today, HG is still convinced that their Frankenstein creation of Robotech is popular enough to warrant a live-action movie...
Just watched another version of this, not sure from the comments, if what I watched was a feature length episode or a combination. It's weird as it's like after the events of the last but before the start as well. Is it a different studio, the animation isn't quite as good.
Anyone know where to get this anime? I have Secret of the Lens on VHS, but this version I can't find anywhere. They may have nothing to do with the books, but it brings a sense of nostalgia to me. Thank you so much for posting this video up! I didn't even know this movie existed!
I've read the first two of 'Doc' Smith's series but this is very loosely based and not too appealing but the animation and high production value are the only up side.
seriously; you'd think the Japanese would try to follow the original story a bit more closely but like the abomination that is the OVA Starship Trooper they too hollyweirdized them both. The insult to injury was definitely the tv show.
I knew it was going to be bad. I LOVE the books. This; is not them. It's an ok adaption. As others have said; this is where the Green Lanterns came from; and Power Armor was first shown in the Lensmen books. I'd suggest reading the books (Chronicles of the Lens) by EE "Doc" Smith. They're worth the time.
I don't understand the ending. Why was the Overlord trying to kill Kim? Their was a whole scene explaining why the Overlord needed him alive. And for that matter, why did the ship built by pacifists have weapons? Let's assume the death lasers on that plant ship had a peaceful purpose and the Overlord was such a murderous prick that he simple forgot that he need Kim alive. How does killing this nameless, low-level minion constitute an ending? Nothing has been resolved. Their are still plenty of bad aliens left and they still want to kill/capture a Lensman. They could have ended the movie a half hour earlier and nothing would have changed.
You raise some good points, Panoply. I can only suppose that either the Boskone Overlord would rather destroy the lens than lose it, as there were other lensmen in the galaxy. Or perhaps he/she were only trying to damage the escape pod enough to capture it. That would also offer somewhat of an explanation as to the lethality of the weapons on that "pacifist" ship (Remember the first time the pod got hit it only rendered Kris unconscious. It did not kill her). As to the ending, the fact is this isn't really a movie at all. These are re-edited English-synchronised 3/4 episodes from the Japanese "Galactic Patrol" TV show.
SuperPanoply Well... I can only really say that this alternate version/plotline of the first Lensman movie, is a messy thing. Enjoyable, cool stuff in it, but no match for the first Lensman movie, and, gotta say, Streamline Pictures is much better than Harmony Gold version.
Lol yeah. There's a couple of other shows I've seen when I was a kid that I'm still hunting for over the Internet. Makes me mad because I've seen them, therefore they exist >:-/
why is the lensman tv series so hard to find? in this age of the internet it should be easy but i can't find it anywhere. does anyone know where i can find the entire series?
it was never released on home media because the Smith estate thought it was terribly made. there's a group out there that has TV broadcast rips of the Japanese dubbed version that they're subbing right now
+Yuval Q check the msubs forum. I was wrong about the show never being released at all as it turns out that the first 6 episodes were released on LD but that's about it.
There's a slightly small problem now in regards to this story.. sony has it by the balls & to keep the rights to it they will shet out more turds every 2~3 years like they do for spidyman & ff4. Money talks & if people still buy it'll never Ever stop. I've got the original novel and like Lensman those novels will never change... till it goes digital and is "shifted" into a more ""pc" form.
Sadly, it wasn't. Both where turds & seeing how much the Japanese loved the original make it even sadder. Look up gearsonlineDOTnet/series to see the great drawings of the Mobile Armor done by them.
", based loosely on E.E. "Doc" Smith's "...I Might say *VERY LOOSELY* as who ever wrote this script could never have read any of E.E. Smith's work. He would be rolling in his grave at this BS, taking his name and work to stupid space.
I remember watching Lensman, Robot Carnival, Vampire Hunter D, etc in 93'-94' on Sci channel's cartoon quest. Good times! Great upload, this is rare.
