I watch a lot of crap around here.
No, seriously. Just take a look at some of the shit I've had to put up with. With as much vitriol as I spew, a classic anime title should be ripe for the pickings, right?
F**k no. Space Battleship Yamato is among one of the best f***ing things I've ever watched. So sit back and let me tell you why.
When one talks about the birth of the space opera in anime, it's hard to go further back than 1974. Long before this author was even born, a plot was hatched to make something different than the standard fare. Space was a new and glorious frontier, and people were enamored by everything coming out of the Cold War. Suddenly, it felt like soon everyone would be living on Mars, eating space foods and meeting strange new alien life forms.
This came a few years after Star Trek. Yeah, Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner Star Trek. The whole space thing was still uncharted territory, more or less, and there weren't any specifically-set-in-space anime at the time.
Looking back at a lot of the stuff that I love about anime, and hell, just looking back at some of the series I've praised over the last few weeks, its hard not to see the influence of Space Battleship Yamato all over the goddamn place. This is the show that launched Gundam. Macross. Evangelion. Shows that have defined the genre.
There is so much to love here. The story is pretty simple: alien bastards have been pummeling our planet with meteors, and caused the planet to become completely uninhabitable due to radiation. But humanity isn't one to take shit lying down, and they've had a plan. For years, they've secretly been assembling a last-ditch effort to save humanity - a space battleship to take the fight to the aliens. When a message comes that some other alien species is offering the Earth a chance to survive? They take it.
Right here, you've got a way stronger plot than most of the shit we see today. The stakes are immediately set in the first two episodes. Earth will be dead in a little over a year. Because at that point, it will have become so irradiated that even the people living underground will die from its effects.
It's a pretty tall freaking order. But one man is up for the job, and he's damn sure going to give it his all to save humanity. They aren't using any old ship though. They're using the remains of one of the most legendary ships to ever grace the Japanese Navy. They name entire classes of ships after that gal. In case you haven't put it together, this ship was built for the express purpose of single-handedly defending Japan against the US Navy. That's a pretty tall f***ing order, son, and it's something that deserves a healthy dose of respect.
Armed with alien technology that provides them with an FTL jump drive and the most powerful superweapon known to mankind, also powered by the same jump drive, humanity places their faith in the Yamato, watching as it sails off into the unknown to retrieve the technology that will save their families.
This shit is just the cherry on top though. The characters, all of who are pretty well thought out and motivated to do whatever it takes to save their home, they're the real stars. The captain in charge of the ship? Not even the main character believe it or not, and that man has the biggest brass balls you've ever seen.
Originally the show was supposed to be longer, but it came with a sequel a few years later that was just as great as the original.
All of that's well and great, but what is it about this show that I love? Besides the history and the characters, I have to admit the designs are really striking, and stand out as their own style. Plus all of the thought and effort put into everything surrounding the ship and its technologies, it shows a lot about how they viewed the future. Some of the shit they come up with is absolutely ridiculous, but with a little thought you can see how they came to the conclusion that it seemed like a good idea at the time.
The animation is hit or miss. For its time, it is really well done, but by today's standards, it ranges from mediocre at best to truly phenomenal. Not gonna lie, seeing them fire the Wave Motion Cannon is one of my absolute favorite things about this show. They don't hold back when they consider just how massively destructive that thing can be, and it fills me with glee when I hear that sucker charge up.
And that announcement to fire. Some things will stick in your mind for your entire life. For me, this is one of them.
Space Battleship Yamato is smart in the same kind of way that Star Trek was, and it's not hard to see a lot of similarities between them. I'm fairly sure some inspiration was taken from Lost in Space as well for this show, especially in the form of the obligatory robot sidekick. What's interesting is that they do take some time over the course of the series to delve into some of the nuances of robots with human intelligence, and whether they too can be people.
Which is a pretty neat thing to do to justify having a perverted robot on the staff.
If you take nothing else away from this, the next time you watch something and you see a battleship in space with an old man with a beard commanding the ship from the bridge, sitting like a stoic f***ing badass? You can thank Space Battleship Yamato for that, because literally everything ever since has paid homage to that.
Some people would say that this show is legendary.
I'm here to tell you this show absolutely deserves that status, despite its flaws. Well over Forty years later, and this shit can still make me feel something.
I wish more anime strove for that.
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