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Voyage into Space are several episodes of Johnny Sokko and
his Flying Robot edited together to form a feature, which makes
the film somewhat choppy plotwise, but it does have a beginning, middle
and end at least: The beginning: Young Johnny Sokko (Mitsunobu Kaneko)
and Jerry Mano (Akio Ito), agent of Unicorn, are the only two
survivors of a shipwreck - and the ship had been attacked by a dragon-like
giant monster called Draculon. Johnny and Jerry make it to an island,
which turns out to be the headquarters of the Gargoyles, a criminal
organisation from outer space hell-bent on conquering the earth led by
Emperor Guillotine (Hirohiko Sato) - which actually sent Draculon to
destroy the ship in the first place. On the island, Johnny and Jerry also
discover the Gargoyles' Giant Robot (Toshiyuki Tsuchiyama), which looks a
bit like an Egyptian pharaoh and which is just about to be activated.
Somehow though, Johnny manages to be the first person to talk to the
robot, which means the robot will forever do Johnnys bidding - and thanks
to that, Jerry and Johnny manage to make it off the island with the Giant Robot's
help ... did I mention the robot can fly, actually The middle: Thanks to
his powers over the Giant Robot, Johnny is quickly made an agent of
Unicorn, the organisation sworn to fight the Gargoyles - even though
Johnny is a pre-teen boy. From now on, he and Jerry are out to thwart many
a plan by the Gargoyles to take over the world by means of giant monsters,
and they are helped by their Jet packs, all kinds of futuristic gadgets,
but first and foremost of course Giant Robot. On the other hand though,
the Gargoyles have sworn to hunt down and capture or kill Johnny because
of his powers over Giant Robot, and more than once, they almost succeed -
but of course, in the end, Giant Robot always comes to the rescue. The
Finale: Unicorn has finally managed to locate the Gargoyles' headquarters,
and even though the Gargoyles throw one giant monster after the other at
Giant Robot, he comes out victorious. But when the agents of Unicorn are
about to put the Gargoyles under lock and key, Emperor Guillotine shows
up, circa 100 feet tall (or as tall as Giant Robot) - and suddenly, Giant
Robot can#t fight no more, having used up all of his energy in the fights
that led to this. It seems the Gargoyles have won, and giant Emperor
Guillotine seems undefeatable because each shot at him could cause a
nuclear blast ... when suddenly Giant Robot comes back to life -
apparently he has managed to tap into an auxilliary power circuit of his -
and since he can't destroy Emperor Guillotine on earth, he takes him to
outer space and ... KA-BOOM!!! There's something about Japanese
giant robot-live action series by and large: Their plots are repetitive
and laughable, the special effects are cheap and at times pathetic, and
both giant robots and giant monsters are frequently unintentionally funny
(e.g. why does Giant Robot look like a pharaoh) ... and yet in their naive
approach to the science fiction genre, these series are often entirely
charming - something that perfectly sums up Johnny Sokko and his
Flying Robot, a cheap and naive yet totally enjoyable little
series. A few words about the edited together film Voyage to Space
though: In editing together a good five or six episodes of the series, the
audience gets a bit of an overload of the Japanese giant robot-charm, and
the repetitiveness of the series becomes a bit too apparent to swallow.
And why this film is called Voyage to Space is left at anybody's
guess, only the tiniest fraction of the film actually takes place in outer
space. All that said though, the film is still good, harmless and
pointless fun, though not half as much fun as watching the series in its
intended (serialized) form ...
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