Star Blazers: The Quest for Iscandar

I first saw this series as a kid in the early 80s. It was branded in the U.S. as "Star Blazers" and I would wake up extra early on Saturday mornings to watch it. Along with (but vastly superior to) Battle of the Planets and Speed Racer it was my intro to anime and it sparked several lines of interest in my life that have continued to the present. It basically brings the outline from the Jason and the Argonauts myth and updates it into a very entertaining space drama. This is a classic series and as such the artwork, music, and characters are not nearlyas well polished as something more modern. But taken for what it is it was an astonishingly good work for the time period. The recent "Space Battleship Yamato 2199" is a completely updated re-make for those of you who can't get past the dated nature of the original. There was also a recent live action film that was so-so. The original series spawned many sequels which range from excellent to terrible. If you like space opera and military anime you can't really go wrong with this series.

Space Battleship Yamato or : How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Warcrimes Story : 8/10 The story is quite simple and any person with a functioning brain should be able to follow it. I won’t go into detail as I don’t want to spoil and you can read the synopsis anyway, but basically the Yamato must travel across space to reach the planet Iskandar and bring back a machine that can purify the irradiated surface of the Earth. So in short, the battleship Yamato is renovated into a space battleship and has to save the earth from an alien civilization that seeks to exterminatehumanity. This is quite problematic since as told in the beginning of the series, the Yamato, largest battleship of its time, was the symbol of japanese pride and japanese military supremacy. The episode that shows how the battleship was sunk at the end of WW2 stinks of japanese nationalism. The Yamato and the fleet escorting it are shown as heroic and brave. When the ship sinks, you see japanese soldiers doing a military salute. Fortunately, this overly nationalistic atmosphere is only present in one episode, but I find it curious that the series doesn’t say anything bad about japanese imperialism, about the horrors and war crimes it committed all across East Asia. In the beginning, the Gamilas are shown as an evil alien race, but as you progress throughout the series you learn that the situation is a bit more complicated than that : the Gamilas are pretty much the same as humans, and they are not trying to destroy humanity just because they are bad. In each episode, the Yamato and its crew must overcome an obstacle, most of which are laid by the Gamilas empire, so a lot of episodes are space battles against the Gamilas space fleet or its military bases. I thought these episodes to be the most enjoyable to watch, as the space battle scenes are very well done. In some episodes however, part of the crew must go to a planet (to fix a certain problem or just to investigate). Most of these episodes looked like filler episodes and were bad and boring to watch. Luckily, there are only a few of these, and most episodes are very good, if not excellent. Art : 10/10 One of this series' strong point. Although the animation and art style may have aged quite a bit, it's pretty easy to get used to it. The scenes where you see the Yamato move around in space, along with the music, are wonderful. The design of the enemy spaceships and buildings are very cool, too. The character design are well done and the characters are easy to identify without them wearing extravagant clothes or having weird hairstyles. Sound : 9/10 I don’t know anything about music so I can’t really describe it accurately but the soundtrack is one of my favorites and it goes very well with the battle scenes. The opening is unforgettable, one of the best I have ever seen. However some of the sound effects (mostly the laser fires) have not aged well. Character : 9/10 Apart from Analyzer (who is also known as the sexual assaulter robot), the crew members are very human and likeable and you get to see their backstories in certain episodes. Most of the characters aren't too complex. You know what their motivations are and they are easy to understand, without being one-dimensional. The leader of the Gamilas empire, however, is too predictable. He’s just your typical cartoonish bad guy that wants the whole universe under his boot, always has an evil plan (that fails, of course), makes bad decisions, kills his own subordinates for fun and does an evil laugh for no reason. Luckily, the Gamilas empire does have at least one good character, Domel, a true man of honor that respects his enemy. Enjoyment : 10/10 This series is very old and has many flaws, but it is a must watch for every anime fan. The wonderful animation and music give it a really high re-watch value. Definitely a show I will re-watch in the future. Overall : 9/10