Yeah I remember that too. I think it was a Saturday night in the summer of 93. It was the night I got into anime and have been ever since.
Same here👊🏽
That was the Streamline Pictures different version of Lensman, though. This is the Harmony Gold version.
@SelfRighteousNewAgeLightWorker Exactly! I have both versions myself. 🤣
Saw this once overseas on AFN back in ‘87 Been looking for it ever since. Thought I was nuts when I watched Secret of the Lens and confused the two. Thank you soo much!
I think the whole Lensman animation started as a japanese TV show and was later re-edited as a full length film by Harmony Gold, when they've brought it to western audiences. There were 2 movies in the series, each with its own plot (they aren't sequels): Power of the Lens & Secret of the Lens, both of which you can now watch on youtube.
As to how to get it... well, check my other posts here :)
Yes, but the "Power of the Lens" film is basically just a heavily edited & English dubbed compilation of 4 out of the 25 episodes of the "Galactic Patrol Lensman" series aired in Japan.
The other episodes never received an English dub.
Thank you for the answer I wanted to ask. This version here isn't like the other movie I watched. How would I be able to find the whole movie? Even subtitles version would be great.
Actually, the first thing to come out in Japan was the movie itself called "SF Shinseki Lensman" (SF New Century Lensman). That film was dubbed by Harmony Gold as "Lensman: Secret of the Lens". A TV series would follow shortly after the 1984 movie under the name "Galactic Patrol Lensman", which several episodes of it were edited together for this compilation film known as "Power of the Lens".
Interesting info!
This is where The Green Lantern, Tron, Dinosaucers, and other Sci Fi Stories got their ideas from. This was the original saga that started it all.
Well this and Perry Rhodan's books as well
Don't Forget the Tom Swift series!
The_Dark_God_of_Sith Mass Effect, too!
This has nothing to do with Tron but Flash Gordon ?
To be fair, the ORIGINAL Green Lantern/Alan Scott preceded the publication of the Lensman novels by a decade.
If you're talking about the Silver Age Green Lantern/Hal Jordan (1959), then, yes, that character's mythos was definitely influenced by the Lensmen novels.
What's more damning is that the co-creator editor on the original Hal Jordan series, Julius Schwartz, was a literary agent before he became a DC Comics editor and knew a lot of science fiction authors who came into their own in the late 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s so it's extremely unlikely that they DIDN'T borrow ideas from Lensmen for the relaunched Green Lantern comic of the 1960s.
DC will NEVER admit that but a couple of the later alien Green Lanterns do share names with characters in the EE Doc Smith novels.
I've only the Lensman animated feature prior to today. I didn't care for it in all honesty. It had a wretched dub and although you could watch it in Japanese on laserdisc in the US in the 1990s there were no subtitles! Companies had to pay extra for closed captions and most of them ended up "hard-burning" the subtitles onto video (for laserdisc releases as well as VHS; VHS DID have bandwidth preserved for subs) to save money instead of paying for CC subs. Besides. half the TV's of the time didn't have closed caption decoding. That only became standard after the mid-1990s.
The audio and video quality for the movie was not fantastic. The dub audio was awful and sounded like it was recorded in a bathroom -- just absolutely poor quality recording although I'm sure it could run through filters today and cleaned up. My guess i that if anyone relicensed the movie they most likely wouldn't bother getting the old dub and would probably record a new dub. I'm assuming the Lensman feature could have been re-released later on DVD with a clean-up but you don't really hear about the anime feature or TV series much anymore.
The estate of EE Doc Smith was NOT happy with any of the adaptations of the novels done so far.
I'm presuming the novels are still under copyright protection since Smith has been dead for just over 50 years. They don't seem to be doing much of anything with his works and it's been a long time since I've seen a fresh reprint of any of his novels in stores. In fact, I don't think I've seen any of them since the early 1990s in-store and I've been generally aware of him since the mid-1980s but haven't read any of his books...
