Star Blazers 2199 - Space Battleship Yamato

Now this is how to update a classic TV series. If you look closely at the 2005 Battlestar Galactica, you come to the realization of what doing a "reboot" truly means. It means the creator of the new series had absolutely no respect for the original material. He liked so little of it that he threw out the baby with the bath water. Nothing was worth saving except for the barest essentials - character names and the tiniest shred of the premise. The characters themselves were completely unrecognizable. JJ Abrams' Star Trek movies are the same way. Space Battleship Yamato 2199 is the opposite. It's a remake, not a reboot. The difference is they wanted to fix or modernize a few things, but by and large had great affection for the series and kept as much of it intact as they could.

I really wanted to watch the original Star Blazers, as the show was called in the US, but alas, the time slot wasn't cooperative as it conflicted with the school day and consumer VCRs were expensive and rare in 1979, so I couldn't timeshift it. Many years later, I finally had recordings of the show, but couldn't really get more than a few episodes into it before losing interest. Still, I did eventually see the English dub of the Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato movie and enjoyed that. The live action SBY movie from 2010 again left me cold and I don't think I even finished that. If I did, it was so unmemorable that I've forgotten even watching it through to the end. To me, this remake is the best version yet, good enough for me to binge-watch the whole series in a matter of days.

As someone who hasn't watched the original Yamato series from the seventies, I cannot compare the two. However, it is easy to see that quite a few things were kept the same, even though they now appear outdated.

The premise and general setup are typical for a soft SciFi space opera: After evil aliens have attacked and devastated Earth, the Space Battleship Yamato must leave on its great voyage to the faraway Iscandar to retrieve a device that will return Earth to its former beauty.

The SciFi part itself is fairly soft, not too dissimilar from, say, Star Wars. There's a magical gizmo that allows FTL travel, artificial gravity is an unexplained thing, and occasionally the dialogue mentions a technical term (like 'interstellar medium') that the writers have no idea about. That's pretty much par for the course for almost every SciFi show, but still something that should be easier to avoid now that one can look things up on the internet.

The Yamato and spaceships in general have a charming naval theme going on, where destroyed ships are called 'sunk' and dimensional submarines are a thing and fighter carriers look quite a bit like aircraft carriers. It's a bit silly but works very well.

What definitely has been stuck in the seventies are some gender-specific thing. I'm not really someone who notices these things but, uhh, when the men wear sailors' uniforms and the women skintight, high-heeled bodysuits, it's a bit on the nose. It doesn't help the primary female character regularly plays the damsel in distress, and even the secondary female character (who is quite kickass most of the time) runs away in tears when she sees her crush talking to another woman.

Generally, the characters were a bit forgettable to me, though that's likely due to the amount of them. The Yamato's important crew is comparable in size to that of various other space shows (think the various Star Treks or Battlestar Galactica), but with only 25 minute segments it's a bit difficult to give all of them enough screentime. Still, by the end of the show, I felt for most of the characters. There're some pretty cool antagonists and occasional side characters, too.

The plot... mhh. As said before, it's typical space opera fare that must've seemed new and daring in the seventies. Today, we're just used to other stuff. To be honest, it's almost campy at times: the evil aliens are basically space nazis that look like humans with blue skin. The good aliens are beautiful blonde women that look so much like humans that they even get confused. The wildest thing you'll see is someone with greyish skin and pointy ears, so... But still, the story works out. I didn't much like the first few episodes; they felt a bit bland to me and I hadn't yet liked the characters. I'd say that the story turns for the better in episode ten, and the last ten or so episodes are absolutely marvellous. If it were only for the first half of the show, I'd give it a 7 at most, but in total it's definitely worth an 8.

As for the production values, the soundtrack is fairly good but gets repetitive. If you binge this series, you'll probably get sick of the same five themes repeating ad absurdum but in small doses they're very catchy. The graphics are fantastic: a perfect blend of CGI and traditional cel animation. The (Japanese) voice acting is solid as always. I'd say the direction and editing is nothing to write home about, but I'm not really someone who notices that stuff.

Also, perhaps important to note is that there is pretty much no fanservice, so you can safely watch this with your kids or parents or whomever.

I'm rating it 9/10 but personally for me its 10/10 because of the nostalgia factor.

This is a remake of the mid 70's Space Battleship Yamato which was released in the US as "Star Blazers" and dubbed into English. It was so popular in Japan that there was a musical tour of the music from the show. It was equally popular among American children of the 70's and 80's.

This is an excellent remake. They kept what made the series great in the 70's and of course the animation and general picture quality is vastly superior.

First off, thank you Bandai and the production team for bringing this back.

I watched the original when I was 10-12 years old, so on a personal level it was nostalgic. That being said, the story has been modernized in a very technical way to add "onion like" layers to the level of realism.

The combat scenes were the finest space battle scenes I have ever seen in live action or Anime, in their detail, Better than the New Battlestar Galactica IMHO. The CGI and 2D animation was blended masterfully.

The Story has been updated in a way to fill in the realism gaps without stepping on the Original. The Characters have real and individual motives and the antagonists are no exception.

You do not have to have watched the original, the movie, or even anime, to thoroughly enjoy this series.

If you like SCI-FI, this is it for you. But not only space battles and lasers.

This series gives such a great attention to details, and explains pretty much everything (that is how I like a SCI-FI, create new tech while creating the backstories explaining them). I often had to pause to look at things like the very detailed engine or shield monitors, and had to back up to listen back to important information given.

The main vessel of the series, the Yamato, is also very well explored and used, with plenty of different technologies used, from huge cannons to classical WW2-era artillery shells.

The characters are also very well developed in here. Most of them are multi-dimensional and serve their own roles somewhere. This is actually an excellent space opera, and was really drawn into all of the inner stories, even love stories.

The enemies are also very well depicted, and get their fair share of screen time, and are also multidimensional. You get to understand them, and even understand them well, their behavior, and why their are doing what they are doing.

The english voice acting was also up-there, beautiful and well talented voices, fitting the characters.

All in all, this is a 10 for me, up there with neon genesis evangelion series. Looking forward the 2022 part! Thank for that new personal classic.