Space battleship Yamato does not live up to it's reputation for me, however I see why people like it a lot. Story (5.5)- For the most part the story's your stereotypical humans vs. aliens story. Though there are times when it rises above that. You might think the Yamato's plot amour (which was done to conserve the anime's budget) would sink the show however for the most part it uses interesting tactics to get out of the sticky situations the Yamato is put in. The aliens also have a concrete reason as to why they are attacking Earth. Yamato has influenced countless si-fi titlesas shown by some interesting points occasionally like for example " Is it fair how the losers are treated ?", "Are the Gamilluans really that different form humans ?". Characters (7.25)- Most of them are one note, however for the most part they are well written though. Kodai is a well developed character. Okita is the captain that supplies the interesting tactics that keep the Yamato's plot amour in check, and becomes a mentor for Kodai. Descular is the leader of Gamilon it's interesting to see his very authoritative aggressive personality sometimes create a paradox with his respect for the Yamato. Starsha could have been very interesting, however her character is not explored much. Mori was the worst character very little depth, and development, plus the bits of fan service. Sound (7)- voice acting acting is good. The music is your standard 70's anime soundtrack. Art (7) and Animation (8.5)- Animation is pretty impressive for the most part considering how old it is, though there are some odd facial expressions sometimes. The art looks fine. Enjoyment (6.5)- The story occasionally is able to rise above, the characters are solid, good voice acting, and impressive animation and art for the time: made Yamato worth my time. Though it certainly has problems. Overall (6.4)- The story is most of the time average, has a lot of bland characters, sometimes the Yamato plot armor is not kept in check, occasional animation mistakes, and the generic music hold it down. But the well written characters, and some standout characters, a story that occasionally becomes something more than usual, and impressive animation for its time: make it worth watching.

The story and impact of Space Battleship Yamato is one of the most inspiring and important events in the history of anime. When it first appeared in 1974, it shook the foundation of what TV manga could do. It would be the strong, innovative, and emotional writing of Yamato that would partly aid the medium towards gaining the name anime. It's cited as an inspiration for many valuable works such as Evangelion, Super Dimension Fortress Macross, and Mobile Suit gundam. Now that I think about it, Hideako Anno did quite a harvest on his influences. If you look at early mecha, there is a serieswith a character named Rei Asuka, for example. Another example: the song "Original Yamato Theme" was slightly recycled and used in Evangelion as the song "Background Music II." There were already several science fiction works before Yamato, Still, the fleet battles, dramatic narration, and the strong structure of its story was bold and fresh at the time. Perhaps the viewers were not ready for an anime like this as it did not do so well at the start. Once the movies released, series creator Leiji Matsumoto, who would go on to do many famous works such as Galaxy Express 999 and Space Pirate Captain Harlock, noticed a large amount of fan mail coming from fans. This was especially among the women to his surprise. Director Noboru Ishiguro, who would go on to direct works such as Macross and Legend of the Galactic Heroes, explained that the sudden influx of fans resulted in many travelling, some by plane, to their studio during production. As a result, the staff would hang out animation cells and background pictures as a thank you. The impact of Space Battle Yamato was so great that it inspired the creation of the game Space Invaders. The Yamato's Wave Motion Gun was also the inspiration for the Hadouken in Street Fighter. Not only that, it us rumored that it had an influence in the first Star Wars film that came out a few years later. George Lucas won't admit it despite that the similarities are there. Just one example is The Analyzer. It's the comedic robot that is rumored to have possibly been the inspiration for R2D2. This has been a topic of debate for decades that was reached no conclusion as many viewers are constantly agreeing and disagreeing. Truly, if Yamamoto never existed, the many great works I mentioned earlier may never have existed, or been very different without it perhaps. Being a work of Matsumoto, the master of melancholy, you can expect an emotional and dramatic