Follow TV Tropes

Following

YMMV / Invasion of the Neptune Men

Go To

  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The giant Hitler mural getting blown up.
  • Designated Hero: Space Chief helps save the kids from the aliens at the beginning, but does pretty much squat after that. He more or less becomes "Too Little Too Late Chief" by the end. He shows up after a few dozen buildings have been blown up, probably hundreds dead, and even then, he takes his sweet time actually taking down the ships. Ultimately, he doesn't even get to finish the Neptunians off. However, as his secret identity he does beat them. In fact, his civilian version is a lot more useful in every respect.
    (singing) "Space Chief failed miserably and tried to cover up his shame."
  • Fashion-Victim Villain: "Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha...Your costume is ridiculous!"
    • And they're being fought by a Fashion Victim Hero and a gaggle of boys in Fashion Victim Shorts.
  • Fight Scene Failure: Space Chief's first fight with the aliens is just him flailing his arms and legs at them to little effect while jumping around and the aliens fight even worse. One of them just awkwardly falls down when Space Chief slightly pushes him.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Space Chief would not be the last masked hero named Chief fighting off hostile aliens.
    • The titular Neptune Men have certain resemblance to the Marvel supervillain Whirlwind, especially the helmets.
  • Narm: Space Chief's first appearance, the "Roji-Panty Complex", and the classic case of misplaced stock footage where the Neptunians blow up a giant mural of Hitler.
  • Padding: The American version has somewhere around 8 minutes of extra footage crammed in to stretch the story out to the bare minimum running time. The film takes its sweet time showing off the aliens blowing up buildings, Space Chief ineffectively dogfighting the aliens, and the missiles that were used to defeat the aliens.
  • Retroactive Recognition: Sonny Chiba as Space Chief.
  • The Scrappy: The parentless kids. They're at any place where the plot wants them, even if they logically aren't supposed to be there, and they get themselves into danger more often than not.
  • Serial Numbers Filed Off: Alien invaders? Check. Mysterious superhero with the word "Space" in his name dedicated to fending off the invaders in his flying machine? Check. Roving gang of Japanese children? Check.
  • Special Effect Failure
    • Space Chief's cardboard-mockup-finmobile-on-a-first-generation-keijidosha-chassis. You can even see the fins wobble when he drives off.
    • The rear projection of stock footage behind the ships sent by the aliens is pretty bad.
    • One of the POV shots of the drones fighting Space Chief is just a zoom-in on a grainy photograph.
  • Stock Footage Failure: The interminable final battle between Space Chief and the Neptune Men is very obviously just the same few short clips of them fighting shown over and over again. Even the shot of Space Chief waving in his ship is used twice. This is not the case in the Japanese version of the scene, which is far shorter than the US release.
  • Trapped by Mountain Lions: At one point late in the movie the Neptune men try to use their ship to cause an Endless Winter (how this works is never explained.) About five minutes later, the humans somehow counteract it using the Electro-barrier (which also isn't really explained), and the temperature returns to normal. As Crow put it "Yay, our quick and pointless plot cul de sac is over!"
  • WTH, Costuming Department?
    • One of the few areas where Space Chief actually has a leg up on Prince of Space is the fact that his outfit isn't quite as ridiculous - but it's still very silly looking. Ditto the Neptune Men; not nearly as goofy looking as the chicken men of Krankor, but they're pretty bad.
    • When not in their clunky space gear, the Neptunians can be told apart from normal humans by wearing extremely heavy eye shadow and lipstick.

Top