E E Doc Smith's are readily available now in cheap digital editions. The whole Lensman series is 6-8 books long. It's a great series although the first book is not nearly as good as the rest, so you should definitely keep reading. The Green Lantern Corp is of course based on the Lensmen. This film strays pretty far from the books but its ok.
Lensman: Power of The Lens (1987)-haven't watched this in years will have to try and track down the books again,a film like this would work today
I haven't seen a lot of Harmony Gold's adaptations outside of Robotech in stores, period. I was big anime collector back in the early 1990s.
A lot of the films were released overseas (Europe) on VHS but they never had official US releases. A few of the lapsed-license films have been relicensed and are streaming now including the Minky Momo OVA HG adapted.
Windaria was licensed by Streamline Pictures (defunct now) which was co-founded by Carl Macek, the HG employee who edited Robotech from 3 different series. Windaria got released on VHS and later DVD (by ADV Films under the title "Once Upon a Time") but they never released Windaria with the original Japanese audio track. The original music is intact but not the Japanese vocals.
I didn't see the HG adaptation of Minky Momo or this movie until people posted them online!
HG never dubbed the original Macross feature film because it was licensed by another home video company (Celebrity/Just for Kids and later Best Video) before they could secure the rights to it. The old story Macek told before he died was that he WANTED to dub Macross:DYRL with the Robotech cast in the 1980s but it didn't happen. Instead, they did that half-assed adaptation of the Megazone 23 Part 1 OVA crossed over with footage from Southern Cross and that became Robotech: The Movie.
Heh, funny thing about Megazone 23 Part 1 -- there are AT LEAST 3 English dubs of it that I'm aware of. Robotech: The Movie, the Streamline dub (Part 1 only; released on VHS and DVD), and the ADV Films dub commissioned in the early 2000s done at the same time new dubs were commissioned for Megazone 23 Pt 2 and Part 3. M23 Part 2 has two dubs -- an original dub supervised by Macek (for what company I don't know but probably HG) and the ADV Films dub.
I watched this in the 90's and was really impressed by the CG effects during those times.
The CGI still looks amazing!
Holy crap!! I've been looking for this for years! I have both versions of the film, but this is the first time seeing the TV series compilation dub. Thank you!
Well, Robotech 3 was produced by Harmony Gold, the same company who produced the Lensman series (the English version). It's possible they shared resources bewtween the two shows...
Τι λές τώρα το έβλεπα στο Junior όταν ήμουν παιδάκι !!!!!!! Από τα αγαπημένα μακράν anime εκείνης της εποχής :D
Και έγω το είχα προλάβει και το είχα σε βιντεοκασέτα αλλα μου την "έφαγε" το βιντεο, μπας και ξέρεις που μπορώ να την βρώ στα Ελληνικά
I love Robotech. That show kicked the ball passed Soccer Moms big time. Too bad it won't be released to kids in this day and era.
OMG! i cant believe it, ive been looking for this since my lil brother taped over my copy 10 years ago, thank you so much!!!!!
Been looking hard for it myself... finally I stumbled upon it while filesharing, and since I knew there were many who were looking for it as well, I thought it was best to upload it here.
Can we in America find the original with subtitles? Is there a link to look at? Houston, TX. U.S.A.🤠
Same here. Saw this when i was like 8 and living in Russia. Took me about 4 straight hours of Googling before i found it.
A 10 layer quesadilla got NOTHING on this cheesy into 😋
wow this version is much different than the one I saw as a kid, pretty cool!
I was in the same situation but it happend maybe 20 years ago =)) Took until 5 years from now for me to finally remember the name of it. I only had flashes of the movie in my memory so it wasnt easy =)
Same here. Flashes of childhood memories. Been looking for this for years and years. Took it to Reddit and they solved it in 45mins for crying out loud. (tears of joy)
They reused some of the music from Robotech and Robotech II The Sentinels in this, I thought that was neat. Too bad They never finished it all !!!
