Space Battleship Yamato

Space Battleship Yamato
File:Yamato title.jpg
Genre	Drama, Military, Science Fiction
Anime
Directed by	Leiji Matsumoto
Studio	Academy Productions
Anime
Space Battleship Yamato II
Directed by	Leiji Matsumoto, Noburo Ishiguro, Toshio Masuda
Studio	Academy Productions
Anime
Space Battleship Yamato III
Directed by	Leiji Matsumoto, Noburo Ishiguro
Studio	Academy Productions
Anime
Space Battleship Yamato: The Movie
Directed by	Toshio Matsuda
Studio	Academy Productions
Anime
Farewell Space Battleship Yamato
Directed by	Leiji Matsumoto, Toshio Matsuda
Studio	Toei Animation
Anime
Space Battleship Yamato: The New Voyage
Directed by	Toshio Matsuda
Studio	Toei Animation
Anime
Be Forever Yamato
Directed by	Leiji Matsumoto, Toshio Matsuda
Studio	Toei Animation
Anime
Final Yamato
Directed by	Leiji Matsumoto, Toshio Matsuda, Yoshinobu Nishizaki
Studio	Toei Animation
Anime
Yamato 2520

Space Battleship Yamato (宇宙戦艦ヤマト, Uchū Senkan Yamato) is a Japanese science fiction anime series and the name of its eponymous space craft. It is also known to English-speaking audiences as Space Cruiser Yamato or Star Blazers; an English-dubbed and partly edited version of the series was broadcast on American and Australian television under the latter title.

Development

File:SpaceBattleshipYamato.jpg

The release of Space Battleship Yamato is often cited as the beginning of the Golden Age of Anime

Conceived in 1973 by producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki, the project underwent heavy revisions. Originally intended to be an outer-space variation on Lord of the Flies, the project at first was titled "Asteroid Ship Icarus" and had a multinational teenage crew journeying through space in a hollowed-out asteroid in search of the planet Iscandar. There was to be much discord among the crew; many of them acting purely out of self-interest and for personal gain. The enemy aliens were originally called Rajendora.

When Leiji Matsumoto was brought onto the project, many of these concepts were discarded. It is his art direction, ship designs and unique style that accredit him in fans' eyes as the true creator of Space Battleship Yamato, even though Nishizaki retains legal rights to the work.

Production run

Space Battleship Yamato

The first season began airing in Japan in 1974. Set in the year 2199, an alien race known as the "Gamilas" ("Gamilons" in the English dub) are raining radioactive bombs on Earth, rendering the planet's surface dead and uninhabitable. Humanity lives in refuges built deep underground, but the radioactivity is slowly infiltrating the underground cities too. Earth's space fleet is hopelessly outclassed by the Gamilas and all seems lost until a mysterious space probe is retrieved on Mars. Blueprints for a faster-than-light engine are discovered, and a message from Queen Starsha of the planet Iscandar in the Large Magellanic Cloud says that she has a device, the Cosmo-Cleaner D (Cosmo DNA), which can cleanse Earth of its radiation damage.

The inhabitants of Earth secretly convert the ruin of the Japanese battleship Yamato into a massive spaceship, the Space Battleship Yamato of the title, complete with a new, incredibly powerful weapon called the "wave motion gun". In the English dub, the ship is still the historical Yamato and referred to as such, but is renamed the Argo (after the ship of Jason and the Argonauts) once rebuilt. A tiny but intrepid crew of 114 leaves in the Yamato to go to the Large Magellanic Cloud and retrieve the mysterious device, if it exists. Along the way they discover the plans of their blue-skinned adversaries: the planet Gamilas, sister planet to Iscandar, is dying; and its leader, Lord Desslar ("Desslok" in the English dub), is trying to irradiate Earth enough for his people to move there, at the expense of the "barbarians" he considers humanity to be.

