Ken Shinsei the Star Wolf and the crew of the Bacchus 3 — drunken Captain Joe, angry Rocky, lovestruck Tammy, Dan and Billy — as they battle Ken’s old planet Valna Star and the forces of the evil emperor who looks nothing like Darth Vader, not at all.

As we mentioned in our review of the original Fugitive Alien, these stories were originally written by Edmond Hamilton, who grew up in the next town over from my childhood home between Youngstown, OH and New Castle, PA. He started his career writing for pulps like Weird Tales, spent 14 years writing for DC Comics and then published several novels. A year before his death, Toei Animation produced an anime of his Captain Future novels that became popular not only in Japan, but also in France, Italy and Germany. The very same year, Tsuburaya Productions adapted Star Wolf into a tokusatsu series and that’s where we get Fugitive Alien.

Sure, you could write this off as a Star Wars ripoff, but in truth, it could even be the other way around, as the first Star Wolf book was published in 1967.

You can watch this on YouTube.