Thursday, April 13, 2017

Space Battleship Yamato 2199


I recently got my hands on the entire Space Battleship Yamato 2199 series for fairly cheap and, having been injured recently and not really wanting do do housework, I have watched the whole thing. Here are my thoughts on it.

I'm not one for remakes or re-imaginings, especially of properties that I love. Star Blazers is one of those that I never wanted anyone to touch but the people that did this version obviously love the original as much as I do. I have absolutely nothing bad to say about it. That's right, nothing.

The story line is, essentially, the exact same one from The Quest for Iscandar, which Dr. Bill and I covered on Anime Freaks. However, there are changes, and every single one of them is for the better. First of all, there are more female characters on the ship. Yuki Mori (aka Nova) is still there, but now she's just the Operations Officer. The role of Nurse is taken by Makoto Harada, a capable if slightly ditzy assistant to Dr. Sado (aka Dr. Sane). Then we have Assistant Warrant Officer Yuria Misaki, who acts as the morale officer, even starting a ship's radio station for entertainment.

Probably the biggest female lead after Mori is Ensign Akira Yamamoto (the white haired woman above) who is a fighter pilot and seems to have taken much of Kodai's (Wildstar's) hatred of Garmillas (aka Gamelons). She also seems to be developing a connection with Kodai, making for a love triangle that we didn't see in the original.

The next addition that I like is that there are a lot, and I mean A LOT, of subplots going on. Both on the Yamato and within the Garmillas Empire. None of these slow down the show, but instead give us some really good moments and plot points. At least one of these was scrapped in the original, but it worked in very well here.

If I give you anything else, I'm pretty sure that I'll be spoiling something, and I really don't think you'll want that. I would highly recommend that any fan of Star Blazers pick this up.

I now leave you with the opening (which doesn't show up until Episode 3) in all of it's awesomeness.



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4 comments:

  1. Time to go check Crunchyroll...and DANG THAT OPENING!

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    1. Unfortunately, no version of Yamato is on Crunchyroll. Trust me, I've checked. Several times.

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  2. Also...the original Yamato came out before Macross right? If so, I can definitely see the influence it had on that property.

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    Replies
    1. Yes. Yamato came out in 1974 and Macross came out in 1982.

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