We at CineSavant have got a serious thing for foreign outer space epics, as indicated by our enthusiasm for arcane space fare from Japan, Czechoslovakia and even East Germany. We even like those goofy Mexican space comedies, but really good disc copies of those haven’t surfaced as yet.
A month or so back we featured a disc by the new company Deaf Crocodile films, an arcane spy fling from Switzerland called The Unknown Man of Shandigor. Expecting maybe something similar, we were surprised with a show nobody could expect. Delta Space Mission is an animated film from Romania . . . I think I’ve seen only one official Romanian live-action film, back years ago at Filmex. Billed as Romania’s first animated feature, this was made back when the country was in the Eastern Bloc. Should we assume that big shows like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars were shown in the East, or did they filter through Communist trade barriers only after the arrival of VHS home video? It’s easy to point to ideas in Misiunea spaţialã Delta that appear inspired by both of those shows. But Delta Space Mission presents its own futuristic take on space opera, via traditional cel animation.
Centuries from now, humans are exploring the far planets in spaceships. To help guide one mission a large, diamond-like supercomputer is built. An alien reporter named Alma volunteers to go along, accompanied by her ‘alien dog’ pet helper Tin. Alma is enraptured by the crystal supercomputer, a spiritual appreciation she expresses via an aerial dance fantasy. But the crystal computer surprises everyone by developing a posessive fixation on Alma: “Mine! Forever!” Going ‘HAL’- crazy rogue, it steals its new ship Space Station Delta and ‘disappears.’
Alma and her human friends Dan, Oana, Yashiro and Anura cannot track it down. Able to design and dispatch its own robot probes, the crystal computer tries to force Earth to hand over Alma. It first creates giant monsters, out of a mountain and the ocean itself. When Alma decides to return to her home planet ‘Opp,’ the sneaky computer diverts her egg-like ship to a hostile swamp planet. She and Tin are menaced by its robot kidnappers, as well as the indigenous swamp creatures.
Delta Space Mission to some degree looks like a Japanese anime, but the tone is completely different. Although the astronauts talk in tech-speak the situations are very simple, as in a Saturday Morning cartoon. The show is tracked with a synth score that bloops and bleeps its way forward in a very ’80s fashion. The human characters don’t have outsized personalities, and Aura is equally reserved, cool and calm.
The only cartoonish character is Tin, a rubbery, square headed bi-ped frog-thing. Fronting an amiable attitude in the most dire of situations, Tin is always doing something constructive. When lost in a bog and hunted by killer robots, he bores through the ground, avoiding the nasty grub monster he encounters in a subterranean tunnel. Although not overstated or over-emotional, Tin reacts excitedly to both good news and bad. He indulges some swamp blobs that seem to think he’s adorable, and want to embrace and pet him.
Love is a prime motivating factor, especially for the sentient computer smitten by the alien reporter. We never learn more about the ‘big mission’ because everybody’s busy chasing after a runaway space station. You’d think heads would roll for whoever allowed a zillion-dollar project to be seized by a hunk of amorous Artificial Intelligence. But no blame is assigned — a Space Council spokesman reasons that when you build new stuff, you don’t know what it might do!
The humanoid characters seem drawn with the aid of rotoscoping; could Alma’s love flight fantasy for the crystal computer have been patterned from films of water ballet? The space women are given form-fitting body suits. Delta Space Mission was likely too spacey / esoteric / psychedelic for U.S. kiddie TV anyway, but the prominent breasts didn’t help its chances for import. By the way, Alma’s skin color and yellow lizard eyes remind us of another alien species from a later 3-D blockbuster. →
As in vintage Japanese anime some animation is minimized, although there’s a great deal of diminishing perspective work and full-on character motion. The background art is beautiful and the parade of alien creatures is visually creative. Our own TV kiddie adventure fare in ’84 was violence and force-oriented, Masters of the Universe and all that. Delta Space Mission has numerous ray-gun battles and encounters with monsters, etc., but they’re often resolved in other ways than brute force. Every fierce creature doesn’t have to be killed.
The low-key approach is very welcome, even as we try to imagine how exactly this would play in Bucharest. If there’s any political angle here — as is present in all the Eastern bloc live action space fare I’ve seen — I missed it. This is purely escapist fun.
← Little Tin’s antics compensate for the show’s sobriety elsewhere — he’s fashioned with a real sense of humor. Someone remarks that Tin’s habit of idly chewing and eating metal might cause a problem, and we cut to the little guy munching in secret. He aids in every heroic rescue, and frequently saves the day on his own.
Delta Space Mission is a smooth combo of kiddie animation and spacey imagery, more sedate than Fantastic Planet. There’s very little broad humor, although the actions of love-crazed swamp blobs and pesky, persistent robots is on the droll side. Someday we’d like to see Ion Popescu-Gopo’s Romanian space comedy Pasi Spre Luna, which sounds very droll: after establishing the super-advanced techology of a vast futuristic spaceport, the film’s amiable hero plugs his electric razor into a spaceport lavatory — and the whole complex loses power.