The first season contained twenty-six episodes, following the Yamato 's year-long voyage across the Galaxy and back. A continuing story, it features the declining health of the determined captain Okita (Avatar in the English dub), and the transformation of the brash young orphan Susumu Kodai (Derek Wildstar) into a mature and capable-acting captain, as well as his budding romance with female crewmember Yuki Mori (Nova). The foreign edits tend to play up the individual characters, while the Japanese original is often more focused on the ship itself.

The series was condensed into a ninety-minute theatrical movie by selecting a few key episodes, editing them heavily, and sticking them together; as a result, the first-season movie leaves large gaps and doesn't flow very well. Additional animation was created for the movie (such as the scenes on Iscandar) or recycled from the series' test footage (such as the opening sequence). The movie was edited down further and dubbed into English in 1978; entitled Space Cruiser Yamato or simply Space Cruiser, it was only given a limited theatrical release in Europe, though it was released on video.

Space Battleship Yamato 2 and Arrivederci/Farewell Yamato

The 90-minute movie version of Yamato outperformed another space opera, Star Wars, at the Japanese box office, leading to the production of a second movie that would end the story. In Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato (also rendered as Arrivederci Yamato), the Yamato and her crew face the onslaught of the Comet Empire, a civilization from the Andromeda Galaxy who seek to conquer Earth, led by Zwordar the Great (Prince Zordar). The Earth ship is aided by an anti-matter woman, Teresa of Telezart (known as Trelaina in the English dub), while the Comet Empire have restored to life Earth's greatest enemy, the Gamilas' leader Desslar, who is eager for revenge. After a massive battle which destroys both Earth and Comet Empire forces, the Yamato crew defeat Zwordar's plans, but at the cost of the ship and their lives.

As the popularity of this franchise became clear (due largely to an enraged fan outcry from those who saw the movie), a second season of the television series was produced, retconning the movie and presenting a different plot against the movie's enemy without killing off the Yamato or its primary characters. Expanding the story to 26 episodes, the second season featured additional plots such as a love story between Teresa and Yamato crew member Daisuke Shima (Mark Venture) and an onboard antagonism between Kodai and Saito (Knox), leader of a group of space marines. The English dub of this season is considered the best by many of the series' American fans.

Footage from Arrivederci Yamato was reused in the second season, particularly in the opening titles; the sequence of the Yamato launching from water was also reused in two of the subsequent movies.

Yamato: The New Voyage

The television movie Yamato: The New Voyage came next, featuring a new enemy, the Black Nebula Empire. In the film, which initially was later modified into a theatrical movie, Desslar (called Desslok in the English dub version) sees his homeworld destroyed by the grey-skinned aliens, its twin planet Iscandar next in line for invasion. He finds an eventual ally in the Yamato, on a training mission under acting captain Kodai.

Be Forever Yamato

The theatrical movie Be Forever Yamato sees the Black Nebula launch a powerful weapon at Earth, which will annihilate humanity if they resist a full-scale invasion; the Yamato, under a new captain, travels to the aliens' home galaxy, only to discover what appears to be a future Earth in which the terrible proclamation has come to pass.

Space Battleship Yamato III

Following these movies, a third season of the TV series was produced, broadcast on Japanese television in 1980. In this, the Sun is hit by a proton missile, which accelerates the star's life cycle, and humanity must either evacuate to a new home or locate a means of preventing a supernova. At the same time, the remnants of Desslar's Gamilan Empire seek a new home close to the centre of our Galaxy, where they encounter their forebears in the Galman Empire, and come into conflict with a new alien race, the Bolar Federation. Originally conceived as a 52-episode epic, funding cuts meant the season had to be reduced to 25 episodes, with a corresponding loss of overall story development.

Final Yamato

The saga ended in 1983 with the fifth theatrical movie, Final Yamato. In this feature, the Gamilan Empire is destroyed by a chance collision of galaxies, while the Yamato, back under the command of Captain Okita (who was cryogenically frozen after his apparent death in the first season), encounters the planet Deingil too late to save its humanoid civilisation from being flooded by the water planet Aquarius. The surviving Deingili, a warrior race who believe only the strong should survive, plan to use Aquarius to flood Earth and destroy humanity, in order to create a new home for their race. When all seems lost, the Deingili are destroyed by Desslar and the remains of his people (in gratitude for the human crew's honoring the Gamilan dead), and the Yamato is filled with tritiated water and detonated like a giant hydrogen bomb by Okita to divert the water stream. A great deal of time is taken at the end of the film showing the fragments of the Yamato repeatedly "sinking" beneath the waves in space, Okita going down with his ship. The unedited version also shows Kodai finally marrying his long-time sweetheart Yuki (and subsequently "consummating" their marriage).

