What might a series dating back to 1974 have to offer to the modern anime viewer? Apparently, a fair bit. The first of Leiji Matsumoto's space epics to be animated, Space Battleship Yamato, or Star Blazers in the highly-locailized (but still fairly in line with the original) English dub, is about the fate of Earth, which has been in a gradual state of decline from continued attacks from the planet Gamilus. However, a messenger from a distant planet tells, in her dying breath, how to save the earth - head to the planet Iscandar, as they have a chemical that will cleanse the earth of radiation and revitalize it. Additionally a schematic for a new type of propulsion: a wave motion engine, capable of propelling the Yamato at light speeds once installed. As a side note, the wave motion engine also doubles as a weapon firing a beam of plasma from it. In this installment of the franchise, the Yamato's crew has to stave off the Gamilans in order to reach their goal, thus punctuating the journey with moments of action.
Before I do a deep dive into the plot, the main characters must be established first. The protagonist is Susumi Kodai (Derek Wildstar in the English dub), orphaned after his parents were killed in a Gamilan attack, he as well as his older brother decided to serve in the Earth Defence Force. His brother, however, perishes in a space battle at the beginning of the first episode. This affects Kodai gravely and has negative feelings towards the captain of the Yamato, who was there on that fateful day, but eventually these feelings subside. Speaking of the captain, Juuzou Okita (Abraham Avatar in the English dub), the aging, stern captain of the Yamato is characterized as experienced and determined, if a little cold. He serves as a voice of reason and a natural leader for the crew under the particularly intense situations that this mission to Iscandar presents, even though he is ill. Additionally, there is Yuki Mori (Nova Forrester in the English dub), a nurse turned radar operator; Shirou Sanada (Stephen Sandor in the English dub), an earnest science officer who is focused on the safety of the crew and integrity of the ship; Daisuke Shima (Mark Venture in the English dub), a quiet and level-headed navigator, he does not have full confidence in himself and is often at odds with his best friend, Susumi Kodai. There is doctor Sado Sakezou (Dr. Sane in the English dub) and his assistant, the robot known simply as Analyzer (IQ-09 in the English dub), they serve mainly as comic relief. The main antagonist is Aberdt Desler, most often referred to as Lord Desler; he is mysterious, but has ulterior motives in everything he does.
With the premise having been established - the plot thus far. Following the information about the wave motion engine, work is done to get a spacecraft with this technology in place. The solution: to implant the technology into the wreck of the IJN Yamato. By the time the ship has had the technology installed, there is no time to test and facing a direct attack from the Gamilans, the craft is launched, with only a year left to save the earth. The first arc (episodes 1-10) occurs in and around the solar system and follows a series of Gamilan attacks launched from Pluto, including direct attackson the Yamato, its Cosmo Fleet fighters, close range human combat (even some hand-to-hand fighting) and the destruction of bases, with the destruction of the pluto base being the gripping resolution of this arc.
Episodes 11 and 12, the journey continues with continued harassment by the Gamilans: first through a minefield, where the mines move on their own, nearly getting blown, if not for a difficult operation done by Analyzer, then through a three-stage attack, resulting in passing dangerously near the star Orion. In episode 13, a Gamilan is captured and is analyzed, only to be found that they are practically lke humans, Kodai attempts to kill him, but then is reminded of his past and his upbringing all through the attacks and eventually breaks down.
In episode 14, there is a three week time skip, while the Yamato waits on the clearing of a storm, tensions run high and arguments and fights are common, while the channel opens up during this time, Kodai and Shima are constantly at odds with each other, however it takes their teamwork to clear the storm and they reconnect over this. Episode 15 is somewhat similar, in that another astronomical phenomenon, one which drains the Yamato of its power, Kodai and Shima are both at odds over what to do, even though, they do not directly conflict with each other, but even then, it seems impossible to leave this spacial desturbance. That is, until visited by an appearance of Starsha of Iscandar, her powers give the Yamato the guidance it needs to be piloted safely out of the disturbance, as well as an impending Gamilan attack. The next episode features the Yamato heading to the planet Bemera, due to detected vegetation. This episode also reveals that Analyzer wishes to marry Yuki Mori (she naturally pushes back these sudden advances. Captain Okita sends bith of them to Bemera to find food for the Yamato to sustain on a longer trip to the midpoint planet of Balan, and eventually Iscandar. Unbeknownst to the landing party, made up of Analyzer and Mori, Bemera has a race of people who are allies with the Gamilans. Though they are mistaken for Gamilans and a struggle ensues over whether the Bemerans should be allied with the Gamilans and both Yuki and Analyzer are almost done away with. But at the least moment, a struggle breaks out among the Bemerans and Yuki and Analyzer escape, which was at the time Kodai and a landing party had arrived, after having destroyed a Gamilan tanker. Both Yuki and Analyzer are taken to safety.
