Episode 1...

While flying their spaceship, the Comet, on a routine training mission (is there any other kind?) the Futuremen pass over a strange green asteroid and are visited by a ghost that demands they use time travel, if they have such and ability, to save his race. Luckily for him Captain Future does have a machine that can send them through time, it's just that he hasn't used it yet.

The team head back to their base on the moon and install the time drive. Future says his goodbyes to Joan and the gang head off into space to perform the time warp. Be sure to stand well back of the Earth just in case the drive was installed upside down and it goes critical.

The intergalactic DeLorean works as hoped and Captain Future and his crew find themselves many millions of years in the past. And are immediately hit by an asteroid. I guess they won't be returning to 1985 until they fix that hole in the ship.

At this point in the story the clock stands at 22 minutes out of the 25 for episode one. It has taken nearly the length of one show to see a ghost, install a time drive and crash into a prehistoric planet. The time warp alone was four minutes long! Four minutes of the same pulsing lights and flashing blobs. Toei sure saved a lot of money the day they animated that sequence!

The comet crash lands on a prehistoric planet, assumed to be Earth and the misfit crew wander out for a look around. Like a sequence out of the Time Gal coin-op, the Futuremen discover a cave girl being chased down by a pre-Jurassic Park T-rex. They run to her aid, their running is animated so stiffly it looks like they are dragging someone behind them on one ankle.

The Captain zaps T-rex and the girl is saved and the future is altered, who knows what the affects will be. Cave-girl rests inside Comet as incoming spaceships are detected approaching.

Episode 2...

So, after the breakneck excitement of episode 1 what does episode 2 have in store? The Futuremen try to communicate with Cave-girl but the language barrier gets in the way. The more they talk to her, she might pick up some English words and phrases but that could take minutes!

Even though they are from different eras, speak different languages and he is a android Otho falls in love with Cave-girl. "Her eyes are like deep quiet pools..." Did people really used to say stuff like that?

Back at the caveman village Captain Future witnesses the primitives worshipping a distant planet, calling it Coome. Wait a minute, what happened to the approaching spaceships from the climax of episode one?

As part of the ritual the elder takes El Capitan and the tribe to visit their broken down old caveman-spaceship. Captain Future gazes at the sacred scrap pile and theorizes how the cavemen must have been passing Earth and crash landed in prehistory. They were forced to live stranded with the dinosaurs until they evolved into humans. His views aren't countered with a creationist version of the proto-spacemen's journey. How unbalanced.

Learning that the rusted ship is made from the materials they need to repair the Comet, Captain Future and his gang pay lip service to the ceremony in hopes that they can swipe some sacrilegious scrap metal. As devious as this is, it works and soon they are plundering this sanctified relic for spare parts.

More than ten minutes since their announced arrival at the end of part one, the aliens finally arrive... again. Otho runs up to greet the landers and offers his assistance to their leader. They thank him for his kindness and then beat the crap out of him. Cave-girl Roo winds up being blasted by the S&M Gimp squad too prompting the Future-goons to speed into action. Well, maybe speed-walk into action. They track the bad guys to their base on Mars where Cornel Gimp-mask has thrown Otho and Roo in jail with Julen the son of the Luthen the ghost that prompted this whole low-pace adventure.

Junior explains the plot, stop me if you have heard this before. His home planet of Prometheus is doomed. A good scientist (his father) formed a peaceful plan for the survival of their race. The evil ruler chose the more action packed solution of taking over a nearby planet. For once this wasn't Earth but Mars. The people of Mars don't like that idea and want to wipe out the would-be immigrants. Bored of his stories, and possibly fearing "prison love", Otho forces himself through a gap in the bars and escapes. He is picked up by Captain Future and Krug and leads them back to Luthen and Roo. Reunited, they make their escape back to Prometheus.

The Comet passes at such high speeds that it causes the deaths of several military personnel who had yet to declare attack on the futuremen. Callous!

And so the unbelievable, edge-of-your-seat excitement of volume one comes to a close. How will this deep and twisting, multi layered tale end? And, more importantly, who cares? Well, you'd better care because I forced myself to watch both tapes so I could tell you.

Episode 3...

The narrator brings us up to speed with the epic story so far. It takes less than the length of this sentence.

