Justin’s rating: Great Hera! Or should I say, Great Herold!

Justin’s review: As shocked as you might be to read this, I am not the expert on ’70s South Korean animation as I once made myself out to be. For shame! I am a fraud! Actually, I didn’t even know that Korea made animation, especially five decades ago, so consider this my crash-course in the subject.

Galactic Wonder Princess seized upon the popular Wonder Woman TV series that was all the rage from 1975 to 1979 and said, “Hey, I wonder if anyone will mind if we shamelessly rip that off. But, y’know, in cartoon form!”

Playing the role of Lynda Carter is Wonder Princess, a girl with eyes the size of dog dishes and the ability to change her outfit any time she spins around like a ballerina. She’s also an alien who’s running from what I assume to be beauty pageant judges, bringing all the destructive drama of this battle right to our planet.

Thanks, Wonder Princess. I don’t dump trash on your planet, why you have to wreck ours?

She bumps into a stranded human astronaut on her way to earth, sparks fly, and a love ballad emerges. But can she keep him alive when the bad guy who looks like Doctor Wiley from Mega Man sends body builders to wreck their day? Turns out that with her special powers, including bullet-deflecting bracelets, yes she can.

There’s also a precocious kid who’s in every fourth scene with his pet panda, because what Korean kid didn’t have a panda pet in the ’70s? Dime a dozen, those.

Again, I’m not overly familiar with Korean animation, but this really isn’t terrible to look at. It’s a little similar to anime but also different enough to appreciate the cultural boundaries. The characters — Warrior Princess aside — are thicker and chunkier than I’d expect to find from Japanese anime

I couldn’t find any English subtitles or dubs of this hour-plus flick, so I had to suss my way through on context alone. I was fun to image the dialogue, but to be honest, this sort of thing isn’t going to be that complicated. It’s good guys — a good girl, really — fighting a bunch o’ bad dudes. I doubt anyone was reciting Shakespeare during it.

I was hoping for a lot more insane anime-styled antics, but for the most part, this is pretty straight-forward action-scifi stuff. Other than the oddity of seeing old Koreanime come up with a surprisingly cute Wonder Woman, Galactic Warrior Princess isn’t going to be the most thrilling hour you’ll ever spend.

Intermission!

• This was directed by Kim Chung-gi, who also made the cult classic Robot Taekwon V
• Four spaceships can spin around each other to execute a pretty cool laser barrage
• Korea had a space program in 1978. I mean, maybe it did. I’m not going to do research on that. But I think we would’ve heard if Korea had landed on the moon.
• I think the astronaut’s head is going to explode. Please explode. Please.
• Dizzy freaky panda baby freaks me out
• Warrior Princess’ sunglasses are HOT
• Slow-mo dad-son hug!
• Who needs to animate parades when still photos suffice?