Space Battleship Yamato

This classic, unfortunately didn't age very well, it has some of the times mannerisms (some characters are much archetypes than real human beings and the comedic moments dont pay off), and, for me, the worst part is that it seems that important chunks of the story were missing (for example: a major conflict in the first volume ending was completely cut, showing just his end result), it feel like watching one of the Zeta Gundam movies, where big part of the story were cut in order to fit in a movie format, and, as a consequence the narrative was compromised. I still think that themanga is worth reading for historical purposes, but I wouldn't it will be a very pleasant reading.

People who enjoy vintage sci-fi will enjoy this. I'm not saying this is the greatest or even the most entertaining manga ever, but it is one that feels quintessential of the time period. One of those things where reading it almost transports you back to the 70s. I can hear Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Aerosmith, AC/DC and The Rolling Stones in these pages. I can imagine being a child reading this and going in line to see Star Wars. As it is about 50 years old, there are some things that don't necessarily age well in that it has a simple good guys vs. badguys with nothing really complex about it. I was also caught a bit off guard when this manga also felt more like a pilot for the mega franchise it spawned particularly in its non-ending. The pacing doesn't give the audience any room to breathe and kind of jumps around. Nonetheless I enjoy the characters. They are mostly archetypes of 70s sci fi characters and some don't quite standout but the main cast is iconic. The best aspect is the art. Where Leiji Matsumoto feels limited in his writing, he more than makes up in his art. Some battles are a little difficult to make heads or tails of, but he knows how to make the universe seem big. He draws space as more than just a black background. He also presents interesting concepts of space travel such as warping which puts the ship through portals to weave through showcasing more world building. People who only follow the trendy manga like Chainsaw Man and My Hero Academia may not find much of value here, but the ones who like studying the history of manga and reading the foundationals such as Astro Boy, Golgo 13 or Lupin III will also enjoy checking this out.

Besides being obviously outdated, which can't be helped, it feels weak even accounting for that. It could be nice for an easily impressed kid that loves space exploration, but then the manga format and the length doesn't help much on it being lively for anyone younger than your grandpa. Manga is well-illustrated and printed in excellent paper (newpop prime PT-BR), and can be a window to the past regarding art style and what people of that time expected for the future. So it could actually be used in art studies/references in some very specific cases. "Battles" feels off and dead, it doesn't capture the movements too well. Characterproportions are off-putting and not constant, to say the least. Sometimes they're ok, in other's a captain has a head-to-body proportion of a young child. I'm not sure if in a particular scene it was on purpose or not, but I imagine it makes more sense just being a mistake. Plot is weak, which is understandable since the original was a tv show and it focused on action and speech, which weren't properly made impactful in the manga. Translation was ok, but feels like source material was weak. Immersion is broken by mixing different units, authors not knowing that in a tridimensional space you need two angles and one distance, extremely generic names for places and technologies (which is a residual from an tv show, understandable). So not recommended, unless it's a gift for someone that already watched on TV and you want to gift it out of their nostalgia... Review based on newpop prime's version in Brazilian-portuguese.