Characters

See Space Battleship Yamato characters

Cultural impact

Further information: List of references to Space Battleship Yamato in other works

• The theme song from Space Battleship Yamato is frequently performed by military bands of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, an example of life imitating fiction.

• The downtown area of the Japanese city Tsuruga in Fukui Prefecture has about two dozen bronze statues, each about four feet tall, depicting characters and scenes from the Space Battleship Yamato and Galaxy Express 999 TV shows and films.

• The Aum Shinrikyo cult — long before their sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subways — promoted their faith with inspirational videos that emulated the animation style, cosmic images, and theme music from the series.

• The show was dubbed in Arabic in the early eighties. Based on the American version, this was an unusual project in many ways. The Jordanian team who tackled the job approached the drama very seriously and delivered wonderful performances. The Arabic version retained the American names, a first in Arabic cartoon shows. This proved a hit. This version enjoyed an adult gloss and in many ways surpassed its American counterpart and appealed to a wider audience. It also featured a rare event in the participation of renowned actor Nabil Al Mashini who voiced captian Avatar with warmth and emotion. Veteran actor Zuhair al Noubani gave his shrilling voice to Desslok and raised the bar for bad guys forever. In the "Comit Empire" Al Nobani apologized and Mohammad Hilmi took the role to stellar frontiers. One exceptional difference between the Arabic version and the American version is that the ship retained its original name "Yamato". No "Argo" appears in the show. Although the reason for this was not revealed, it's a peculiar detail that brings the Arabic version closer to the Japanese original. The show was called "Abtal Al Fada" (Space Heroes). The second season held a different name before the credits "Al Ruwad Al Shuj'an" (The Brave Raiders), but the inside dubbing referred to them always as "Abtal Al Fada".

• Twenty years later the rights were bought again by another company and a joint Egyptian-Syrian team dubbed it again under the name "Nousour Al Fada" (Space Eagles). This was a poor effort in which two entirely different teams dubbed each season separately using unimaginative Arabic names. Their most disturbing mistake, however, was a very bad montage that utterly destroyed the soundtrack and spoiled the feel of the show. A total mess resulted. The original glamorous Jordanian version is the one true to the spirit of the show and is a hot commodity only found in collections of die-hard fans and maybe in the Archives of the local TV station.

Star Blazers

Space Battleship Yamato
Genre	Drama, Military, Science Fiction
Anime
Star Blazers
Directed by	Billy West
Studio	DiC

In 1978 Westchester Corporation identified Yamato as a potential "kids' property" (Starlog, June 1980), and bought the rights to the first two seasons. Dubbing and editing were done by Griffin-Bacal Advertising and production and syndication by Claster Television. Being marketed at a school-age audience, Yamato was bowdlerized by the American editors in order to satisfy the broadcast standards and practices offices of American TV stations. However, far fewer edits were made than with another 1970s anime, Battle of the Planets (a heavily-censored version of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman), and even in its edited American form retains practically all of its uniquely Japanese characteristics in terms of content, plot, character development, and philosophy.

Principal changes included Westernisation of character names, reduction of personal violence, toning down of offensive language and alcohol use, and removal of sexual fan service and references to World War II although the sunken battleship ruins were still identified as the Yamato in dialogue. Many fans nonetheless regard it as more "adult" than other cartoons shown in the US at the time, as personal tragedy, funeral scenes for fallen comrades and the extinction faced by humanity were left intact. The very Japanese theme of "the honorable enemy" was also a tremendously important aspect of Desslok's character development in the second and third seasons, as well as in the later movies.

