SFXB Forum

You might be thinking of Starchaser - The Legend of Orin. A film that, like Star Fleet, stayed with me from childhood despite having only seen it perhaps once. Apparently it was originally designed to be watched with 3D glasses. I managed to find the video courtesy of eBay. Lots of humans working underground mining red crystals for a "God", bloke with a sword hilt without a blade? Sounding familiar? Welcome to the board BTW!

Hmm. Now that I think about it, you could also be decribing Space Firebird. If you can remember anything else let us know. As for other animated films of the 80s, I'm not sure there were that many, anime features like Akira aside. It isn't something Disney ever really did in the 80s. In fact, aside from Transformers the Movie I can't immediately think of any other big animated SF movies from the 80s. Anyone else?

It depends how you want to approach things. If you completely exclude Japanese productions, then, yes, there don't seem to be many SF-orientated animated features.A further couple off the top of my head:Time Masters: often mistaken for an anime, this was actually a French production. May have been seen on BBC2.Heavy Metal: American production based on comic strips that appeared in the magazine of the same name. Different, but always struck me as being rather crude.G.I. Joe: The Movie. In fact there were a couple, some more SF than others, but there was only one actually called The Movie.If you include Japan, however, the list goes on for quite some time: Macross, Do You Remember Love?, Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind, Laputa: The Castle in the Sky, My Youth in Arcadia, no less than 5 Urusei Yatsura films, Gundam RX-93: Chars Counterattack, Galaxy Express 999... and thats only a fraction!