This has really been an awesome year to be an anime fan in Japan. In addition to the usual stream of worthwhile series on TV, there have been some excellent releases on the big screen, and I realize now that all my trips to the movie theatre this year have been to watch anime films, except for the new Harry Potter movie. (Aside: have we nerds taken over the world, or what?) First there was the Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance film, then the recently released Macross Frontier movie, both of which were great to see. And now we’ve got another treat: a brand-new Space Battleship Yamato film, which is set to “roadshow” (as a movie premier is called here) this Saturday. A melodramatic space opera in which Japan’s most famous battleship is reborn to save the Earth from the Americans and their atomic bombs the evil Desslar and his radioactive planet bombs, Space Battleship Yamato (or Star Blazers, as it was known in English) is one of the major achievements of the era, telling a compelling story with love, death and all those other themes no one thought that animation should deal with. Fans of incredibly complex sci-fi shows like Battlestar Galactica or Babylon 5 absolutely have Yamato to thank for showing us the way.
The Yamato is off to save the Earth again this weekend, and I’ve got my Wave Motion Goggles ready.