After a bit more yak from the heroes we get to meet the bad guy of Prometheus the curiously named General Cuban Fax, apparently he is the brother of Starcom's villain Emperor Dark. He is keen to get this war started and his spies tell him of the arrival of Captain Future and the others.

Future visits the pre-ghost Dr Luthen who explains his wimpy, non-violent survival plan; they move everyone to Coome. He has even converted their planet Prometheus' moon into a large, granite based, greyhound bus for this purpose. Stop laughing, it could happen. General Fax doesn't like the Doctor to have guests so he sends his Spy Rats and Spy Bats to go interfere. This causes an outbreak of slapstick as the future-pets chase the Spies around to a strangely primitive Manic Miner-style soundtrack.

Finally Cuban Fax appears within a cloud of smoke and he confronts the Doctor in a debate as to the viability of his proposed exodus plan. Dr Luthen explains that all but two people from their planet will be frozen and packed into his rocket-moon and they will undertake a twenty year journey to Coome using the Iridium engine. Fax queries the validity of the Doc's claims but the numbers are solid, all the calculations have been made. He even has a flash forward to how his eventual death of old age might look aboard the ship. He really has it all planned out, to the final detail. There is not one thing he has overlooked in this miracle solution to their pending housing crisis.

Well, except one. The General points out that they don't have anything like enough Iridium fuel to make the journey. "That is a problem we have not yet solved." states the Doctor's son defiantly. I'd say it was an extremely key problem, now I'm backing the invasion plan with the full weight of my influence, sorry Captain. You took sides a little too quickly, should have checked if the old boy on the side of good was a quack or not first. General Fax laughs in their face and then disappears. He may be evil but he has a point.

In order to save public face, Captain Future elects to go even further back in time to an era when Iridium was more plentiful and bring it back to them just so this fatally flawed plan might stand a chance of working. Personally I would have washed my hands of this whole sorry affaire and returned to my own time. They'll all be dead by the future anyways...

There is a slight snag while passing back through time: a Fax planted bomb detonates aboard the Comet, knocking the Futuremen unconscious and sending them much farther through time than they planned. This also gives the Toei animators another excuse to kill six more minutes with crazy psychedelic colours and trippy shapes.

Episode 4...

Get ready for the heart stopping conclusion! The team wake up just in time to witness the Big Bang first hand. They burn out the last of their time-travel fuel heading as far into the future as it will take them. As they speed through time they watch out of the window as the Solar System is born, only millions of years before God created it all over again.

With all the planets formed the Futuremen mine Iridium out of the nearest one and then head into the future once more to deliver the excess to the Promethens. They quantum leap directly into the middle of the inevitable Star War between General Fax's Promethens and Mars. At last! Action is on its way!

Captain Future opens a three-way space-conference call between him and the warring races. It is time for him to take action. He explains that they are all really brothers, castaways from planet Coome stranded on separate planets from millions of years. Fighting is useless since they are all the same people.

Fax sees his plan to become Emperor of Mars unraveling and orders his fleet attack the Comet. They open fire. Here it comes, the space battle we've been waiting an hour and thirty five minutes for. They shots miss and Captain Future counters - by accelerating straight at the General's flag ship then stopping suddenly! The enemy crew fall out of their seats with terror. Future then indicates the space debris above them and, with General Cuban Fax and all his men watching, blasts it to pieces!! All of it!!!

Fax's men know better than to mess with this crazy guy and surrender unequivocally. Yeah, take that space rocks! No one messes with the Captain!

As foretold Prometheus is destroyed by Jupiter and the reunited inhabitants head off on their long journey in a rocket powered moon rock. Captain Future could have at least offered to tow them half way.

It is said that the original novels inspired George Lucas to make the original Star Wars trilogy. Well, maybe this dull, long, plodding and dialogue laden cartoon adaptation was the inspiration for his second trilogy.

Out of all the 52 episodes, is this really the best plot arc that Ziv could have chosen to translate? I can't imagine many kids were transfixed by heavy scientific theory and astrological history when there was so much to choose from on the video shelves of the early 80's. Maybe, when seen as a full series Captain Future is more enjoyable but as an introduction to the show, these two volumes are a real turn off.

I realise the books emphasised intelligent solutions over needless aggression and the anime is reflecting that, but such an ideology works better in print than a four part kid's show I feel.