THE PHOENIX from BATTLE OF THE PLANETS (1978)) Developed by Sandy Frank from ‘GATCHAMAN’ created by TATSUO YOSHIDA

Battle of the Planets was an animated TV series that was shown iin the UK in the late 1970s - post ‘Star Wars’. It was an AMERICAN edited version of the 1972 Japanese ANIME TV series Science Niinja Team Gatchaman, generally known as ‘Gatchaman’. 85 episodes of Battle of the Planets were made from the original 105 episodes of Gatchaman, with some of the more violent elements removed and an R2-D2 like robot (7-Zark-7) was included to cover some of the newly formed gaps in the story and to provide comic relief…generally ‘pad out’ each episode to a standard 22 minutes.

The series followed the adventures of G FORCE - a team of 5 heroes. Mark (the leader), Jason, Princess, Tiny and Keyop. They seem to work for some sort of Government division and are charged with defending the earth from the invading forces of Spectra, lead by the evil Zoltar.

The Phoenix was G Force’s ship. It carried 4 smaller vehicles - Jason’s high speed car was carried in the nose, Princess’ motorcycle and Keyop’s ‘tank’ were each carried in one of the wing pods and Marks fighter plane docked into the tail section. One in position, its tail fin served as the a central tail fin for the Phoenix.. All quite Gerry Anderson-esque. Tiny was responsible for the Phoenix iself. the ship was launched from an underwater base and could operate as a submarine and at times a spacecraft too. But it was principally seen as an Aircraft. In time of extreme danger the ship could mutate into a gaseous ‘Fiery Phoenix’… I don;t recall there was ever an attempt to explain how this was possible.

Like many fictional vehicles seen in TV and films and spacecraft the size of the ship seems to vary between scenes. Jason’s roadster is quite a snug fit inside the nose, yet the members of G Force can all stand up inside the dome on the top of the ship. So the ship is either about 150feet long otr 350 feet long!

The series was well drawn and featured limited animation that is now familiar the world over. The Phoenix itself looked different depending on the individual artwork. I believe the very first design featured more curves, but the version I recall was more box kke with straighter edges - which were almost certainly easier to draw, and this is the version I have painted here.

The ship was designed by Matsuki Nakamura, who had previously designed the Mach 5 for racing car for ‘Speed Racer’ and is one of the pioneers of Anime and design in Japanese media. ,