Special thanks to Mike Bogue for his generous feedback on this review.
Battle in Outer Space (1959) is a polarizing film for the relative few who have watched it. With its lack of a giant monster and relative obscurity compared to most Ishiro Honda sci-fi films of the period, Battle in Outer Space is praised for its fantastic special effects [note 1] and as the last big experimental Toho science fiction film [note 2] before the company found its groove with monster-on-monster battles that would characterize the studio’s fantasy/sci-fi output for decades.But the movie is equally often disparaged for its painfully thin story and characterization (I think it was Matt Parmley from Kaiju Transmissions who called the characters “quarter dimensional,” and it’s hard for me to disagree). I was definitely on the negative side when I first watched the film, calling it “seriously bad” and bemoaning the wimpy aliens, the boring characters, the dispassionate carnage. Yet at the time, Battle in Outer Space was a considerable hit; a pseudo-sequel to The Mysterians (1957) and popular enough to warrant consideration for a sequel itself, Battle in Outer Space possesses a smorgasbord of special effects that would be mined for stock footage for years, and its innovative space battle sequences have fueled speculation from many that George Lucas used the film as inspiration for his Star Wars films. While the Natarl Aliens themselves rarely made cinematic appearances afterwards,[note 3] their movie made an impact—enough to warrant at least two manga adaptations, the shorter of which is coming under the reviewer’s lens today.[note 4]
Originally serialized in the January (or New Year) and February issues of Shonen magazine in 1960 (and later reprinted in issues 55 and 56 of Godzilla All Movie DVD Collector’s Box Set series), the initial printing following the release of the movie on December 26, 1959.This Battle in Outer Space adaptation was illustrated by Yoshizo Hotani from the screenplay by Shin’ichi Sekizawa and treatment by Jojiro Okami. Hotani seems relatively forgotten today; his name doesn’t bring up so much as a Wikipedia page, and none of his manga seem to have been reprinted in modern tankobon. Searching auction sites, one can find additional titles of various genres from horror (Revenge of the Ghost from 1958, published in rental book format) to shojo (Mother’s Ryokan from 1959) to additional science fiction adventures (100,000 Kilometers Above Tokyo) to television adaptations (Sea Cordon, based on the Fuji Television drama of the same name).[note 5] His wasn’t the only Battle in Outer Space manga available, however. Another, longer version by Mikio Ono (he did the cover for H-Man Continues, but otherwise I couldn’t find anything about him) exists published by Akashiya Shobou, and I own a ratty copy; it’s far more faithful to the movie than Hotani’s version, for better or worse.
Let’s summarize the story of Hotani’s manga version. The tale follows the film fairly closely, but with more appearances from the aliens (now beefed up) and a new child protagonist (this should sound familiar if you’ve read many of my manga reviews). The story opens the same as the movie, with a shot of a Von Braun space station wheel that comes under attack by flying saucers. After the space station is destroyed, we cut to Katsumiya (Ryo Ikebe’s character from the movie) and his little brother, Jiro (an original character to the manga—his age is never specified, but he looks like a kid). They are on a train going to the Science Center to meet Prof. Adachi. Their train is attacked by flying saucers, who elevate the machine off the track before smashing it into the ground. Katsumiya and Jiro survive relatively unscathed, however, and reach Prof. Adachi.
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| Natarl saucers on Earth |
After the pair recover, they participate in a UN meeting to determine how to respond to the alien threat. Jiro and a scientist named Iwamura (Yoshio Tsuchiya’s character from the film, here with a big honking nose) demonstrate heat-ray guns but are interrupted by a masked gunman. Jiro manages to tackle and punch the thief, who flees and quickly disappears after rounding a corner. The only one who should have seen where the man went is one Dr. Ahmed, genius-level rocket scientist, who claims he saw nothing. Ahmed, like in the movie, is under the control of the aliens, and soon tries to steal the heat rays but is tackled and punched by Jiro again before getting annihilated by a flying saucer. Here, Katsumiya then takes the additional step of destroying said menacing saucer with one of the heat guns.