Episode 17 reveals Okita's declining state of health as he collapses while in command and is in need of surgery. During his operation, the Yamato is attacked by the Gamilans using a new weapon, one which uses mind control to shape molten rock into whatever is desired (in this case: a dragon-type creature). The Yamato staves off this attack, but only by using the Wave Motion Gun, which resulted in some damage of the ship. Afterwards, Okita wakes up from his operation and commends Kodai for his decision making, despite the damage.
Episode 18 features an autonomous Gamilan base and the backstory of Shirou Sanada. Once the base had been found out and was discovered to emit damaging Electron Waves. Sanada and Kodai are sent by Okita in a special seamless scout spacecraft to inspect, and hopefully, destroy the base. Once there, Sanada and Kodai make a trek through tunnels leading to the outside of the base, once inside, Sanada shares two stories of his life. The first is one of Kodai's brother, he was the last one to wotk on maintaining his ship, but it went out highly damaged, which, as revealed at the beginning of the series, is the mission which he will never return from. The next is from his childhood, where he once had vacationed on the moon with his family, while at an amusment park he and his sister were taking a ride quite similar to a roller coaster, but the ride had left its track and was launched, killing Sanada's sister and forcing him to have artificial limbs. For the mission, Sanada says, he has place explosives in his limbs and has a remote detonator on his body, he is to be on the outside of the base, while he detonates the explosives, he is uncertain if he will survive. After the plan has been executed, Sanada is alive, but burned. They return to the Yamato.
Following in episode 19, the lesser character of Aihara is the focus. After earth communications were seemingly restored, Aihara has been making secret calls to his parents. He grows weak and weary because of it. On earth, he learns, riots have broken out and Aihara's father had died. It is all too much for him and leaves the Yamato, in an attempt to get to Earth. He fails to do so, quite naturally, but he finds a signal boosting probe following the Yamato. He wonders who could have set it up and comes to one solution: the Gamilans did it to wear down the crew's morale. In the meantime, Kodai leads a search party to find Aihara and when he does, Kodai and Aihara agree to destroy the communications probe. Once done, they return to the Yamato and Aihara apologizes for his earlier actions.
In epsidoe 20, the midpoint planet of Balan is reached, but unbeknownst to the crew of the Yamato there is a Gamilas base there. It has been evacuated though, as to not attract the distress of the Yamato. A landing party is sent down and the base is spotted, this party evades base attacks and returns to the Yamato to reveal what they hve found with Okita. Once they have discussed this matter with Okita, the plan is to attack the base, as it poses a threat on the Yamato's safety. They plan to shoot the base, but once they start to start to execute it, the sun, which was a small, artificial, controlled body, is sent towards the Yamato and into the planet below. This plan is only stopped because of Lord Desler's orders and it gives the Yamato a chance to turn around and fire its Wave Motion Gun to destroy the sun and in turn destroy the base.
Episodes 21 and 22 are part of a two part story. It is the final battle with the fleet based at Balan, with all of the Gamilan carrier ships present. The Gamilans have two secret weapons though, one fires a beam that cloaks ships linear to the device, the other a bomb with a drill meant to penetrate the Wave Motion Engine in the Yamato. Both are used successfully on the Yamato and inflicts heavy damage and casualties, but the bomb has not quite detonated, so Shirou Sanada and Analyzer are sent into the engine room to try to diffuse or even potentially reverse the course of the bomb, the latter is able to be done, but in the meantime, the Yamato is facing a direct attack from the Gamilas Carrier Fleet. Sanada and Analyzer work franticallty to send the bomb back on its trajectory and they do it not a moment too late: all carriers are destroyed by the explosion of the Drill Bomb leaving just the command ship. This leaves one last plan of attack: suicide. The command ship approaches the Yamato and manages to grapple onto it. There is a final message, one of somber respect for Captain Okita from the Gamilas fleet leader; he then engages the self-detruct. This leads to the bottom levels of the ship being evacuated, but even then many lose their lives. Episode 22 concludes with a mass sendoff of those who perished with a sad instrumental of the ending theme accompanying it. This is truly one of the most emotional things I have seen in an anime, with the closing image being the caskets of the dead trailing the Yamato as they were launched. (It is of note that this episode had to have been redone because there was so much wrong with the first version, it took a total of 50 days to produce). The next two epsiodes are another two part adventure, this one being the last fight with the Gamilans.