I noticed too :D
There's a fansub group working on the series this was adapted from. They're up to episode 9 so far.
msubsreleases.wordpress.com/?s=lensman
There's always a possibility Lensman might get licensed if they don't charge TOO much for the licensing. I sort of doubt it but it could happen.
Lensman is fairly unknown at this point. Like I said in another post, I don't think I've seen any of EE Doc Smith's books recently reprinted and in bookstores for over a decade now. I've never seen Lensman in stories but did see a reprint of one of the Skylark novels.
The biggest continuing legacy of the Lensman is arguably Green Lantern, the 1959 version which is HEAVILY influenced by the Lensman books. Of that, I have no doubt.
There's been quite a few classic 1970s and 1980s science fiction/adventure anime licensed and released lately on Blu ray and DVD. Mazinger Z, Great Mazinger, Goshogun, Giant Gorg, Super Dimension Century Orguss, Giant Robo, Zillion, and Armored Troopers VOTOMS.
Licensing fees for some of the older series are lower than licensing brand-new series.
If you also listen carefully you will also hear some of the voices from Robotech as well!
Thank you for posting this so much
I remember growing up in a predominately Asian neighborhood and there was a local channel that played Asian shows in their original language + English subtitles. One of the shows was Lensman. If only I knew the Japanese version of the TV series was rare, or I wouldn't have worn out my VHS tapes from multiple viewings.
But this will do. It's better than no Lensman series.
If you hadn't read the Lensman series from childhood, this wouldn't be a bad movie. It's just not a good adaptation... no surprise there!
Ive never read any of the books or Manga, Ive only seen the other movie. Since thats the extent of my experience, would I enjoy it to an extent or is it still bland or non essential to the other?
Just found this. It bears little resemblance to the books that I remember. Thought I saw a Veritech near the beginning. Harmony Gold reused a fair amount of material & voice actors (expected Saul to start singing "Stagefright".
this is a heavily edited tv version of several episodes of the anime series.
Beautiful movie , great anime, incredible version, yessssssssssssss, thank you
This was great! Thanks for the upload!!
Thank you so much for uploading this great anime!! I have been searching so long for the version "Lensman - Power of the Lens"! =)
Thank you for making me young again.❤
I’ll show this to Kenny Lauderdale.
Oh god, the nostalgia. 😭
The cheese is strong with this one.
This is the Scooby Doo version of The Secret of the Lens, which is the Scooby Doo version of Doc Smith.
You said it mister! I hope Hollywood doesn't get hold of the Lensman series, as they'll butcher it the way they did Starship Troopers.
@@stainlesssteelfox1I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon.
Ahhh...I love old school anime.
I only clicked this thinking it was the movie most of us have seen. I never knew there was another film
Don’t tell anybody I told you is very relevant
Don’t tell anybody I told you it’s very relevant
Yes this is a different version. I read through the comments to better understand what the whole story is about. Would even like to find the original, esp. if it came with subtitles.
In the books, Valerians are dwarves. Heavyworld humans who are short and squat with great strength and ultrafast reflexes.
Based loosely on the Lensman series of novels by EE Doc Smith, it is a a kind of version of the story. very good and watch if not accurate,
they also had Version on SI FI channel when that came out
well in one of this movie he got the lens from a dead lens man it transferred like the green lanterns ring. in this one he was given the lens. I'm getting bored so I'll return after a bit of music an a nap.
It's a beautiful movie
thank you for the upload! and thank you for thr Information about the robotech movies!
I've read all of E.E. 'Doc' Smith's books. This 'movie' would annoy him greatly!!!
It did
The soundtrack is from Robotech II the Sentinels
Why?