In the aftermath, Dr. Adachi finds a mind control device in the disintegrated remains of Dr. Ahmed, and Earth decides to send a team to the moon to investigate a possible moon base from which the Natarl may be attacking. Katsumiya and his little brother are made a part of that team, along with Adachi and Iwamura. As Jiro and Katsumiya discuss the mission, they are interrupted by a mysterious honking vehicle. It’s Iwamura playing a prank on them, and the goofy scientist decides to go on a joyride before joining Jiro and Katsumiya on the mission. On his drive, he is taken over by the Natarl, and we see something that seems to pierce his skull. Soon the two spaceships are ready for their departure, with Adachi in charge of Ship One, and Katsumiya in charge of Ship Two. On the way into space, after some low-gravity antics, the ships come under threat by remote-controlled meteorites. As the ships begin blasting the meteorites out of the way, Iwamura comes under direct control of the aliens again and begins sabotaging the power supply of Ship Two. Jiro finds Iwamura and gets into a fist fight, but Iwamura traps the kid in a sealed room and begins draining the atmosphere out. As Jiro collapses, Katsumiya reports that he can’t fire his ship’s weapons, and the first chapter ends on a cliffhanger.
At the beginning of the second chapter, Katsumiya desperately evades the remote-controlled meteorites with deft maneuvers and hears Jiro getting banged around in the exhaust room. He lets the kid out, and together the brothers take down Iwamura and tie him up. The two ships land on the moon and our heroes drive in their moon buggies to look for the enemy moon base, following what appear to be Natarl message flairs. When they find the base, the adults take the forward position, readying to strike, and Jiro is in the rear. Aliens from inside the cave ambush Jiro and pull him into the cave, and Katsumiya and the others chase after, only to be caught in a trap and surrounded by Natarl aliens. The Natarl use a freeze gun to freeze a hapless astronaut, then menace the adults. Nearby, Jiro is about to get strangled by a nasty Natarl, but he judo-throws the villain and saves the adults with a surprise attack via his heat ray gun. A shootout ensues, and as a backup, the aliens send a message to Iwamura to destroy the ship. Our heroes manage a bold escape in their buggies, which take damage from attacking saucers, and Iwamura manages to escape his bindings and blow up one of the spaceships. However, when he does so, a piece of the ship hits him in the head and frees him from alien control. Things are looking grim for the earth attack force, and a Natarl saucer nearly takes the rest out with a blazing attack. At the last moment, Iwamura shoots the saucer out of the sky and provides cover for Katsumiya and the others to escape, sacrificing his life in the process.
In the climactic action, the aliens invade earth, and we see them disintegrating innocent civilians, and they annihilate Tokyo. Katsumiya and Jiro (and presumably many others) take to the sky to fight the aliens, and dogfights ensue, with Katsumiya declaring they need to find the alien command vessel. When one of the UFOs begins dropping spiked bombs, Katsumiya declares it to be the command vessel but loses his jet, surviving with a parachute. Thus, Jiro gets to face the Natarl command vessel and bring it down, the rest of the aliens flee, and earth rejoices, with a final comment that they need to be ready for any possible further attacks from alien menaces. The end.
Anyone who read my Gorath manga review should immediately notice a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses here as they did in that adaptation. Gorath, too, was an ensemble piece without a readily defined main character, though I would say the cast there were more fleshed out with richer relationships and humor than the stick-figures populating the movie version of Battle in Outer Space. Still, the manga version of Battle, just like the manga version of Gorath a few years later, focuses on just a few key players from the film, cuts out the romance, and positions a boy as the main hero. These steps help streamline the story for a thirty-page digest version, and the main heroes are thrown into all the main action sequences from the train attack to the final invasion, which generates audience involvement where the movie sometimes feels detached.
Giving the heroes more heroic moments beefs up the space-opera sense of adventure, too. As mentioned in the commentary by Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewsky for the film, Katsumiya has few heroic moments in the film (one has him drop a heavy object on Dr. Ahmed to disarm him, which is a sharp contrast to the frequent fistfights in the manga), and it makes his character less interesting. Here, Katsumiya has more to do… but he is constantly overshadowed by his super-soldier little brother, Jiro.