The most significant change made by Griffin-Bacal was purely narrative: whereas in the original series the Yamato and its crew were regarded as a single entity, the narrator each week urging "Yamato, hurry to Iscandar!", in Star Blazers the crew were named the Star Force and became the focus of the show, with the Argo merely being the vessel in which they travelled (though it retained its source in the Japanese battleship, the name-change being covered in dialogue).

The first two seasons (whose DVD releases are titled "The Quest for Iscandar" and "The Comet Empire") were broadcast in 1979 and 1980. By the time the third season of Yamato was released, however, the original voice actors had moved on and, being non-union, were uncontactable by the American production company. The third season (released as "The Bolar Wars") played to a small test market at the time and was not as widely seen until its release on video and DVD, and remains less popular than the first two seasons. Many of the original English voice actors have since been tracked down and interviewed for the Star Blazers DVD releases.

American comic adaptations

To date three American comic adaptations have been published; two as comic book series and the most recent as a web comic.

The first series was published by Comico in the late 1980s and served as a postscript to the second season. In this series it was discovered that the White Comet Empire's rear fleet (comprising fully half of the empire's entire fleet) still existed and - with Earth's entire fleet other than the Argo having been wiped out - only the Argo stood between the massive fleet of the empire and Earth.

In the mid-'90s Voyager Entertainment published 12 issues of a Star Blazers comic book before publication was halted due to poor sales.

Star Blazers Rebirth is currently being published as a web comic, with new chapters appearing on the official Star Blazers site every month or two. The art and story is by Tim Eldred, who was also responsible for the Voyager Entertainment series. In Star Blazers Rebirth the Earth is once again threatened by a menace from space headed for the Earth 25 years after the first series; this time in the shape of what appears to be a black hole. At first Earth's government does not believe the information, on the basis that black holes aren't supposed to be able to move. However, they eventually agree to send Earth's newest and most powerful starship, Andromeda II, to investigate. Upon reaching its destination, Andromeda II is quickly destroyed with all hands onboard, though not before transmitting its data to Earth. Shocked by the disaster, and disgusted at the lack of response from Earth's government (other than to begin evacuating the citizens of the Earth to the far less hospitable planets discovered during the third series), Sandor and Wildstar (now grey-haired, bearded, in his mid-40s, and constantly haunted by the past - as well as by pasts which never happened) devote their wealth and energies to rebuilding the nearly shattered Argo, which was encased in ice and left floating in Earth orbit at the end of Final Yamato. Since most of the old surviving bridge crew of Argo are now captains in command of their own ships, many of the new crew members are the children or grandchildren of the original Argo crew. In keeping with the original series' emphasis on human mortality, one of these children is the daughter of one of the original crew's most important members, who (apparently) died in the Andromeda II mission to investigate the mysterious black hole. In the meantime, the decision to relocate Earth's population to numerous colonies has left Earth's forces stretched far too thinly, with several colonies beginning to break away from Earth's control. Short on supplies, Argo heads toward the center of the galaxy in attempt to learn more about the mysterious black hole and a rash of attacks on Earth's colonies.

Remakes

Yamato 2520

In the mid 1990s, Nishizaki attempted to create a sequel to Yamato, set hundreds of years after the original. Yamato 2520 was to chronicle the adventures of the eighteenth starship to bear the name, and its battle against the Seiren Federation. Much of the continuity established in the original series (including the destruction of Earth's moon) is ignored in this sequel.

In place of Leiji Matsumoto, American artist Syd Mead (Blade Runner, Tron and Star Trek: The Motion Picture') provided the conceptual art.

Due to the bankruptcy of Nishizaki's company Office Academy, and legal disputes with Matsumoto over the ownership of the Yamato copyrights, the series was never finished and only three episodes were produced. Most Yamato fans were generally underwhelmed by the series' first episodes and were not disappointed by its cancellation.

In March of 2002, a Tokyo court ruled that Nishizaki legally owned the Yamato copyrights. The two parties eventually settled, and Nishizaki began work on a new movie titled Yamato Rebirth (set after the original series), while Matsumoto planned a new Yamato series. However, additional legal conflicts have since stalled both projects.

