Space Battleship Yamato
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Space Battleship Yamato (or, alternately, Space Cruiser Yamato) is the English title for the Japanese science fiction anime series 宇宙戦艦ヤマト, created by Leiji Matsumoto（松本零士）. It is better known to American audiences as Star Blazers, the name under which an English-dubbed (and partly censored) version of the series was broadcast on American television.
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Development
Conceived in 1973 by producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki, the project underwent heavy revisions. Originally intended to be an outer-space variation on Lord of the Flies, the project at first was titled "Asteroid Ship" and had a multinational teenage crew journeying through space in a hollowed-out asteroid in search of the planet Iscandar. There was to be much discord among the crew; many of them acting purely out of self-interest and for personal gain. The enemy aliens were originally called Rajendora.
When Leiji Matsumoto was brought onto the project, many of these concepts were discarded. It is his art direction, ship designs and unique style that accredit him in fans' eyes as the true creator of Space Battleship Yamato, even though Nishizaki retains legal rights to the work.
First season
The first season, titled "Quest for Iscandar," began airing in Japan in 1974. Set the year 2199, an alien race (the "Gamilons") are raining radioactive bombs on Earth, rendering the planet's surface dead and uninhabitable. Humanity lives in refuges built deep underground. When all seems lost, a mysterious message is received by Earth's military forces, revealing plans for a faster-than-light engine and containing a message that Queen Stasha ("Starsha" in the English dub) of the planet Iscandar in the Large Magellanic Cloud has a device which can repair Earth's radiation damage.
The inhabitants of Earth secretly convert the ruin of the Japanese battleship Yamato (referred to as the Argo in the English dub) into a massive spaceship, complete with a new, incredibly powerful weapon called the "wave motion gun". An intrepid crew leaves in the Yamato to go to the Magellenic Cloud and retrieve the mysterious device, if it exists. Along the way they discover the plans of their blue-skinned adversaries: the planet Gamilon, sister planet to Iscandar, is dying; and its leader Lord Dessler ("Deslok" in the English dub) is trying to irradiate Earth enough for his people to move there.
Like much anime of its time, the World War II themes and explicit violence were regarded as too explicit for Western children, and so the English dub in 1977 was toned down in these respects. Nevertheless, the epic story (with echoes of many of the themes of both Star Wars and Star Trek) and high quality of the voice dub (though as the dubbing was done by non-union actors, their identities were obscured for years afterwards) earned it many fans who remember it fondly to this day.
The first season contained twenty-six episodes, following the Yamato's year-long voyage across the galaxy and back. A ninety-minute theatrical movie version of the first season was made by selecting a few key episodes, editing them heavily, and sticking them together; as a result the first-season movie leaves large gaps and doesn't flow very well. This compilation movie was actually edited down further and dubbed into English in 1978, prior to the dubbing of the episodes as Star Blazers. This movie version, entitled simply Space Cruiser, was only given a limited theatrical release in Europe.
Following seasons and movies
A theatrical movie titled Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato followed, to bring an end to the story of the Yamato. In this film, the Yamato and her crew take on the Comet Empire and die valiantly as they save Earth once again. But as the popularity of this franchise became clear, a second season ("The Comet Empire") of the television series was produced, ignoring the movie and presenting a different plot against the movie's enemy without killing off the Yamato or its primary characters.
The theatrical movies Yamato: The New Voyage and Be Forever Yamato came next as prequels to a third television series, "The Bolar Wars." All three television series were dubbed in English and broadcast on American television.
The saga ended in 1983 with the fifth theatrical movie, Final Yamato, in which the great ship is detonated like a bomb to protect Earth from an intergalactic tidal wave guided by yet another evil enemy. Melodrama abounds in this film, which takes inordinate amounts of time to show the remains of the ship repeatedly 'sinking' beneath the waves somewhere out beyond Earth.
Space Battleship Yamato exists in Leiji Matsumoto's Captain Harlock universe; there have been some references between them.
The Space Battleship Yamato series generally involves themes of brave sacrifice, noble enemies, and respect for heroes lost in the line of duty. This can be seen as early as the first episode of the first series, which recounts the defeat of the original battleship Yamato while sailors and pilots from both sides salute her as she sinks (this scene was cut from the English dub). The movies spend much time showing the crew visiting monuments to previous missions and recalling the bravery of their fallen comrades. Dessler, the enemy defeated in the first season and left without a home or a people, recognizes that his foes are fighting for the same things he fought for and eventually becomes Earth's most important ally.
The concept represented by the wave motion gun (an extremely powerful main weapon that requires time to charge beforehand and leaves the ship powerless and vulnerable after firing) has been used in other science fiction, including the Babylon 5 spinoff Crusade. See Yamato weapon for more.
During the mid 1990s, The Walt Disney Company had purchased the theatrical rights to a live-action Yamato movie. The most highly publicized script reportedly put a ragtag crew of misfits aboard the rebuilt United States battleship Arizona (which was sunk by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor) on a mission to save Earth. As of the late 1990s, this project is considered dead.
Yamato 2520
In the mid 1990's, Nishizaki attempted to create a sequel to Yamato set hundreds of years after the original. Yamato 2520 was to chronicle the adventures of the eighteenth starship to bear the name, and its battle against the Seiren Federation. Much of the continuity established in the original series (including the destruction of Earth's moon) is ignored in this sequel.
In place of Leiji Matsumoto, American artist Syd Mead (Blade Runner) provided the conceptual art.
Due to the bankruptcy of Nishizaki's company Office Academy, and legal disputes with Matsumoto over the ownership of the Yamato copyrights, the series was never finished and only three episodes were produced. Most Yamato fans were generally underwhelmed by the series' first episodes and were not disappointed by its cancellation.
In March 2002, a Tokyo court ruled that Nishizaki legally owned the Yamato copyrights. The two parties eventually settled, and Nishizaki began work on a new movie titled Yamato Rebirth (set after the original series), while Matsumoto planned a new Yamato series. However, additional legal conflicts since then have stalled them both.
Trivia
Star Blazers is mentioned in the song "Wave Motion Gun" on the Shapeshifter album by Marcy Playground (1999).
The Anime's Title in English
Nishizaki was a sailing enthusiast and owned a cruiser yacht. For the love of his boat, he dictated the English title for Yamato to be Space Cruiser Yamato. So in fact, this anime had to be called Space Cruiser Yamato for the longest time in English. The original title of the anime more correctly translates to Space Battleship Yamato, as 戦艦 is battleship. Today, Yamato is available in English on DVD from Voyager Entertainment. The productions of Yamato that aren't marketed as Star Blazers bear the title Space Battleship Yamato.
External links
- Leiji Matsumoto Official Site (http://www.leiji-matsumoto.ne.jp/)
- Star Blazers (http://www.desslok.com)
- The Star Blazers You Didn't See (http://www.desslok.com/INFO/didntsee.htm)
- A review of Yamato 2520 (http://home.comcast.net/~hasshin/yamato.html)
- Yamato Rebirth (http://www.enagio.com/yamato/)
- Homepage of Amy Howard Wilson (http://www.amyhowardwilson.com), Star Blazers voice actor