Crusher Joe is 1983 anime realizing what Star Wars looked like in motion, with animation so fluid and colorful it makes you forget the story barely holds together. Every frame moves like someone spent weeks on a single corridor, a single hand gesture, a single cockpit moment. Watch this for what anime could do when it decided to stop apologizing for being animation and started treating space opera like it deserved craft.

Crushers are interstellar hired hands who will take on any assignment if the price is right. Joe leads a small crew of them: the cyborg Talos, the beautiful Alfin and young Ricky. What should be a routine job, escorting a cryogenically frozen heiress to a medical facility, falls apart when she vanishes and the team is left to take the blame. Space pirates appear to be setting the Crushers up, and Joe will not stand for it. He follows the pirates back to their home world, where the four must save their missing charge and bring the pirates down, through space dogfights, explosions and close-quarters brawling in a sci-fi action adventure.