space voyage as the Yamato ventures through space. The Gamilas led by Aberdt Desler is facing a dilemma. The life of their planet is running out. As a result, they decide to go out on a mission to take over the planet Earth. To destroy the humans, they sent out a barrage of meteor strikes that destroyed so much of human civilization that humanity had to go underground. Schools were being used as hospitals previously, and many of the women had to become nurses out of necessity. In addition to that, the Gamilas flooded the earth with radiation that threatens to seep into the earth to wipe out the last of humanity. In an attempt to save the human race, humanity has deployed an old World War II ship, the Space Battleship Yamato, to travel out towards Iscanda to acquire a machine that is capable of destroying the radiation poisoning that is slowly killing the planet and themselves. The crew only has a year to make the roundtrip, and faces many obstacles along the way through space anomalies and Galimus fleet battles. The voice acting is immaculate. Among the main characters, Kodai is voiced by Kei Tomoyama, who would go on to voice Yang Wen-li 14 years later in Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Shima is voiced by Shuusei Nakamura, most famous for being the voice of Toru Rikiishi in Ashita no Joe. The music I would say is iconic. There are lots of dramatic and amazing songs that help uplift the fleet battles and tragic moments. The funky drum work in some of the songs is impressive and amusing to see mixed with the scenes. The art, for being a work from 1974, is impressive, even by today's standards. The beautiful hand drawn animation can fluidly and naturally present the brutality of the fleet battles. There is one episode that took the staff nearly 2 months to animate because of that. The character designs are solid, and there were many times interesting effects used to portray the murkiness of space and the emergence of the yamato from smoke. As the crew continues their voyage, the stakes run high as their schedule starts falling behind. They have estimated one year's time before the radiation destroys the humans. At the end of an episode you may hear the narrator sounding desperate as he counts down the days until humanity's doom. At this point I will start using spoilers for the analysis. I would highly recommend watching this historical document of an anime before continuing unless you don't mind spoilers. In my opinion, though Kodai is the main character, my favorite is captain Juuzou Okita. He is the first captain of this new version of Yamato. His leadership is bold and provocative. His years of experience leads to unorthodox tactics to fight against the Gamilus or to get out of deadly situations. He knows full and well how to lead his team in a serious manner. He may sound cold, but he loves his crew, the earth, and the rest of humanity. The tragedy of Okita is that he is suffering from radiation poisoning. As the Yamato went on, he'd often collapse from it. The doctor, who is usually seen drunk drinking sake, tells him that he needs to get an operation to stay alive. In Okita's point of view, he is determined to follow along with his duty to lead the crew. However, even I would say that if he doesn't get the operation, it will get in the way of his focus during crucial moments. And this would be the case as he was constantly passing out while on duty. Eventually, he decides to get the operation, and is left mostly bedridden. A wise man, he spoke some words that really inspired me. There was a time where the crew of the Yamato had doubts about their journey. Hope felt as it was lost. And yet, Okita would confront them and state, "Why don't we believe in ourselves? Nothing is sure in life. One step ahead is darkness in our lives, but if you're overly afraid, you won't accomplish anything. Overcoming our fears, and believing in our future is an important battle in our minds." Always calm cool and collected, he always kept his composure even during the most dire situations. Even after being defeated at some point by the Galimus, he respected their strategy in defeating him. Oftentimes, his reactions would be quiet as he'd sometimes look down with his hat, covering his eyes, or look straight ahead with an unshakable determination. Despite there being no dialogue, his reactions feel like they speak louder than words at times. Since the beginning, he felt for the loss of Kodai's brother who supposedly died in the beginning of the series fighting the Galimus. Shima would express regret towards Kodai as an engineer that Kodai's brother had entered this mission on a ship that Shima knew was too damaged for the mission. Considering all this, Okita developed a bit of a soft spot for Kodai. As his time grew near, Okita would summon Kodai and make him the new captain of the Yamato. Determined