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| Jiro vs. Doctor Ahmed |
Just like in the manga version of Gorath and its introduction of the ridiculously over-accomplished boy-hero Hayao, Battle in Outer Space the manga introduces the ridiculously over-accomplished boy-hero Jiro. Jiro isn’t quite up to Hayao’s levels, though—whereas Hayao came up with the world-saving strategy of moving the earth, helped oversee the construction, and flew a fighter jet to kill a kaiju, Jiro is “only” good at fisticuffs and dogfighting. Plus, Jiro doesn’t always win; when he fights with Dr. Ahmed and Iwamura, he gets his butt handed to him as much as he gets his own licks in. Also, just like in Gorath, he replaces an important female role—Katsumiya’s love interest, Etsuko Shiraishi. It’s Jiro who is hanging out with Katsumiya when Iwamura plays his “haunted car” prank in the manga (in the movie, Katsumiya and Etsuko were having a lover’s spat of sorts in this scene); it is Jiro who gets kidnapped by the Natarl instead of Etsuko. Overall, while Jiro isn’t quite as annoying as Hayao, he is still a huge concession to the boy audience of the manga.
As far as other characters go, only Adachi, Katsumiya, and Iwamura make much of a mark, and like the movie, Iwamura has the most development. A jokester when he possesses his own mind, he is also the only character to show much quiet emotion, expressing a wistful love of his home planet before setting off to the moon; he even sings what appears to be a slightly modified version of the 1957 single “Osaraba Tokyo” by Michiya Mihashi as he drives off on his joyride. The strange device that seems to stab into his skull makes his takeover by the aliens more physical. While I don’t care for the way Hotani draws the guy (he looks like a pug-nosed comedian), the character gets a fair treatment before getting his body blown into bits—his last line is spoken from a disembodied head as he explodes. Adachi and Katsumiya are mostly allowed to be serious, scowling heroes, and background characters often are depicted as more extreme comic relief. A chubby astronaut masters drinking milk while floating through the air, for example. Overall, there is some balance, and with the focus on only a few characters, the manga has a clearer set of heroes that kids can glom onto, even if the result isn’t much increased depth.
Another arguable improvement is the portrayal of the Natarl aliens. In the movie, while we frequently hear a menacing voice that takes over genius scientists and guides them to deeds of dastardliness, when we finally witness the Natarl aliens themselves… they are complete wimps, and an entire chirruping crowd of them (they beep and wortle like the Meganulons from Rodan) is wiped out by one man.[Note 6] Here, however, Hotani gives the Natarl a more threatening vibe—they kill an astronaut, they have scowling eyes and a menacing mien, they have three-clawed hands, bird-like three-toed feet, even something like a beak poking out of their helmets. Plus, their leader sports a wicked-cool cape. It doesn’t hurt that when they attack they have the entire earth team pinned down (rather than just barely managing to harass one single woman like in the movie). Sure, Jiro manages to kick the outer-space rump of one by his lonesome, then send the rest packing with a few well-placed shots, but still at least here they are lethal and scary-looking.[Note 7]
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| Blast exchange with the Natarl |
On the other hand, a huge loss for the manga version is the international, let’s-all-work-together theme. Honda was well known for his peace-loving, world-cooperation narratives, and while the former is lost in the movie, the international flavor is retained with one of the human rockets (called SPIPs in the film) manned by an international crew.[Note 8] The aliens in the movie attack all over the world as well, as portrayed through a series of news reports, such as an attack on Venice. All of this global unity and theme of togetherness is lost in the manga version, however; there is no international crew, we never see the aliens attack global cities, and the climactic fight (as in the film to be fair) is completely in Japan. Now, the only prominent foreign role in the film is Dr. Ahmed, who acts as a mind-controlled villain. Even though Dr. Ahmed is not in control of his faculties, the fact that the only major foreign character in the story is acting to sabotage humankind makes the story feel xenophobic.
