To a reasonably intelligent eight-year-old in the first flowering of his burgeoning nerdhood, whose brain still bore the deeply-creased impressions left by Star Wars, Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica, and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, the summer of 1980 brought one of the greatest treasures of all when Star Blazers exploded onto my big ol’ cathode-ray TV screen. I had no idea it was originally a Japanese anime called Space Battleship Yamato. I actually missed its debut the first time it aired, so for a long time I had no idea the Argo was a converted battleship with a somewhat unsettling connection to World War II. All I knew is that the ships looked great, it had the kind of characters I could dream about being, and the Wave Motion Gun was freakin’ BADASS. In short, it was pure, undistilled awesome, and getting my half-hour dose every afternoon became priority number one.
Now, in the wake of last year’s live-action theatrical film (which I’m still waiting to get my hot little completely-law-abiding >koff koff< hands on) we’re getting what looks like a full-on anime series relaunch entitled Space Battleship Yamato 2199, with the first few episodes set to be shown in movie theaters. Check out the trailer:
Based on that little bit, I’ve got mixed feelings. One the one hand, it looks relatively faithful to the original, or at least the original’s first few episodes. The updated animation can be a plus if it’s relatively similar otherwise. But, as usual when stuff I adored as a kid is remade or rebooted, part of me says “oh no they’re gonna wreck it >groan<” while part of me says “Shiny new verson, woo!” I guess we’ll find out next April…
I can’t wait!