Anime: Uchuu Senkan Yamato (1977)

Since this is a recap movie, this review and the one I made about the full series will have some similarities.

Story : 9/10

The plot is quite simple and any person with a functioning brain should be able to follow it. The Earth is being bombed by the Gamilas Empire, an alien humanoid civilization with superior technology, that aims to submit humanity and colonize the planet. The bombings have covered the surface of the Earth with toxic raditation and humans are forced to live in underground cities. Humanity is on the verge of extinction. To remove the radiations and to fight with the aliens on equal footing, humanity turns a WW2 japanese battleship (the Yamato) into a poweful space battleship and sends it into space to obtain a radiation removing machine from Sarsha, an alien woman living on the planet Iskandar. The movie follows the Yamato's journey to Iskandar, and the many challenges faced by the crew as they travel through ennemy territory. As you can imagine, most of these challenges consist in fighting the aliens in space battles, or removing obstacles laid by them. The plot isn't particularily original since a war between an alien race and humans is a very common theme is SF and it is also very manichean : all of the Gamilas (except one) have mischievous and/or ugly faces, but it is well executed and easy to follow. This recap movie only shows the best parts of the series and a lot of the boring moments have been removed. However this does mean that the characters background and backstories are skipped, which makes it harder to attach to some of them who don't appear on the screen a lot.

My main problem with the plot is that the plot writers chose the Yamato, a WW2 battleship that was the largest of its time and the symbol of japanese military supremacy, as the spaceship that has to save the earth. The part of the movie where it is explained how the Yamato was sunk by the US navy and airforce in 1945 stinks of japanese nationalism. The japanese fleet is shown as heroic and brave and they are outnumbered by far by the americans. When the ship sinks, you see japanese soldiers giving a military salute. Fortunately, this overly nationalistic atmosphere is only present in one scene, but I find it curious that the movie doesn't even mention the crimes commited by Japan and its army at that time, and chooses to portray it in a positive light instead.

Art and animation : 10/10

One of this movie's strong point. Although the animation and art style may have aged a bit, it's pretty easy to get used to it. The scenes where you see the Yamato move around in space, along with the music, are wonderful. The space battles are very pleasant to look at. The design of the enemy spaceships and buildings are very cool, too. The character design are well done and the characters are easy to identify without them wearing extravagant clothes or having weird hairstyles.

Sound : 9/10

I don’t know anything about music so I can’t describe it very accurately. The soundtrack is excellent (one of my favourites) and sounds military, with drums and trumpets. The opening theme is very good and you will hear it often since a lot of tracks are variations of this theme. The voice acting is of good quality. Unfortunately, there are certain sound effects (mostly the laser fires) that have not aged well at all.

Character : 8/10

This recap movie removed the god awful scenes where Analyzer, the robot, sexually assaults (almost not an exageration) the only woman in the crew, so that makes the character less annoying than in the original series. The crew members are very human and likeable, and somewhat realisitic. Most of the characters aren't too complex. You know what their motivations are (most of them share the same objective) and they are easy to understand, without them being one-dimensional. The "bad guys" however are too predictable. The leader of the Gamilas empire is your typical cartoonish bad guy that wants the whole universe under his boot, always has an evil plan (that fails, of course), makes bad decisions, kills his own subordinates for fun and does an evil laugh for no reason. His generals and subordinates are not very clever either, apart from one, Domel. Contrary to the rest of the bad guys, Domel is not ugly (he doesn't look evil, so to say), is somewhat clever, brave and also a man of honour who respects his ennemy.

Value : 10/10

Space Battleship Yamato is known to have inspired many other anime, so watching it is a very interesting experience, along with the fact that most of it aged pretty well despite being a 70's anime. It is a must watch for every anime fan. If you have the time and the patience you should probably watch the full series, but you can also start by watching this movie as an introduction (as I did). It has the best aspects of the series, making it a good way to introduce you to it and a good way to rewatch it without having to go trough the boring episodes you can find in the middle of the series. The wonderful animation and music give it a really high re-watch value.

Enjoyment : 10/10

Definitely a favourite of mine. It has one of the best soundtracks I have ever heard and one of the best animation I have ever seen.