I was a happy child, but I didn’t have such a happy childhood. Other kids didn’t get my weird vibe, especially in elementary and middle school. And one year in particular, we moved to a new city and a new school, and things got ugly. Only one thing kept me from losing my shit: Star Blazers.
As far as I know, we still haven't gotten the new Space Battleship Yamato 2199 TV/movie series in the United States, even after it aired a whole season in Japan. But now, there's a follow-up movie, Star-Voyaging Ark, in which the Yamato gets hit with a weapon called the Flame Direct Attack Cannon, that can "transcend…
On the heels of an incredibly disappointing re-cap movie, space opera epic Yamato 2199 returned to the silver screen this past weekend in Japan with Yamato 2199: Ark of the Stars—a film that is less a stand-alone story and more of a beginning for a whole new epic.
These days, anime seems to follow a set pattern. If you have a successful series, you follow it up with a recap film. Most of the time, these films have something new in them—new footage, new characters, a new side story—but not Yamato 2199. It is completely unnecessary in every conceivable way.
Space Battleship Yamato (Starblazers in the West) is one of the cornerstones of anime. Created by Yoshinobu Nishizaki and the legendary Leiji Matsumoto (Galaxy Express 999, Captain Harlock, Daft Punk's Interstella 5555), it is the original space opera anime and has had a prominent place in Japanese popular culture for…
