a.k.a. Ogon Batto
Toei Co. Ltd [1966] 72′
country: Japan
director: HAJIME SATO
cast: SONNY CHIBA, HIROSHI NAKATA,
cast: ANDREW HUGHES, REIKO KASAHARA
Poor young Akira – after spending night after night star gazing and single-handedly discovering that the planet Icarus is on a collision course with Earth, no one in the grown-up world believes him. The police think he has an overactive imagination and the astronomers at the local observatory simply refuse to take his claim seriously for no reason other than that it sounds silly. Just when Akira’s day can’t seem to get any worse, a group of sunglass-and-suit donning henchmen show up and drag him to an isolated chateaus in the Japanese Alps.
There he discovers something he never though possible – an uber-cool super lab funded by the UN under the cover name of the Pearl Institute and existing, seemingly, for the sole purpose of spying on amateur Japanese astronomers, building fantastical weapons (the Super Destruction Beam Cannon!), and saving the Earth from threats like, say, renegade planetary bodies under the control of evil spacemen. After a brief introduction to the facility by Dr. Yamatone (Sonny Chiba!), Akira agrees to join forces with them. The first order of business is to complete the Super Destruction Beam Cannon by locating appropriate material from which to fashion a lens.
