Space Battleship Yamato

[Scott Tortorice]

Why can't Hollywood make old school, "WWII in space" sci-fi movies like this instead of crappy sci-fi like Avatar?

[video=youtube;pJhJHoHUvX4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJhJHoHUvX4&feature=player_embedded[/video]

That's the good stuff (I loved the cartoon as a kid).

 

[kawaiku]

I never got to see that sadly. But it would be nice to see that... hopefully with good storytelling.

 

[Scott Tortorice]

By today's standards, it was a very simplistic good guys - bad guys cartoon, with confused and inconsistent story elements. But at the time it was thoroughly unique.

I particularly liked the long-term story arc where Yamato went from operating alone to being reinforced by much more sophisticated warships (built while Yamato was holding the line). They would then operate as fleets and take the fight to the enemy (pretty realistic in that sense). This ultimately made Yamato the "old warhorse" that went from being a legend to a sadly out of date warship (both I suppose)...and resulted in some interesting competition between Yamato's captain/crew and the those of the other warships.

And boy did a lot of people die in combat in that cartoon! It was...amazing by today's childish standards.

I understand Star Blazers (the US name) is credited with launching anime mania in the States.

 

[Scott Tortorice]

Here's a good vid, showing some of the newer ships that joined Yamato in Star Blazers. The amazing thing is that it is still a great cartoon! The action is actually better than most contemporary sci-fi movies.

[video=youtube;JoobYtlE4bE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoobYtlE4bE[/video]

Good times, good times.

EDIT: Found the original footage.

 

[kawaiku]

that's great! thanks for the video!

 

[Scott Tortorice]

Star Blazers is what got me interested in space opera. The show, over the course of its entire series, is probably the best representation of 4X sci-fi gaming ever put on TV. You had it all: fleet battles, tech research, planetary assaults, dogfights, diplomacy with shadowy alien empires...it really was fantastic in its depth. Again, World War II in space. It really is amazing that it was never made into an American movie, especially in the wake of Star Wars. Imagine what a Star Blazers movie could be like with the budget of Avatar! Heck, I would take an episodic series on TV in the fashion of Battlestar Galactica. I'm hoping this Japanese interpretation does extremely well and garners the attention of American studios.

Here's the opening scene from Season 1:

[video=youtube;eMcrep48Wz0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMcrep48Wz0[/video]

Hey Don, can we get a theme song like that for Gamesquad?

 

[Scott Tortorice]

Darn it! Now I can't stop watching old clips!

Check this out. It's part 2 to the Saturn Battle episode:

[video=youtube;hC5_Y7GnmvQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC5_Y7GnmvQ&feature=player_embedded[/video]

How cool was that anti-shipping strike? And the futuristic CIWS? For Pete's sake, this cartoon had a more believable grasp of naval tactics than just about any sci-fi movie I've seen in...decades?

And do you realize that about 10,000 people must have been killed during this battle?!? No "clones" here!

What a great show.

 

[GrumpyWargamer]

"Why can't Hollywood make old school, "WWII in space" sci-fi movies like this instead of crappy sci-fi like Avatar?"

Because it's Hollywood and it's in the US where they tend to screw up a lot of things.

I like watching anime, and Starblazers is really just one example of countless examples really. Starblazers is today an old show, but the anime industry has been doing great scifi for decades.
The problem is, you say the word anime, and you get the predictable response. Their loss.

 

[kawaiku]

^I was just about to say this too!

For instance here is a military science fiction show called Legend of the Galactic Heroes. I've only seen the first episode but it involves lot of military tactics, battles, and politics. But why can't we see more of this!
[video=youtube;ukIw1s4L0A8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukIw1s4L0A8&feature=related[/video]

 

[Scott Tortorice]

You're right, this appears to be a great show (it makes me want to run off and play AI War )! You always do this to me: you post a clip from some tempting sci-fi anime, and then I run off only to discover that Netflix doesn't have it, or only carries the season 2 DVD. :laugh:

 

[kawaiku]

Haha I can't help that now can I Oh and in order to watch the show you have to find it on an internet site because as far as I know it's never been released in the US let alone translated into English meaning all the subtitles are done by fans!!

 

[Scott Tortorice]

Haha I can't help that now can I Oh and in order to watch the show you have to find it on an internet site because as far as I know it's never been released in the US let alone translated into English meaning all the subtitles are done by fans!!

Yeah, I checked Netflix and there was no sign. Even checked Amazon and zippo.

What I would give for Adult Swim to drop the endless tripe they keep showing and give us more sci-fi anime like this!

 

[kawaiku]

I actually expected the Sci-Fi channel to air more science fiction like shows when they started running anime last... fall I think. Instead we got Monster (which is a good show imo), a Gundam show (Could have at least done one of the earlier shows), and some weird murder genocide mystery on a ship with creepy characters lol! The least they could have done with either the one you mentioned, the one I mentioned, or Patlabor, Crest/Banner of the Stars, Lucky Star, Eureka Seven, Samurai 7 (steampunk take on the classic movie), Macross, Darker than Black, Gunbuster (only because it reminded me of Ender's Game a little bit), anything. But nope... nothing. And you ever since they dropped Toonami cartoon network's anime list eventually fell to Inuyasha, Cowboy Bebop, and GITS (not that I don't mind the last two at all) but it would be nice to have a larger pool to choose from that didn't come on late at night.

 

[Scott Tortorice]

Just stumbled on this:

[video=youtube;aqaaRgeuprg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqaaRgeuprg[/video]