A new anime season is upon us, and as usual I’m still rushing to finish last season’s shows, like Attack on Titan, the second season of Bakemonogatari/Monogatari and the realistic otaku girl anime WataMote. The most important show to me in recent months has been Space Battleship Yamato 2199, the re-make of the 1974 space opera about the WWII battleship Yamato, transformed into a spaceship capable of traveling 148,000 to the planet Iscandar to bring back equipment that can heal the Earth of radiation poisoning. It’s not every day one’s childhood walks through the door to greet you warmly, and director Yutaka Izubuchi and his production staff have done a fantastic job of updating the classic story for modern audiences and adding new twists in the plot, several based on episodes written for the original series but never produced. It’s fun to see some of the story adaptions they’ve made: for example, there are now “blue” Gamilas aliens as well as a “white” sub-race that’s part of the empire, a nod to President Desler’s original white coloring in the 1974 series, which was changed to blue ten episodes in after some criticism. I’ve been savoring the last few episodes of the new series, unable to bring myself to pull the trigger and actually watch the end, though I’ll probably give into temptation this weekend. If you’re interested in one of the greatest space opera stories ever told, I recommend this show a lot, and happily, the Yamato 2199 Blu-rays are fully region free and subtitled in English! (And no, it’s not necessary to watch the original first.)
I’m enjoying the Yamato re-make.