I've been trying to find the three tunes that play from 11:57 'til 16:14 since I was just a kid, but over 20 years later and still no luck. At least now I can timestamp the part afterwards to learn that odd bit i nthe middle. There's a few reprises of what i called "the Boskone theme" as a kid, and I always thought that Basment Jaxx's "Don't Give Up" ripped them off. I'd give a fair amount of rubles to get the whole OST from this, but I fear it's lost to the sands of time... even the official OST has barely anything from this version...
I like suprisingly.Plot seems better the movie.Better background on the dark and light aliens.In Triplanetary the aliens shaped evolution of humans.Ideas of uplift space people were introduced in the lensman books and they were written in the 1930s
awesomeness. I remember this one. Harmony Gold needs to do a rerelease.(If the EE Smith's camp allows it).
Harmony Gold is more interested in real estate now, the only licensed title they have right to and the only one they give a damn about it their Robotech title. Which they hold even if they plan on doing nothing with it, and they'll sue any one that tries to bring any other Macross titles over because they claim international distribution rights to anything titled Macross even if it was made many years after they made a deal for the original. Harmony Gold should be more like Harm Money Gold.
S Roberts Poo Gold is more like it. Mono audio post 1985 and voices that match for every charactor they voice.
They were InterSounds budget animation option though so we also gotta give them a bit of leaway.
They at least tried to be the best in a pile of stinkers Channel 5 knock off Disney, Goodtimes knock off Disney ect were some of their also cheap low budget VHS/TV rivals.
The really good part is when Gorge Lucas invented Star Wars he borrowed heavily from two book series one was Frank Herberts Dune the other was the Lensmen series of books!
The books need a reprint.
I second that notion.
its an edit of 4 episodes
Holy crap dude, where the heck did you get this?!? I havn't seen this since I was like a toddler! I have long memories, I've been trolling the Internet for years looking for this version.
Same, I reckon I've been looking for this on and off for 10 years. All I could remember was the cliff and vine bat things and him swimming into the fortress. No idea of name until today when 'something'man came to mind, went through clingsman, clansman until I randomly saw lensman and woila, found the bastard! Funny thing is I remember it being a lot darker/blue in colour, so I just have really been remembering the swimming/fortress part!
The problem with the rights is the Smith family who owns the copyrights to the novels !!!
+Wil Newman that's ok. no scifi fan is ever going to mistake this for The Lensman and nobody who likes this tripe is ever going to make it through the books. In a Venn Diagram it's 0 0
Would be so cool of the same actors would redub all 25 episodes, and the movie, remastered on blu-ray, would be day one purchase for me!!!
Filesharing? We should thank that guy if we ever find who it was. And this is pretty good quality, kind of makes me wonder if the uploader stumbled upon this himself. In either case, thanks for uploading this on TH-cam!
I had to watch the new Dune series and read the book properly to finally put two and two together about "force speed" to be NOTHING else then a pure copy of the Bene Gesserit power like just about everything in Star Wars and "Let the force flow through you" as oposed to "Let the lens work through you"!
Though Lucas DID take up the fight against big corporations(even though his became one itself ironically)!
Kim Kinnison as an upstart wiseass kid.
Kill me. Kill me now.
this is crazy it's the same actor's from the 82 version but it's completely different weird
That's exactly what it is ...can't bring myself to watch yet
this is a different EDIT of the footage from the original TV series from Japan. The Series was called Galactic Patrol Lensman, based on a series of pulp SciFi novels written in the 30s-40s by E.E. 'Doc' Smith. The Series didn't last very long, only a few episodes, and has never officially been translated into English. This Dub and its Counterpart are the closest you will find to being able to watch the series in its entirety. The 2 movies were also produced by 2 different American Anime studios, Harmony Gold and Streamline pictures. I have toyed with the Idea of trying to cobble together footage from both of these films and make one 'supercut' of this great SCIFI classic. Hasn't Happened yet, tho.....