with the will to live, as the Yamato makes its trip back to earth, Okita kept himself alive with solid resolve that he must see the earth again before perishing from the radiation. It would be around this time that he began thinking about the concept of death. He was under the assumption that the soul leaves the body when someone dies, and looked on out into space while bedridden wondering where his soul will go after he dies. The most crushing moment in Space Battleship Yamato is his death in the last episode. I was in tears constantly as the writing pushed the blade deeper and deeper into my heart. There were more tragic events that were already giving me heavy emotions in that episode already. As obvious as the obvious demands for the sake of the plot, the Yamato does make the roundtrip which I'll look into later in this video. Okita thanks the doctor for his treatment and asks to be left alone. As the emotionally tragic music plays in the background, Okita takes out a picture of his family and caresses it with his hands. His hand then begins to shake as he tears up. He looks up at the Earth and speaks weakly with his dying breath, "Earth. Everything about it is precious." He passes on, leaving behind part of the environmental message that the series tries to make about the planet we live in. As he met his end, there is a miracle that happens here that I will explain concerning him and Yuki when I get to her. It's only a theory but fairly interesting. Kodai, is another protagonist and the successor as captain of the Yamato after Okita personally handpicks him. He suffers from the trauma he faced as a child from the attacks of the Galimus. His parents were obliterated in a meteor attack. Kodai finds only scraps of their clothes. Later on, he had to go through the supposed death of his brother at the hands of the enemy. Though he grew up as a pacifist, he decided to volunteer for the army partly due to his brother's wishes for him to do so. It is this trauma that leads to that intense moment where the Yamato crew managed to capture a low ranking soldier from the Galimus. At that point, humans did not know what they looked like. Once the doctor reveals the blue man's face, Kodai became infuriated. How could a race of aliens so cruel and brutal look like a human? He cannot accept this and tried to stab the alien with a tool. The crew members stop him, and as Kodai begins to gather his cool. The captured enemy soldier then decides to try and take his own life at the point, and gets immediately and ironically saved by Kodai right after. To show that the Yamato crew are not the type to torture, they feed the soldier and eventually let him fly back to Galimus after failing to get intel out of him. Throughout the series, there is the obvious romance that builds up between Kodai and Yuki. Yuki already had a crush on Kodai and would tease the oblivious soldier about it constantly. She is a chief member of the crew, and is often seen handing drinks out to them, performing her tasks during missions, or finding herself victimized the Analyzer. She is main woman protagonist, and for an anime as far back as 1974, has a beautiful character design. Her personality can be very playful, yet behind the scenes she is depressed about being separated from her family. There are a few points where the crew are allowed to communicate with earth during their trip. The entire crew are allowed 5 minutes to talk to family, and you can see the desperation of the people on Earth during this time as well as the emotional breakdowns of the crew who miss family and home. When Yuki calls her parents, she sees that her mother has become obsessed with her getting married with having lots of kids for the sake of the continuation of humanity. This leads to poor communication as their time ran out talking about trivial things. She gets involved in an odd triangle eventually between her, Kodai, and the Analyzer. The Analyzer is a hilarious robot aboard the Yamato that performs date collecting among other tasks. He believes he is a human despite being man made and not God made, and is completely in love with Yuki. Outrageously, he often flirts with Yuki, or tries to undress her during inappropriate times. Yuki eventually goes to complain about the Analyzer's predatory ways to captain Okita, though nothing could be done to reprogram him. episode 16 would be the episode where she and The analyzer would come to a resolve. Of course, Yuki tells the robot that she could never be with him because of what he is. The Analyzer disagrees and says that he feels he is human enough to love her. They would eventually get captured while scouting in an unknown land by an alien race because Yuki for whatever reason want to climb into a strange hole that led to their nest. As Yuki talked about the fear of her own death, she accidentally insulted the