Our Friend Power 5 is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Challenge of the GoBots Mockbuster movie made in South Korea in 1989. The film uses elements of both live-action and animation, and was made alongside merchandise, like toys and a board-game, all produced by Popeye Toys.
A group of turtle aliens from the planet BattleStar, along with their princess, are being chased down by the evil Shark Gang. After their ship is destroyed, they wind up on Earth, where the Shark Gang comes to find them. They get discovered by some human characters, and Hilarity Ensues, as the turtles and their new-found friends struggle to adapt to living on Earth, and prepare to defeat the Shark Gang once and for all...
No official English translation exists, but one was made by Phelan Porteous and a friend for the sake of review.
Tropes found in this film include:
- Aliens Speaking English: Or in this case, they speak perfect Korean. It's justified; Hyuk asks the turtles how they speak like he does, and they claim that being able to adapt and communicate regardless of where they are is their special power. It's not clear how the Shark Gang do it though.
- Chinese Vampire: Dalgeun at one point dresses up as a jiangshi, complete with painting his face a pale purple and wearing a long, colorful robe, all in an effort to scare Mina. When he moves, he even hops around with his arms outstretched. Then, when the turtles see him hopping around, they also transform into jiangshi, thinking that's just how humans are supposed to look...
- A Dog Named "Cat": The rats are led by the tyrannical Shark (who, contrary to his name, is also a rat).
- Evil Is Petty: The actions of The Shark Gang range from "messing with people's lunches" to "stealing Yesular's wand" to "murdering children".
- Explosions in Space: There are a few times when giant, fiery explosions happen in the middle of space, due to the characters being aliens engaged in combat.
- Fainting: Hyuk and Mina's mother faints when she opens a door and find the turtle aliens, who she'd previously only seen looking like regular Earth turtles, sitting in a room. Moments later, their dad faints, and lands on top of her.
- Gratuitous Princess: Among the turtles is the princess of BattleStar, Princess Yesular, the magic-wielding leader of the team.
- Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: While the male turtles are all taught Taekwondo, Yesular instead relies on her magic wand, and is generally less involved in combat scenes.
- Harmless Villain: The two main Shark Gang characters do little more than bumble around on Earth and fail to kill the turtles. Even when the turtles and Yesular are defenseless and asleep, they just steal Yesular's wand and leave, allowing the heroes to strike back and defeat them.
- Human Disguise:
- When the turtles want to fit in on Earth, they try to disguise themselves as humans. Unfortunately, the only human they saw up to that point was Dalgeun dressed like a jiangshi... It works much better later on, when they meet normal humans, allowing Yesular to blend in as an ordinary Korean woman.
- The two main Shark Gang members turn themselves into human men, only with both of them having noticable facial hair, similar to Shark himself.
- Humongous Mecha: Both the turtles and the Shark Gang create giant robots to use in battle against each other. The turtle's mecha is made of five combining parts, each for one of the characters to pilot. The robots also transform into vehicles.
- "I Am Great!" Song: The Shark Gang duo have a Villain Song that brags about how great and evil they are.We cannot be scared in the dark
We are the kings of bad things - Kick Chick: Mina is a Taekwondo fighter, meaning that she's mastered some powerful kicks and uses them constantly- whether it's to beat up Dalgeun or kick an alien in the face, she's always using her legs.
- Kill All Humans: Shark decides the best way to take out the turtles is to "Kill every Earthling", for no other reason than that they, well...exist, and a few of them helped out the turtles. The attack they launch spurs the heroes into action against them.
- Literal Ass-Kicking: In the very beginning, Mina decides to have a Taekwondo sparring match against the nonathletic Dalgeun, and at one point kicks him right in the butt, where he cries out "Ouch! My bum!", and is still hurt in the next scene.
- Magic Wand: Yesular's father gives her a wand to help her deal with The Shark Gang. She uses it for teleportation, whipping up disguises, and powering the giant robot.
- Medium Blending: Though most of the film is live-action, action sequences such as space-battles are done in 2D Animation. At some points, the live-action mixes with the animation, or the characters are added into the scene via rotoscoping.
- Merchandise-Driven: Toys for the film, including character figures and a board game, were made around the same time as the film, and produced by the same company. The film was most likely made as a vehicle to promote the toys.
- The Mockbuster: Uses aliens dressed as Ninja Turtles, fighting inside of a Gobot, as the protagonists. The toys, similarly, are Ninja Turtles-figures remolded and down-scaled packaged with a Gobots bootleg figure. Hilariously, the characters based on Master Splinter are the villains.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The evil leader of The Shark Gang is named...Shark.
- Non-Indicative Name:
- The "Battle Soldiers" aliens are apparently very peace-loving, and struggled to fight back against The Shark Gang when first provoked.
- The "Shark Gang" are a race of evil rat-like aliens.
- Radiation-Induced Superpowers: Hyuk gets struck with gamma rays in a laboratory accident, and winds up with Psychic Powers, such as the power to shoot energy from his hands.
- Rat Men: Despite the name, most of the Shark Gang are made up of aliens that look like anthropomorphic rats.
- Toilet Humor: While being punished for almost getting Hyuk killed, Dalgeun really has to go to the bathroom, to which his boss allows. Dalgeun staggers out of the room, looking sick and farting loudly.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The turtles go wandering around a busy, packed city, making no effort to disguise themselves as ordinary humans. Nobody takes notice of the fact that there's giant mutant alien turtles walking around.
- Would Hurt a Child: The Shark Gang's first act on Earth is to shoot and kill some children they come across in the forest.
- You Dirty Rat!: The villains are a gang of rat-like Aliens, and all but their leader have entirely rat-like bodies.