American remake

During the mid 1990s, the Walt Disney Company purchased the theatrical rights to a live-action Yamato movie. The most highly publicized script reportedly put a ragtag crew of misfits (none of whom are named after any of the original show's crew from either the Japanese or English version) aboard the rebuilt United States battleship Arizona (which was sunk by the Japanese during the attack on Pearl Harbor) on a mission to save Earth. The project is believed to have been shelved following Michael Eisner's departure from the company. In April 2006 it was announced that Benderspink and producer Josh C. Kline had teamed up to make another attempt at creating a live action version of the story.

Trivia

• In the original Japanese, the Gamilons were loosely based on the Nazis, while many members of the Yamato crew were named after samurai, particularly the Shinsengumi. See Space Battleship Yamato characters for more.

• Many video games based on the series have been available over the years. The Nintendo GameBoy, PC Engine Super CDRom, and the Bandai Wonderswan had a unique Yamato release for each platform. The series has become quite popular on Sony's game platform in recent years, with Bandai releasing three Space Battleship Yamato games for the PlayStation and another three games for the PlayStation 2. In addition to these, the Yamato theme was also extended to another Japan-only PlayStation 2 release, this being a pachinko game titled Fever 7. Note that no Yamato games have ever seen a release outside of Japan.

• The Space Battleship Yamato series generally involves themes of brave sacrifice, noble enemies, and respect for heroes lost in the line of duty. This can be seen as early as the second episode of the first series, which recounts the defeat of the original battleship Yamato while sailors and pilots from both sides salute her as she sinks (this scene was cut from the English dub, but later included on the Star Blazers DVD release). The movies spend much time showing the crew visiting monuments to previous missions and recalling the bravery of their fallen comrades. Desler, the enemy defeated in the first season and left without a home or a people, recognizes that his foes are fighting for the same things he fought for and eventually becomes Earth's most important ally. In this — the Japanese concept of "the honorable enemy" — and many other respects, Star Blazers is almost certainly the most "Japanese" anime to survive the editing process and be widely syndicated in the United States.

• In the Space Battleship Yamato time line, later spaceships built by Earth look more like normal spaceships, but tend to show traces of the "converted sea-battleship" shape of the Yamato.

English title

For many years, English-language releases of the anime bore the title Space Cruiser Yamato. Nishizaki, a sailing enthusiast who owned a cruiser yacht, ordered that this translation be used out of love for his boat. However, it is inaccurate, as 戦艦 senkan means "battleship" and not "cruiser" (which in Japanese would be 巡洋艦 junyōkan). Today, Yamato releases, including the Voyager Entertainment DVD, are marketed either as Star Blazers or Space Battleship Yamato.

In Spanish, Space Battleship Yamato is known as Nave Espacial and in Portugal as A Força Astral. In Brasil it is known as as Patrulha Estelar, in Hebrew as חלוצי החלל (Space Pioneers), in Arabic as Abtal Al Fada (Space Heroes) in the 1980s excellent version and "Nousour Al Fada" ("Space Eagles") in the much inferior newer version twenty years later (see Cultural Impact above). In Greek it is known as Διαστημόπλοιο Αργώ (Spaceship Argo).

External links

• Official Star Blazers website
• Star Blazers Rebirth web comic
• Template:Languageicon Leiji Matsumoto Official Site
• The Star Blazers You Didn't See
• Great Yamato #0 (Leiji Matsumoto's Yamato project)
• Space Battleship Yamato and Galaxy Express 999 statues in downtown Tsuruga
• Template:Languageicon Bandai's site for its series of Space Battleship Yamato games for the Playstation 2
• Template:Languageicon Galaxy Express 999 and Space Battleship Yamato statues in Tsuruga

• Star Blazers: The Quest for Iscandar ({{{type}}}) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia
• Information about Star Blazers TV series, movies and video games
• The Ultimate Star Blazers and Yamato Resource Page
• Review of the English Language 'Space Cruiser Yamato' movie