Analyzer by saying that is he died he'd just become a pile of scrap metal. The Analyzer argues frustratingly so that his life is not worth any less to that of a human just because he is a robot. After making up, he decides to do all he can here to protect her, and even Yuki at some point acknowledges that he has a human heart despite being nuts and bolts, and hugs him. One part of the emotional side of Space Battleship Yamato is that when the characters hug or caress each other, there is a lot of emphasis on this that shows how precious they all mean to each other. Eventually, they are taken out for execution by the insect race. The Galimus, which were controlling these huge insects appear, send in a ship but their crew get killed. A part of the insects were rebelling and stated that the queen is using them for their blood to give to the Galimus. This is true. If any were to rebel, they'd get crushed and processed into goo. As the civil war goes on, the Yamato crew would come to save her. Though the Analyzer felt closer to Yuki then ever before as they were embraced during the war and rescue mission, she would run from him and go to Kodai, hugging him instead. The Analyzer felt depressed, and decided in that moment that maybe he really is just a robot after all. At the end, Yuki confronts him, and reminds the robot that they could never work. The Analyzer responds that he'll always love her. As be rolls away, he asks her, "There's nothing wrong with loving someone, right?" Creepy behavior aside, The Analyst is the funniest character in the series and best source of comedy in general with how outrageous he is. He can be often found getting drunk with the doctor by pouring sake over his metallic head. Something I started thinking about half way into this series is the mental effect of being stuck out in space for hundreds of days. The series does address this later as some of the crew begin to lose their minds from being out in space away from their families for too long. One crew member named Aihara would take this to an extreme. Though a Galimus plot, Aihara was manipulated into missing his family so much that he loses his composure in front of the crew and jumps out of the ship in a suit into space. Eventually, he realizes the wrong in his ways and luckily gets rescued as he would have died out in space. What is also interesting about this is that the Yamato has an image therapy room. Those who get anxiety are placed there and are given illusions to make them feel as if they are at home or somewhere out in the wild. In Aihara's case, he recognized this as fake. As a result, it didn't help him and eventually led to where I said he desperately tried to swim back home from space which was impossible. It is around this time that Kodai himself starts to lose it somewhat. He and Shima, who helps with navigation, often get into arguments and fights here. During one emergency situation, Kodai demands that he follow him. Kodai then expresses his desire to beat him while Shima expresses his desire to toss Kodai out into space. It's amusing to watch Until Yuki stops them. Still, they become comrades until the end of the series. Shima himself lost his sister in an accident from a ride at an amusement park and he himself ends up with four cybernetic limbs as a result. He nearly dies during the end but shows the necessity of sacrifice after he blows up a Gamilus ship by detaching his limbs that had bombs installed in them. Next, I want to talk about the Galimus. They are the main antagonists of the series and are led by Desler. Desler is a smug and ruthless ruler that doesn't hesitate in killing his own men, even high ranking ones, for slightly annoying him or to just make a point. His goal is to take over planet earth seeing as though their own homeland is collapsing and dying. He becomes interested in the Yamato and decides to destroy it. Time and time again, the Yamato manages to overcome his admirals and dirty tactics. Still, for Desler, he finds amusement and excitement over this. Often times he'll laugh with fascination at how strong the Yamato and how intelligent it's crew is. It almost feels as if the Yamato itself is what gives him a reason to live or feel excitement in life. Regardless, he tries relentlessly to try and destroy it. Desler ends up ordering Admiral Domel to the task. Domel ends up replacing Gale, which outrageous him. Gale was proud of his position, and could not stand Domel to the point that he would start sabotaging Domel when trying to destroy the Yamato. There was a point where Domel had assured victory. On the other hand, Gale went to Desler and told him that Domel was trying to sacrifice one of their bases to destroy the Yamato. Domel was, however, and had to let the Yamato survive the one time he could have destroyed it since Gale was jealous and spiteful of him. At the same