Moreso than the human characters, the tech (largely designed by Shigeru Komatsuzaki, as mentioned in Ryfle and Godziszewski’s commentary) is made a main focus in the film, and while the manga does not linger as lovingly over shots of the rockets and ray demonstrations, Hotani mostly hues close to the original designs. The JSS-3 appears whole in only one panel before getting blown up, but is a simplified Von Braun space station that never fires back at the UFOs.The SPIPs (unnamed in the comic) are only mildly revised, nearly identical but only switching out the “tapering, needle-like fuselages” (as novelist Stephen Mark Rainey described them in his review) for a more bulbous, sausage like aspect. The all-terrain vehicles appear in a few panels but have a completely new design; instead of the extended, submarine-on-treads look from the film, the manga employs mostly nondescript buggies with transparent glass domes on top and blackened pointy bumpers. We also never see them fly like their filmic counterparts. The Natarl UFOs are simplified, scrubbed of the twin “eyes” of Komatsuzaki’s design (though sometimes rendered with twin cannons instead), they also lack the pizazz of Eiji Tsuburaya’s effects—they don’t light up when they fire. The Mother Ship is also (mostly) gone, differentiated from the other UFOs only by its armament of space “torpedos” (which look more like spiky mines). Perhaps the most disappointing are the anti-UFO armaments at the end. The Giant Heat Ray Guns never appear, and the FFE Space Fighters are depicted completely devoid of detail, simple and all-black fighters with squashed chassis. Overall, Hotani doesn’t seem to specialize in detail down to bolt and wire, so his military weaponry is mostly workmanlike rather than the focus of loving effort.
A quick word about the art as a whole. When I first read Hotani’s manga a few years ago, I really didn’t like it, but having spent more time analyzing it, I have come to appreciate it more. As with most manga from the period, Hotani’s work is obviously aimed more at kids and has that cartoonish, rounded, “silly” vibe that dominated boys’ comics at the time—though I would say in general that the characters look a little more grounded than the extremes that Osamu Tezuka’s work reaches at times (no absurd mustaches or massive noses). The action, too, is easy to follow and utilizes a wide variety of panel sizes and striking poses, and it needs it because Hotani’s version packs the pages with drama and excitement, punchouts, air-burning shootouts, brow-sweat-mopping aerial battles, and more. It’s rushed, it feels like a near constant white-knuckle sprint, but I think Hotani pulls off his changes better than the Gorath manga, and may be because Gorath was limited so much by its smaller size. Gorath was published as small booklet included with a magazine—think around the size of a Reader’s Digest of old, smaller than the average tankobon reprint. Battle in Outer Space was published with magazine-size pages (the sides of the pages are populated with advertisements for other comics and trivia about mice and how the tongue works, etc). This increased size gives Hotani a lot more to work with, and results in a beefier, more exciting comic with more varied page layouts.
In some ways, as a story, I think Battle in Outer Space the manga is better than the movie. The comic firmly establishes Katsumiya and Jiro as the main heroes, and right from the get-go the Natarl aliens (now truly threatening) are gunning for them. Almost all the action set-pieces include Katsumiya and Jiro, and they are often more violent and explosive than the film (with the exception of the conclusion).On the other hand, the film has a far more astonishing climactic confrontation, and the movie also has a more worldwide and international theme. The movie has some more contemplative moments (such as the prayer over the dead from the space station attack), it has much longer sequences depicting the flight of the SPIPs and the all-terrain vehicles, it has the amazing special effects of Eiji Tsuburaya. But as a simple adventure tale, Hotani’s Battle in Outer Space the manga has a slight edge over the film.
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Note 1: Mike Bogue noted in his article from Scary Monsters Magazine 111 that a 1965 Castle of Frankenstein (issue 8) praised the film as possessing “good special effects,” and Stuart Galbraith IV in his Japanese Science Fiction and Horror Films included a blurb of from Howard Thompson of the New York Times that describes the effects as “obvious, but effective” and “downright nifty,” though he also points out that The Motion Picture Guideclaimed the film had “lots of errors in…special effects and looping.” A more contemporary from podcast Kaijuvision Radio heaped praise on both the story and visuals.
Note 2: Brian Scherschel and Daniel DiManna discussed as much in their Kaijuvision Radio episode on the film, identifying films such as King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) and Mothra (1961) as the watershed moment for establishing the set pattern Toho would follow into the future.
Note 3: Podzilla notes that the Natarl can be seen in the obscure filmCheers, Mr. Awamori from 1961 starring Sukiyaki crooner Kyu Sakamoto. The movie, an adaptation of a humor manga, is not commercially available, but some scenes can be found online. I was not able to find the sequence with the Natarl, but I did find a sequence showing what appears to be a special-effects backlot, and Mothra menacing the main character.
