When I was growing up I wasn’t exposed to much anime. Astro Boy would show up on TV often, but aside from that there were only an handful of shows I could watch on VHS. Because of that, I watched and rewatched the few I had, including Ninja the Wonder Boy (a dub of Manga Sarutobi Sasuke) and Time Fighters.
Time Fighters was a fairly slapdash dub and edit of the anime Time Bokan that took a series and edited it into a feature-length film, but when I was a kid it was among my favourites. The corny —though admittedly catchy— music and outlandish characters held me transfixed and the fantastic robots were the stuff of dreams. This was everything I needed when I was 8 years old.
Lately I’ve been thinking about things to introduce Celestine to as she grows up, so I went looking for Time Fighters and found the first edited English film and the follow up available to stream online. Someday I’ll dive into Time Bokan properly, but for now I know I can keep the English dub at hand.