review: yamato

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+=========================
+ Space Battleship Yamato
+=========================
+:CreationDate: 2014-03-19 12:03:57
+:Id: anime/review/yamato
+:tags: - anime
+       - review
+:rating: 4
+:original: http://www.easternkicks.com/reviews/space-battleship-yamato
+
+It's the year 2199. Orbital kinetic strikes with radioactive meteors
+have rendered the surface of Earth uninhabitable; humanity has
+retreated underground, but they only have one year left to live. A
+message capsule from a distant planet promises a way to remove the
+radioactivity and allow people to walk again on the surface. Using
+the designs contained in the capsule, a faster-than-light starship is
+built, using the WWII battleship Yamato as the basis. The ship and its
+crew departs for a long voyage, to the planet Iscandar and back,
+battling against the Gamilas empire and its ruler, Desslar.
+
+It's also the year 1974, and MATSUMOTO Reiji (松本 零士) has just
+taken the reins of the project that will become Uchū Senkan Yamato (宇
+宙戦艦ヤマト), initially devised by NISHIZAKI Yoshinobu (西﨑 義展).
+Matsumoto brought a very characteristic style, both to the art and to
+the story, and it's quite probably that without him, Nishizaki's
+project would not have had the impact that Yamato had. Using a
+centuries-old sea battleship to house a starship seems a very
+far-fetched idea, but you have to remember what the historical Yamato
+was: the biggest, most powerful battleship built during WWII, that
+should have given the Japanese navy a decisive edge in the Pacific
+against the USA. Although it essentially failed to deliver on its
+promises, and was sunk on April 7th, 1945, the ship still symbolises
+Japan's heroism and fighting spirit.
+
+The story of the crew under Captain Okita, with fighter pilots Kodai,
+Shima, Sanada, marine Saito, nurse Mori, doctor Sado, engineer
+Tokugawa; of Desler and Starsha; their adventures and personalities,
+have left a deep impression on Japan's culture, even outside the ranks
+of anime enthusiasts: it's not everyday that bronze statues of
+animated characters get erected, but in the town of `Tsuruga
+<http://www.city.tsuruga.lg.jp/sypher/www/common/eng.jsp>`_ there are
+`almost 30 such statues
+<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGNWh8xyRtM>`_, representing
+characters and scenes from Yamato, but also Galaxy Express 999 and
+Captain Harlock. Yes, because after fusing the hero's journey with
+space opera and military ambitions, Matsumoto kept producing
+influential works featuring strong, courageous characters saving the
+world against insurmountable odds. Practically everybody in Japan
+knows Matsumoto and his stories: there have been sequels and
+re-tellings for the past forty years, and even if not all of them have
+been equally successful, the popularity of Matsumoto's works never
+waned.
+
+Yamato, in particular, has seen many adventures in films and series:
+after the first 26 episodes in 1974-75, the crew embarked in a suicide
+mission against the Comet Empire in "Farewell to Space Battleship
+Yamato" (1978). That story was ret-conned as an alternative timeline
+after fans expressed outrage at the death of the crew, so the story
+was reworked in a second TV season. It was followed by two more
+movies, "Yamato: The New Voyage" (1979) and "Be Forever Yamato"
+(1980), a third series, and the "Final Yamato" movie (1983).
+
+The live-action movie was released in 2010, written by Nishizaki and
+directed by YAMAZAKI Takashi (山崎 貴), it reworks the basic story of
+the '74 series, mixing in some ideas from the first movie and the
+second series, with significant changes to the nature of the Gamilas
+people and to the device used to cleanse the Earth. The acting is very
+Japanese, with displays of emotion that look over-the-top compared to
+Hollywood's standard fare, but then, the entire story is over-the-top,
+a single ship outgunned and outnumbered, on a voyage with no
+certainties, to save the entire planet: we can appreciate that
+subtlety is really not called for, here. YAMAZAKI Tsutomu (山崎 努)
+delivers a sombre and wise Okita, and KIMURA Takuya (木村 拓哉, member
+of the pop group SMAP, also voice of Howl in Ghibli's "Howl's Moving
+Castle") is appropriately cocky and conflicted as Kodai. I was a bit
+disappointed in the music: the classic Yamato score is never heard in
+its entirety, only in fragments, and the ending theme ("Love Lives"
+written by Aerosmiths' Stephen Tyler) feels incongruous.
+
+Women have always been under-represented in Matsumoto's creations,
+each story has essentially just one or two women: Yamato had Mori and
+Starsha, Galaxy Express had Maetel and Prometheum, Harlock had
+Emeraldas. Furthermore, they tend to be willowy and ethereal, with
+extremely slim bodies and very un-Japanese long blond hair. This film
+adds a few more women to the cast (Mori Yuki was the only visible
+woman on the original Yamato), and makes them more important to the
+story: Mori is now a fighter pilot, Doctor Sado is a woman, and there
+are a few women on the bridge and throughout the ship. They're still
+not as important as the men, and even Mori ends up moulded to the
+lover/mother stereotype, but at least they feel a bit less "token"
+than in the original work.
+
+At this point, someone might ask why I have not mentioned Star
+Blazers, which is the title under which many outside Japan know the
+adventures of the Yamato. The reason is that Star Blazers is a rather
+different story, which just happens to use most of the visuals from
+Yamato. Like Robotech (which re-uses pieces of Macross, Southern
+Cross, and Mospeada), it's not a translation but a mostly separate
+product. If your only exposure to the Yamato and its crew is via the
+Argo, you owe it to yourself to watch at least some of the originals:
+they may not have aged very well, but they're still much better than
+the botched US rewrite.
+
+In conclusion, while the canonical Yamato remains the one in
+Matsumoto's animated works, this film provides a good alternative take
+on its adventures, and can serve as an appetiser before (re)visiting
+those more extensive works.
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