Note 4: While Battle in Outer Space isn’t so well remembered by fans in the West as Godzilla and Gamera, the film continues to be referenced in Japan. For example, in the third episode of Ultraman Omega (2025), the female scientist Ayumu Ichido describes the kaiju Pegunos’ freezing powers with lines that clearly reference BIOS: Ichido: “A theory was proposed in the fifties that as an object gets colder, its nuclear vibrations weaken, bringing it closer to weightlessness. No one took it seriously at the time…” Ichido is referring to a real scientific paper that Jojiro Okami used when imagining the Natarl’s absolute zero ray.
Note 5: I referenced online images of Hotani’s work from sites selling his work, and translated the titles myself.
Note 6: My understanding from multiple sources is that the Natarl were meant to be super-evolved beings with great intelligence and no physical strength. Given Ishiro Honda’s fondness for George Pal epics (as mentioned in the Ryfle and Godziszewsky commentary and in other places), it seems a fair assumption that his alien physical weakness may have come from War of the Worlds (1953), which featured particularly weak alien creatures—and the Japanese title for Battle in Outer Space is nearly identical to the Japanese title for War of the Worlds, with the former simply adding the kanji for “big”—War of the Worlds is 宇宙戦争 and Battle in Outer Space is 宇宙大戦争, hinting that the Japanese film is the bigger deal. The other most notable alien invasion film from the era featuring saucers destroying cities on a large scale, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956), also introduced rather feeble alien invaders enhanced by robot-like suits.
Note 7: The Natarl invaders also have an expanded on-screen role in Mikio Ono’s manga adaptation, in which the humanoid invaders also bear ray weapons and kill astronauts in man-to-alien battles on foot. Ono’s Natarlians never stoop to a lame kidnap attempt on Etsuko, and they are depicted speaking with an alien tongue using bizarre characters in their word balloons ala Matt Frank’s alien races in Godzilla Rivals: Spacegodzilla. However, despite their deadliness, Ono’s aliens don’t look as threatening as Hotani’s version.
Note 8: Ryfle and Godziszewski note in their Ishiro Honda biography that the film is “hardly pacifist” and that the narrative forefronts a “drumbeating for war around the globe,” which goes against Honda’s usual pacifistic stance. The movie does have a defined international flavor, however, with various countries working together, and I wanted to make a quick comment here about something I think might be termed a minor misapprehension vis-à-vis George Pal.
In their commentary for the film, Ryfle and Godziszewski poke at George Pal’s When World’s Collide (1951) for its comparatively all-white (and middle-aged) cast, despite that film’s worldwide threat (the implication being that only the Caucasians escape, perhaps). This is a fair criticism, though I suspect Battle in Outer Space was also influenced by George Pal’s more overlooked Conquest of Space (1955), and that film had a deliberately international cast, including a prominent role for a Japanese character, Imoto (played by Benson Fong). It should also be said that, even if Battle in Outer Space is a pro-international film, the Japanese characters are far more prominent and take on the leading roles. Some other ways that Conquest of Space may have influenced Battle in Outer Space include the opening sequences on the Von Braun wheel-style space stations (Conquest in Space’s station also has some trouble), a burial in space sequence (in Pal’s film, an astronaut is killed via meteorite barrage and is prayed over as he is let go), and especially the space sabotage theme. In Conquest in Space, a team member loses his mind and tries to blow up the ship, spinning wheels and attempting to overload systems before scuffling with fellow astronauts and even shooting one of them. Some of these scenes feel almost ripped whole-cloth and transposed with Tsuchiya in Battle in Outer Space.
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What we have here is the manga adaptation of Battle in Outer Space (1959), illustrated by Yoshizo Hotani. Originally serialized in 1960, this version was later re-released decades afterward in the Godzilla All Movie DVD Collector's Box for volumes 55 and 56, appearing near the tail end of the 61-volume run. For long-time Toho fans, it's an odd little time capsule that translates one of Toho's well known space operas into a short-form manga format.