My point exactly! As I said above here Mr Lucas got ideas from two major book series Dune and Lensmen!
I guess the only other "originals" might be Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers maybe most of everything else seems to have been ripoffs from other sources!
No one beats Captain Future!
True..Sad but true!
But still Star Wars have it´s own charm though most of it thank´s to the expanded universe(including ALL the games etc etc) really it would NEVER have been as popular any other way! I also suspect that Star Trek And Andromeda have similar backgrounds!
Nice to know then :) Thanks mate
This is a good anime because the anime is not as detailed and uses dialogue to make up the difference. However, to make any Harmony Gold into reboot movie of the 21st century, we need to get rid of dialogue of the obvious. They also have to use non verbal cues as well as the technology of high definition cameras and animation techniques.
WOW now if I can find the Robot carnival.
rbotech soundtrack reused :P
no.
This is the version I'm familiar with.
Call me an old man but I grew up during the "robot era" in Sweden you know Robo Tech Gobots Transformers Battletech and a whole lot off other franchises during the early to late 80:ies!
That intro music. TRANZOR ZZZZZZZ!!
I was reading the last book...
I know this is Harmony Gold, but why am I hearing the Robotech soundtrack out of this thing?
Because Harmony Gold apparently couldn't use the original music for some reason (at least part of it was some of it had Japanese vocal lyrics, which was a no-no for Harmony Gold) and was too cheap to commission original music.
They were notoriously cheap. Bad "original" score (probably played in a broom closet on a Casio keyboard in the HG basement), BAD voice acting by recycled Robotech actors...
HG was infamous in the anime fandom for ripping otherwise decent anime to pieces and claiming "They made this".
To really see how bad they were, look at the hack job that was "Robotech the Untold Story: The Movie", a co-production with B-movie studio Cannon Films (before they started hemorrhaging money). It was a very heavily edited Megazone 23, with replaced soundtrack, rewritten script, and spliced-in bits from Robotech episodes.
Their history of ruining anime is known far and wide, and any Con unlucky enough to allow them to have a panel will only see maybe 1 or 2 Robotech fans in the room. Carl Macek created Robotech, and oversaw production on HG and Streamline's different anime chimeras. Before his death, he had been literally BANNED from Cons because fans hated him for what he did. Even today, HG is still convinced that their Frankenstein creation of Robotech is popular enough to warrant a live-action movie...
Just watched another version of this, not sure from the comments, if what I watched was a feature length episode or a combination. It's weird as it's like after the events of the last but before the start as well. Is it a different studio, the animation isn't quite as good.
Anyone know where to get this anime?
I have Secret of the Lens on VHS, but this version I can't find anywhere. They may have nothing to do with the books, but it brings a sense of nostalgia to me.
Thank you so much for posting this video up! I didn't even know this movie existed!
9:24 no no no no no, he's doing that all wrong. your supposed to put your haamster *inside* its hamster ball.
No problem :)
the opening music sounds a lot like the theme from Robotech 3 the sentinels 'movie'
I've read the first two of 'Doc' Smith's series but this is very loosely based and not too appealing but the animation and high production value are the only up side.
8:30 when the shrooms kick in
lol
seriously; you'd think the Japanese would try to follow the original story a bit more closely but like the abomination that is the OVA Starship Trooper they too hollyweirdized them both. The insult to injury was definitely the tv show.
I knew it was going to be bad. I LOVE the books. This; is not them. It's an ok adaption. As others have said; this is where the Green Lanterns came from; and Power Armor was first shown in the Lensmen books. I'd suggest reading the books (Chronicles of the Lens) by EE "Doc" Smith. They're worth the time.
7:45 talking to a giant milkshake :D
I don't understand the ending. Why was the Overlord trying to kill Kim? Their was a whole scene explaining why the Overlord needed him alive. And for that matter, why did the ship built by pacifists have weapons? Let's assume the death lasers on that plant ship had a peaceful purpose and the Overlord was such a murderous prick that he simple forgot that he need Kim alive. How does killing this nameless, low-level minion constitute an ending? Nothing has been resolved. Their are still plenty of bad aliens left and they still want to kill/capture a Lensman. They could have ended the movie a half hour earlier and nothing would have changed.