Early in episode 23 it is revealed that Gamilas and Iscandar are twin planets that are both dying, but the peoples of each planet have different ways of going about saving themselves. The Gamilans have blocked signals from Iscandar and, in turn, messed up the Yamato's navigation systems, sending them to Gamilas. There, Lord Desler awaits to destroy the Yamato, by bombarding to into Gamilas's sea of acid. The Yamato falls into this trap as expected by Desler, but finds a way out by destroying a volcano which causes a mass eruptions ending the bombarding. The Yamato then has no choice but to destroy the Gamailas base. This results in another emotional moment at the end of episode 24 where Kodai questions the ultimate point of the war and why did the war had to end the way it did. The final two episodes are the arrival at Iscandar and the return to earth. Arriving at Iscandar, the Yamato's crew meets Starsha for the first time and given what is needed to cleanse the Earth. However, this is not the only major development in this episode, it turns out that Starsha had been nursing a human back to health, it turns out to be Mamoru Kodai, Susumi Kodai's brother, but he is deeply in love with Starsha and this is reciprocated, so he stays on Iscandar.
The final episode includes the final attacks by Lord Desler, who managed to have fled Gamilas in the few moments he had. The first time he rams the Yamato, has his men board the ship before he enters it (and says "Resistance is futile,"), all while releasing poison gas, the same kind that is on Earth from the Gamilan attacks. Yuki releases some of the cleaner intended for Earth and saves the crew, but at the cost of her life. Kodai is crestfallen by this and weighs more on him than the fact that Earth is in view. Later he takes Yuki's body to the bridge where he views Earth with her in his arms. The second attack from Desler has started in the meantime: an attempt to fire his own Wave Motion Gun at Earth, this fails and his ship is destroyed. The trick was a secret coating added to the Yamato, reverse-engineered from a Gamilan satellite (likely one from Pluto) to reflect the energy of the Wave Motion Gun back. In the final few minutes, Kodai returns Yuki back to where she was resting, she wonders what happened to her, but Kodai does not answer, for he is overjoyed. The episode ends with both Koadi and Yuki looking off towards Earth. An epilogue states that the crew of the Yamato had saved Earth and all was restored back to the Earth's former glory.
There are some extremely high production values. The animation, though not quite near today's best anime, is still very good with the effects and movement of the ships being captured quite well, character expressions and actions are also well conveyed. In fact, I believe to be better to modern anime in some regards, for example: the space backgrounds have an Impressionist sort of look to them, some remind me of Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night, and hold a sort of wondrous enigma to them. That said, what really makes this anime is the music score, it is hard to beat with a host of scores and songs which really elevate this production as a whole and makes the emotion and mood of what is happening really be felt. Do not believe me? Somebody created a playlist of the soundtrack. See it here
The main factor which may prevent some people from watching this series is its pacing, which is slow. That said, its slow pacing is appropriate is this show definitely puts the "ship" in starship and the battles unfold much like actual sea battles would (as a side note, Leiji Matsumoto's father was an aviator in the Imperial Japanese Navy). So, in my opinion, the show is competently paced for what it is.
Overall, I will absolutely recommend this show. Everything about it makes it an emotional watch. Fans of Star Trek will also enjoy this show for its structure is somewhat similar to the show.
This last little bit is a plea for help. For some months now I have tried to find the second season of Space Battleship Yamato (Space Battleship Yamato II), but have been unsuccessful in finding an accurate subtitled version. Only some websites have the highly edited and localized dub which has different character names and deleted scenes from the original. If anyone can find a subtitled version of Space Battleship Yamato II (the series, not the movie), please let me know.
Update: it seems that I am stuck with the movies after an exhaustive search. Movie pages will go up following series completion.
Note to self: may create a Space Battleship Yamato Bandai model building page on the site in a little bit. So far I have built the following: