This flick is your basic cheap-ass animated space opera. We’ve got giant robots fighting each other, blue skinned alien robot invaders, explosions, deception, kidnapping and all that crap. Sounds good on paper, and if you don’t see a need for cohesive writing, good voice acting or continuity in your animation, then you’ll be all set… and you’ll likely need a nap afterwards and a pack of Lunchables™ before.

The new star named Antaricci (the bastard spawn of the star Antares and actress Christina Ricci binary spawning ovaries) has just formed and not 24 hours after it’s creation, the planet’s super evolved blue-skinned, pointy-eared populace have boarded their attack ships and declared war on the neighboring planet Orion… buh-wha?! The planet’s surface hasn’t even cooled off yet and these magically super-evolved beings not only have warships and uniforms and all the bells and whistles of destruction, but they’re already invading a neighboring planetoid!? What the fuck, was this planet formed from the same cosmic anti-matter black hole that belched forth the base genetic material of Herr Bushler?!

Unprepared to defend themselves against newborn war mongers, Orion’s people fall with relative ease, illuminated by mushroom clouds. A galactic train called Super Express manages to escape to Earth, carrying the planet’s children with it, piloted by Prince Siprian and Princess Susan… okay, if you’re going to name your alien royalty with Earth names like “Susan”, that’s fine, but at least be consistent with something like that. “Siprian”?! How many times will my mind be screaming “WHAT THE FUCK?!” before this thing is over with? I really need to know if this will be the movie that puts the tolerance center of my brain into “stroke mode” so I can have an emergency team on call…

Earth deploys their generic Gundam/Voltron defender known as Matzinga 7, piloted by military hero Kent and his lady love Mary. Matty zaps down the bad guys and Super Express lands on Earth without problem. While Siprian starts shit with Kent over how Kent’s dad General Larry (preceded by Lieutenant Moe and Sergeant Curly) immediately surrendered his post to the invaders on Orion, the Earth scientists amalgamate the robot with the space train (by shoving it up Matzinga 7’s cyber vagina like a giant steel eel in one of those “interesting” adult movie sites out of Brazil…), creating Super Matzinga 7-11 Express Mart and send it back to Orion to kill the bad guys and their leader Alfred. On the way there the drama between Sip and Kent escalates as Kent wants to go and take back Orion and Sip intends to go to Antaricci and strike back at his enemies with great vengeance and furious anger. Kent gets voted leader of the small crew though, so it’s off to Orion. The head Earth scientist’s freakish little son Joe tags along too to provide comedy relief, but the little mutant brings neither comedy nor the slightest sense of relief to me… unless it’s gaseous relief squeaking from betwixt my hairy ebon ass cheeks.

The Antariccians send their own giant red robot out to stop Super M’s progress, matching its spinning Hot Topic spiked bracelets, super-sized light saber and big ol’ chain & sickle against our heroes’ lumberjack axe and shiny trident to no avail. Despite his ‘bot getting blown to shit, the Antariccian pilot, General Blackman, leaps from his wreckage and stows aboard Super M, slipping in and starting some hand-to-sword shit with the good guys… and getting his ass handed to him about as quickly as his big robot got its own metal hide handed to it. Meanwhile, it turns out General Larry is still alive and trying to get some intel on how to bring down Alfred’s evil empire. Seducing Alfred’s big-breasted, masquerade mask wearing second-in-command Helen doesn’t work out as intended, so instead he gets an Antariccian grunt drunk and suckers the info out of him instead. It turns out that the azure aliens are actually the robotic products of a race called the Caseopians. When their prototype Alfred went rogue, the Antariccians joined him in destroying their creators. So not only did the Caseopians build robots that can get blitzed, but it turns out that humans aren’t the only race in the galaxy stupid enough to make artificial intelligence without a fucking failsafe device in case of synthetic rebellion… Anyway, after tossing a monkey wrench into Alfred’s plans to destroy the Earth’s ecosystem with toxic waste bombs, General Larry’s captured and tortured. While Helen gives General Larry the Abu Ghraib happy ending, let’s check back with Kent and the boys and girls of Super M.

Thanks to trickery on Siprian’s part, some navigational star charts are switched and Kent accidentally pilots his crew to Antaricci instead of Orion and Sip’s plan to take the fight to the bad guys’ home planet is pretty much forced on everybody else. If you can’t beat ‘em, cheat ‘em! Alfred and his army are waiting for the heroes (uhm, so I guess he hasn’t been on Orion this whole time as I’d been led to believe…) and a fight breaks out. Super M cleans house, but eventually falls to a kamikaze Anataricci. Down but not out, the crew transforms Super M into tank mode and chases Alfred around on his rocket powered snow mobile until he buries them in an avalanche. The crew are captured and tossed into prison with Larry while the Orion children still on board the galactic robot rectum transport ship are taken hostage… Why the fuck couldn’t the children have just been left on Earth until this debacle was over with?! It’s like Bush says; no child left behind… from being strapped into fatigues and sent off to get their limbs blown off on foreign soil by a nation of people who want us to keep our dick in our own asshole and out of theirs.

Kent watches his father die (in a magical jacket that somehow appears from nowhere to cover the old man’s nekkid torso) after the old man passes on the info he’s discovered regarding the Antariccians’ “Central Monitoring Room” that’s the source of their control. As such, I’m just gonna call it their cpu from here on. I was going to call it SkyNet, but that requires twice the typing of “cpu” and makes just as much sense. While the good guys mourn the loss of one of their own, Alfred and his men celebrate the capture of Super M’s crew and the children of Orion with drunken debauchery, pyrotechnics, “wacky” slapstick antics, cartoon bloodsports and an Antariccian chorus line that would have Captain Kirk pitching more tents than a Boy Scout jamboree.

The good guys kick their guard around like a hacky sack and make their escape, fighting off some more minions on their way to reclaim Matzinga 7 and Helen stages a one-woman coup on her hung-over leader, firing on Alfred several times and sending the blue meanie hobbling off and on the brink of death. On the topic of Helen, I really need to address her choice of wearing a masquerade mask as part of her outfit. I can understand the need to hide your face if you’re a big deal political figure, but when you’re the only non-exotic dancer female of an entire race, what’s the point in hiding your friggin’ face?! BLARGH!

The Ants toss another giant robot at the killer Matzah, this one a purple fatty who takes his arsenal tips from Gigan and has a big sickle for a hand. This gay pride cyber dickbag is easily disposed of and M7 heads into the base’s sewer system (thanks to directions from the dying Alfred) to decapitate a big dragon, destroy the Anaricci cpu and save the hostage children, blowing up the planet and leaving Helen to sit on her thrown, drowning in toxic sewage… what a way to go. The day is saved, it’s assumed that everything on Orion will be okay, and nobody has to stress about shit like “troop withdrawals” or “weapons of mass destruction”, because they solved their problems with giant robots and jet-powered snow mobiles and that’s the way it’s done, damn it!

If you’ve ever sat through a cheap Asian animated movie before, you’ve probably experienced all you’re gonna get out of watching Protectors of Universe. The voice acting is hectic and unbalanced and you can tell that the people reciting the lines aren’t as familiar with the English language as they should be if they’re going to be doing dub work. The story is the same old half-ass outer space road trip you’d expect and the characters are all just as generic. The villains are less-than-interesting beyond Helen’s coup (and her insistence on wearing a mask) and the fact that these blue-skinned android guys are subject to intoxication. The animation is jumpy and horrible, and even the continuity of it sucks on a bagel as Super Express seems to randomly disengage and re-engage itself to Matzinga 7’s titanium anus as the robot gets into various fights throughout. It’s just bad.

If you’re looking for an old skool alternative for your kids’ viewing habits because you disagree with the “sluts-in-training” educating their getting from crap like Bratz™ or the Hitler heiling horrors being thrown as them courtesy of Fuhrer Disney’s legacy, you can definitely do better than this. But, if you can’t afford the “Voltron” box sets and you insist on exposing your kids to some kind of giant robot stuff, Protectors of Universe (aside from the improper grammar the youngsters might pick up) will give them something to watch for less than the cost of a bottle of Cherry Coke and a Pixie Stick… do kids still eat Pixie Sticks?