You raise some good points, Panoply.
I can only suppose that either the Boskone Overlord would rather destroy the lens than lose it, as there were other lensmen in the galaxy. Or perhaps he/she were only trying to damage the escape pod enough to capture it. That would also offer somewhat of an explanation as to the lethality of the weapons on that "pacifist" ship (Remember the first time the pod got hit it only rendered Kris unconscious. It did not kill her).
As to the ending, the fact is this isn't really a movie at all. These are re-edited English-synchronised 3/4 episodes from the Japanese "Galactic Patrol" TV show.
SuperPanoply this is a compilation of a tv show first episodes.
I dont know where you can find out what happens though
SuperPanoply Well... I can only really say that this alternate version/plotline of the first Lensman movie, is a messy thing. Enjoyable, cool stuff in it, but no match for the first Lensman movie, and, gotta say, Streamline Pictures is much better than Harmony Gold version.
Lol yeah. There's a couple of other shows I've seen when I was a kid that I'm still hunting for over the Internet. Makes me mad because I've seen them, therefore they exist >:-/
why is the lensman tv series so hard to find? in this age of the internet it should be easy but i can't find it anywhere. does anyone know where i can find the entire series?
+rich carter (bofuthereturn) I want to find the mandarin edition or Chinese subtitles.
it was never released on home media because the Smith estate thought it was terribly made. there's a group out there that has TV broadcast rips of the Japanese dubbed version that they're subbing right now
+Bob McFury I live in China mainland. I remember that I watched this cartoon on TV.
I would love a link of that!
+Yuval Q check the msubs forum. I was wrong about the show never being released at all as it turns out that the first 6 episodes were released on LD but that's about it.
When toons were good xD
Hi,
wow this is great.
I thought there were more movies created. Do you know of them?
How can I get a copy of the video?
There's a slightly small problem now in regards to this story.. sony has it by the balls & to keep the rights to it they will shet out more turds every 2~3 years like they do for spidyman & ff4. Money talks & if people still buy it'll never Ever stop. I've got the original novel and like Lensman those novels will never change... till it goes digital and is "shifted" into a more ""pc" form.
12:17 well offcourse they´re NOT since who would be insane enough for a stunt like THAT?
Four Swampy get hers? Lol
Is this the version that aired on the Sci-Fi channel? Or was it the Streamline Pictures version "Secret of the Lens"?
When? 'Secret of the Lens' was aired on Sci-Fi back in the 90's, along with Robot Carnival.
Were there meant to be more episodes dubbed?
21:30 Music from Macross
Interesting!
A cute movie. But really a bad adaptation.
I do no understand...this movie is different than the other one..
No comments or am I lagging
Power of the
無理やりアニメ化して大コケした奴か
Did they both die
çocukken izlemiştim keşke türkçe dublajlı olanınıda bulabilsem. teşekkürler
Sadly, it wasn't. Both where turds & seeing how much the Japanese loved the original make it even sadder. Look up gearsonlineDOTnet/series to see the great drawings of the Mobile Armor done by them.
", based loosely on E.E. "Doc" Smith's "...I Might say *VERY LOOSELY* as who ever wrote this script could never have read any of E.E. Smith's work. He would be rolling in his grave at this BS, taking his name and work to stupid space.
I like the other version much better than this.. Interesting that they used the same voice actors. But this is terrible tho...
I hope whoever wrote the story had at least read one of the books in the series. When did it come out.
why does the beginning make me think of transformers
ahahaha
8:31 When the drugs kick in
Also, Patrick Stewart the narrator
Good movie but they botched the dismount! The Ending was trash!