time, Domel often had fun teasing and making fun of Gale, such as when he went into Gale's residence and tossed around his fine china telling Gale he has bad taste. Even when Gale tried to light Domel's cigarettes with a faulty lighter, Domel used the opportunity to compare Gale's lighter to how incompetent Gale is. As a result, Gale would often show frustration and throw drunk temper tantrums at his residence. Near the end of the series, Domel loses his fleet and decides to self destruct their ship on the Yamato as a last ditch effort. As much as they were enemies, Both Admiral Domer and Captain Okita recognized and respected the great level of skill they both have for combat. Domel would perish in the self detonation along with a panicked Gale. Regardless, the Yamato survived. Truly, they are both fighting for the same reasons. Galimus is just trying to survive by fighting for a new home planet for their people, while the Yamato crew are fighting them to save their own kind and planet. At one point, the vice president of the Galimus pleads with Desler to try to co-exist with the humans, but Desler disagrees and shoots him to death. An interesting small detail about Admiral Domel is that he decides to keep a rare bird he found at some point. It reminds me of the bird Captain Harlock has which ends up being paid homage to in Cowboy Bebop with Vicious's bird. In approaching the end of the series, it is revealed that Kudai's brother was still alive the entire time. He had been saved by Starsha, the queen of Iscandor that the Yamato were travelling to to meet for the purification device. Kudai and the crew felt relieved to see him still alive, but Starsha had fallen in love with him. She tells the brother this and runs away right before the Yamato took off. Kudai's brother, though finally reunited with his brother, apologizes to him and runs back to stay with Starsha in Iscandor. Kudai was fortunately accepting of this, and told Yuki that they have become the Adam and Eve of Iscandor. He is right in that the two would go on to rebuilt civilization as it seemed. Before going back home, some of the crew lost faith in the last part of the mission to make the delayed trip back to earth with the purifier. It was led by a crew member named Yabu, who had kidnapped Yuki during that episode. They went to go take over an ice castle, but fell to an environmental disaster. Their goal was to repopulate humanity there and take over the planet as they saw the earth as a lost cause. Yuki was saved, at least. In the finale episode, the Yamato makes it back, but not before Desler reveals that he survived their last battle, and makes a last ditch effort to destroy them with a large drill. At first, the Galimus board on to the Yamato, and inject radioactive gas into it to kill many of the members. Yuki would activate the purification device to counter, but seemingly perish from the gas during her attempt. The device activates, and the Galimus flee. Desler then has the Yamato impaled by a giant drill. The Yamato is able to hijack the drill bomb with the help of The Analyzer and sent it back to him, blowing him up. Still, you can see Desler vanish before the explosion revealing that he is still probably alive. Kodai, in complete disbelief that Yuki has died, goes to see her body and decides to carry her to the control room so that she may see their arrival to earth. He makes a love confession that he loved her since the beginning. He was waiting until the mission was over to confess, but cries with her in her arms seeing as though it's impossile now. As the Yamato sees Earth in its vision, this is where the miracle theory comes into play. Immediately after Okita dies, Yuki comes back to life. Perhaps it's about when they were talking about where souls go after they die. Maybe Okita's soul revived Yuki. Still, that's just a guess. The Yamato makes it back home within the long time limit, and the earth appears to be saved. The story concludes leaving the viewers with heavy hearts for the price it took for victory. If I was to point out the flaws in this, there are a few. Sometimes the filter used to portray the murkiness of space stays in place inside the Yamato. Yuki reviving may not make much sense to some viewers because it isn't outright explained. Something that kind of bothered me is that the Yamato takes much more punishment than it should. It gets constantly blown up, rammed into, melted, and severely damaged. Regardless, the crew always seem to have the resources to repair whatever happens to it. It felt a bit too convenient at times. Despite this, Space Battleship Yamato has secured itself in my favorites list as an important part of anime history and as an essential viewing. The spirit of Yamato would live on through macross, Orguss, Legend of the Galactic Heroes and in all the other space operas that carry the torch.