Gulliver no Uchuu Ryokou

Gulliver no Uchuu Ryokou (Gulliver's Space Travels) was Toei's eighth feature-length cartoon, released in 1965. It was dubbed in English and released in the US as Gulliver's Travels Beyond the Moon in 1966. Like all its predecessors, it was not financially successfu. Because of that, it was the last Japanese animated feature to be released in the United States for almost five year, according to Wikipedia. It's easy to see why. Despite its European setting and sci-fi trappings, Gulliver no Uchuu Ryokou still adheres to Toei's faux Disney model..

Ted is a street urchin in an unnamed European city sometime in the 20th century. (They have talking pictures, in color.) Sneaking into a movie theater to watch Gulliver's Travels, he is discovered by the usher and unceremoniously kicked out. 

Wandering depressed and aimless, he is hit by a truck and knocked unconscious. When he "wakes up", he meets a discarded toy soldier, the Colonel, and a stray dog, Mack, both of whom can talk. 

The dog suggests a trip to an amusement park that is closed for the night. Discovered by the guards, the trio escape on a fireworks rocket and crash-land in a forest. 

They're near the house of the now-elderly Gulliver, a professor who is building a rocket ship to reach the Green Planet of Hope.

Ted convinces the professor to take them all, plus the professor's pet crow Kuro, on the planned space trip.

After "rigorous" training, the quintet board the rocket and launch into space.

They travel the Milky Way, encountering various adventures, including the "Reverse Time Nebula" (a black hole) that makes the crew become younger. 

Saved by a mysterious spaceship, they are eventually forced to land on the Purple Planet. It is run by gentle, if perplexed, robots, who serve a robot king and princess.

However, this idyllic existence is menaced by giant, aggressive robots. 

Gulliver, Ted, and his friends fight the menace and defeat it, only to discover that the robots of the Purple Planet are actually the people of the Green Planet, forced to be machines by the giant robots they had originally built to serve them. 

With the natural order restored, Ted et al fly off to return to Earth... where Ted wakes up on the street, having dreamed the whole thing. He meets the now wordless Colonel and Mack and, with his optimism restored, sets off on new adventures.

Gulliver no Uchuu Ryokou has its moments, but it is overstuffed with songs and set pieces. A few, like the training sequence, are amusing,

but others, like Ted's dream and the Song of Earth, feel like padding. A young Hayao Miyazaki was an animator on the film, but he wasn't fond of it. According to Wikipedia, he was not satisfied with the original ending, in which the robots remained inhuman. He proposed the idea that the robots were actually human, and it was adopted. Miyazaki created the original drawings for the scene in which the princess wakes up. He also worked on the scenes in which the robots go on a rampage. He said later that children found the movie boring and ran around the theater. I sympathize.

Gulliver's failure in the US illustrated the diminishing returns of Toei's formula, just as Disney itself was experiencing lackluster returns on its animated movies like The Sword and the Stone. Toei's response was evident in its next two releases, Cyborg 009 and Shounen Jack to Mahou Tsukai. I've already noted that Shounen Jack introduced a more "cartoonish" art style and sensibility. I'll say more about the Cyborg 009 movies when we get to them.

Some translation notes about discrepancies with official sources (e.g., English Wikipedia):

• The spaceship's destination is the Green Planet, because it is clearly green. But official sources call it the Blue Planet. The Japanese word aoi can mean either color.
• Gulliver's faithful crow is Kuro, because it's a common Japanese pet name. But official sources call the bird Crow. The Japanese word kuro normally means black, but it can also mean crow, although the preferred word for crow is karasu.

The voice cast is from an earlier era.

• Sakamoto Kyuu (Ted) was an actor and singer. He had no other voice acting credits.
• Miyaguchi Seiji (Lemuel Gulliver) was an actor from Tokyo. He had no other voice acting credits.
• Hori Junko (Mack the Stray Dog)  was best known as the voice of the protagonists in three Fujiko Fujio works, Obake no Q-tarou, Ninja Hattori-kun, and Chinpui. She played the title role in Cat-Eyed Boy and also appeared in Wan Wan Chuushingura, Taiyou no Ouji: Horus no Daibouken, Rain Boy, and Makoto-chan, all Orphan release), as well as Moomin, Akage no Anne, Cinderella Boy, and Unico.
• Itou Makiko (Kuro) played the title role in Fight Da!! Pyuto, recently completed by Inka, and appeared in Shounen Jack to Mahou Shoujo and Wan Wan Chuushingura, both Orphan releases.
• Ozawa Shouichi (Colonel) was an actor, poet, singer, and researcher. He narrated Band of Ninja but had no other voice acting credits
• Ooizumi Akira (King of the Purple Planet) played Terayama Daikichi in Asatte Dance, Ichiji in Mellow, and Mama-rin in Okama Hakusho, and he appeared in Korogashi Ryota, all Orphan releases.
• Honma Chiyoko (Princess of the Purple Planet) was an actress and singer. She appeared in Wan Wan Chuushingura, an Orphan release.
• Iida Danny (Scientist of the Purple Planet) had no other voice acting credits.
• Imanishi Masao (Boss Robot) played Skipper in Giant Gorg, Franken in Kaibutsu-kun, Antares in Ginga Tetsudou 999, Kyoushi in Miyuki, Fefebvre in Legend of the Galactic Heroes, and Kanpei Fuumi in Ipponbouchou Mantarou, an Orphan release.
• Okada Yukiko (Cupid in Ted's dream) played Kunashida-hime in Wanpaku Ouji and Ruriko in Flying Phantom Ship.

The film was directed by Kuroda Yoshio, also directed many other anime movies and series, including Flander no Inu movie and TV, Peter Pan no Bouken, Pygmalio, and many Hello Kitty OVAs.

The original script was from neo1024. Perevodildo translation checked and timed it for the new raw. I edited and typeset. imatu and Uchuu QCed. The raw was encoded from an HDTV broadcast of the remastered film. As with Shounen Sarutobi Sasuke, the broadcast was too bit starved to support full HD, so it's standard HD, H.265 with 4:4:4 colorspace. If you didn't like that for Shounen Sarutobi Sasuke, you won't like it here either.

Gulliver no Uchuu Ryokou was not the end of the "Toei formula." It would surface again, for example, in The World of Hans Christian Andersen. But after this, Toei began to diversify its offerings, and rising young animators like Miyazaki made their impact felt. Better movies (for example, Shounen Jack) lay ahead. Meanwhile, you can get this one from the usual torrent site.