Now I'll be upfront: I've never been especially fond of the original Battle in Outer Space film. While it has a number of undeniable strengths, such as Akira Ifukube's outstanding score and Eiji Tsuburaya's top-tier special effects, its characters and overall narrative have always struck me as uninspired. That weakness in characterization makes for a shaky foundation, and unsurprisingly, the manga inherits many of those same issues. Still, there are improvements and even some surprising enhancements that make the comic a more engaging experience than its cinematic counterpart.
The most obvious upgrade is the pacing. Clocking in at just 32 pages, this adaptation condenses the story without sacrificing the core beats of the plot. Where the movie often meandered, the manga feels leaner and more focused, managing to convey the same general arc in a fraction of the time. The result is a version of Battle in Outer Space that moves briskly. The action scenes also come across a bit better here. The highlight, though, is the depiction of the alien antagonists, the Natarl. In the film, they were most effective as a bodiless, ominous voice, but their physical appearance was laughably underwhelming once revealed. Hotani's manga gives them a redesign, strangely reminiscent of something out of Mega Man, but within the comic medium the design works. Even better, the manga provides glimpses inside their base, not just its exterior. They also briefly show the docked UFO attack force, which is pretty formidable looking and gives them a larger sense of scale of their attack efforts versus what is seen in the film. Overall, the Natarl come off as more threatening and they feel like a legitimate menace both on and offscreen.
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| Stumbling upon the docked Natarl UFOs |
Where the manga stumbles is in its treatment of the international angle. The film leaned heavily on the idea of global cooperation, with the United Nations and a multinational crew piloting the SPIP spacecraft. Here, that angle is diminished. A UN meeting still appears, complete with the Natarl demonstrating their mind-control technology, but beyond that, the sense of worldwide unity is lost. The crew still appears diverse, at least visually (one pilot looks non-Japanese), yet the manga doesn't emphasize this. What was once a key thematic element in the film is reduced to a passing detail.
Another curious change is the replacement of Etsuko Shiraishi, the female lead of the movie. Her replacement is a completely new character: Jiro, the younger brother of protagonist Chiro Katsumiya. While it's a relief that Jiro isn't written as a full-blown "Gary Stu" (a problem that plagued original characters like Hayao in the Suspicious Star Gorath manga adaptation), he nevertheless hijacks much of the story. Jiro even dominates the climactic dogfight sequence, shifting the focus away from the adult cast.
Speaking of that climax, the aerial battle also suffers from being relocated. In the movie, it unfolded in the void of space just beyond Earth's atmosphere. This was a sequence that, while narratively detached, gave the film a sense of scale and wonder. The manga reimagines this fight on Earth, and the result feels far more ordinary. The SPIP's futuristic space fighters are now depicted as what look like conventional jets, robbing the finale of its sci-fi novelty.
Finally, by adding in Jiro... this manga is also a huge sausage fest. Literally there is only one panel that features a woman, who I assume is a nurse, but the manga is otherwise filled with guys. While movies of this era would often skew very male in their casts, at least they had some representation of both sexes, something this manga is pretty devoid of.
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| Literally the only sequence with a woman in the whole manga |
Anyway, moving on, Yoshizo Hotani's artwork is very much a product of its era, but it's solid overall. His human characters are drawn with a simple, clean style, yet he manages to keep them visually distinct. This is no small feat given the minimalism common to manga of the early 1960s. He also delivers some detailed panels, one standout moment being the sequence where the train is lifted and derailed. That said, the character design choices aren't always successful. The most egregious example is the character of Iwomura, who is inexplicably drawn with an exaggerated pig-like nose. It's a cartoonish flourish that clashes with the otherwise restrained artwork, pulling the reader out of the story.
Bottom line, this Battle in Outer Space manga is more of a historical curiosity than a lost classic. It doesn't "fix" the core weaknesses of the movie, but it trims the fat, strengthens the aliens, and presents the story with a clarity and pacing that the film lacked. At the same time, it sidelines the internationalist message, slices out its female lead, and introduces a child protagonist who doesn't add much. For completists and Toho enthusiasts, it's an interesting artifact, with its standout element being the very different depiction of the Natarl aliens. A publication that reflects both the limitations and charms of manga adaptations of the era. That all said, I would probably cite the manga as being an improvement overall in contrast to the film, thanks largely to that improved pacing. |
