Space Battleship Yamato Returns

It’s a glorious time for me as an anime fan, thanks to the new Space Battleship Yamato series that started running this season. It’s a proper remake of the 1974 classic space opera, telling the story of the Earth in the year 2199, under attack by radioactive “planet bombs” sent by the evil Lord Desslar of Planet Gamilas. All life on earth will cease unless the Yamato (the World War II battleship, refitted with alien technology to be a spaceship) can travel 148,000 light years to the planet Iscandar and bring back a device that can remove radiation with one year. The story is heavily influenced by Japan’s experiences in World War II, of course, and the original series really marked the first time the subject of the war could play a part in popular culture in any way. While the new series is remarkably faithful to the original, creators Yutaka Izubuchi (Gundam ZZ, Loddoss War, Patlabor) and Hideki Anno (Evangelion, Gunbuster, Macross) are tweaking the story elements — for example, the crew sometimes wears Gundam-style pressure suits, and the Gamilas have a proper alien language, for added realism. The original series was a bit of a sausage fest, so new female characters have been added, such as a bridge crew member, a fighter pilot and an assistant to Dr. Sado, who still drinks Captain Avatar’s spring water, er, I mean sake all the time. The new characters have modern moe design features like glasses and ahoge (that strand of hair that sticks up on some characters to serve as a “charm point”) in order to modernize the series.

The Space Battleship Yamato remake is great!