Space Battleship Yamato 2199

They changed character names & personalities, ruined the soundtrack and butchered the plot. The damage is not in Macek's league, but it still makes me glad the company has gone down the drain.

 

Funimation is like the opposite end of the spectrum. They're the most respectable and largest anime distributor in the US, accurate translations, releases always bilingual (the anime anyway), usually provides a BD option, reasonably priced, etc. They are the company you want to get something if you want to see it treated right. I've only had a few issues with them, such as them not finishing a couple series I was interested in due to poor sales.

 

Funimation USED to be really bad (see the original DBZ DVDs and those atrocious orange box releases), but they have redeemed themselves with stuff like the dragon boxes. I hope anything Yamato related they license does at least well enough to justify releasing 2199 at an affordable price in NA, I refuse to pay the absurd Japanese prices for importing discs.

It's also important to point an unfortunate fact out that Matsumoto stuff tends to not sell that well over here, it makes me wish more people would put the shonen down for a few seconds and take a look at something else, so fans of things like Yamato could be thrown a bone very once in a while, but that's a topic for a different thread.

 

Welll to be fair, most of Motsumoto's stuff dates from the 70's, and in general theres not a huge following for any show from that era.

I wouldn't say its completely dead though. Theres still a good number of anime modellers and SF spacecraft fans who love the hardware from the show.

 

Yeah, I'd say the fact that Matsumoto's stuff is from the 70s hurts his cache in the West, especially since 70s anime aged a lot worse than a good amount of western animation in terms of aesthetics and visual quality. And let's not forget that he hasn't made anything recently and when he did, it was kinda shit.

 

Well at least some of the troubles might be fixed by this news (in Japanese)

http://yamato2199.net/news.html#yamato2199_tv

MBS, TBS to air Space Battleship Yamato 2199 on Sunday nights at 5:00pm starting in April.

 

TBS in America? Interesting. That's not where I would have expected to see it, but if true, that's all kinds of awesome. I'm assuming it will be subbed and not dubbed.

 

I think TBS is a Japanese channel, although it would be awesome if TBS in NA showed Yamato.

 

Nah, it'll end up on Adult Swim's Toonami block if Funimation gets the rights to it. Which is fine by me, because it would at least get SOME promotion, as opposed to none.

 

FYI - "TBS" (in Japan) = Tokyo Broadcasting System

The Turner Broadcasting Station won't be airing this in the U.S. come April (would be interesting if it did, but it won't. )

 

Ah - thanks for the info.

And dammit! It sounded too good to be true...

 

The Japanese station of course.

It just means that it will be more widely distributed and accessible to the bloggers and other reviewers.

If they are going to do the while 26 episode run though, they will need to have the last Chapter finished and out in theaters by the beginning of September at the latest. With the BD to come out only a few weeks after the last episode airs in October.

Chapter 4 will be in theaters tomorrow and on BD on February 22nd.

Chapter 5 will be in theaters April 13th and on BD on May 28th.

 

One theory brought up in another forum is that it will be a split cour so that they can still keep their 3 month schedule (which was already accelerated from their 4 month schedule previously) and still make money off of the theatre screenings. The dates kind of work out if that is the case... otherwise, they'd have to end up scrapping the screenings altogether because there's no reason to pay to watch it when you can watch it for free.

That said, there is something funny about a "premiere" shounen block reduced to airing what are essentially re-runs for the first season anyway. As brought up on that forum, the noitaminA block is also re-airing Katanagatari in lieu of ordering new shows.

 

Must have been a bad season.

 

Magi is currently airing in that block and it's a traditionally shounen block... I guess Yamato could be a show that boys might like though. It is an interesting money saving measure to buy a show that already exists rather than pay for a new show to be made though.

I guess it's like what people thought would happen with the last US writer's strike... which never really happened except with one or two Canadian TV shows airing on US TV for a few weeks.

 

Well save that they had said they intended to air Yamato 2199 in 2013.

This remake is also not even close to being a rerun of the 1974 show. There is just too much different to consider that. I've heard this called the best remake ever as it improves on the original rather than dumbs it down to make it flashy like so many Hollywood remakes.

What it does have is a big name, and high sales from the theaters and BD sales. Essentally they are going about it in reverse of normal. Instead of TV, BD, Movie, they are going Movie, BD, TV.

If they maintain their current release pattern, the last "film" will come out around the same time the last episodes are suppose to air (depending on when in April they start). Maybe they will release Chapter 7 sooner? Maybe they will delay the episode releases until the "film" is out? We don't know yet.

We know that by the time the show starts airing on TV they will have 18 episodes done. By the current pattern they will have Chapter 6 done before they reach those episodes in August. The question is if they will have Chapter 7 done by September rather than October. Again depending on when in April they start (traditionally the first week or two, but some stations start later than others).

 

Was it always planned for TV? My impression is that they went with this release schedule half because they probably couldn't keep the pace of a weekly schedule (we already had a casualty from last season where they couldn't keep up and had to air two recaps in place of new episodes). But I have no idea.

As for being a good remake... I've only watched the Yamato anime movies, so I can't really speak to the quality of the show as a remake... but the anime-isms (namely the nurse character) must be part of the appeal. It's the equivalent of Mari in the new Eva movies!

 

^^^
That pretty much sums up my take on Yamato 2199; and it's honestly why I enjoy it so much (while still being a fan of the original 1973 version too.)

 

Heavy improvements to the mecha are one draw. Massive space battles were a draw before, but improving on it makes it rather impressive. The Battle of Pluto was exciting in the new version. While the original also had feeling to it, it was not exciting as a battle. Yamato's weapons are similar to how they were before, but the effects make them appear even more impressive. Add to this what was shown in the Chapter 4 preview of the Gamilas Fleet vs. the Comet Empire Fleets, and you get what is basically mecha fanservice. Glorious mecha fanservice.

The deeper story for the Gamilas is another. Before they were kind of generic enemies that were not quite evil, but you generally didn't care what happened to them. (At least not until the second season when we started to care about Dessler). Now they have families, dreams, goals, and personalities the audiance can relate too. One can actually feel sorry for Schultz and his men. We didn't feel sorry for them in the original. They were the bumbling underlings originally. Now they are just unlucky to have to face Yamato first without any real knowledge about it. They were clever, but just not prepared to deal with something like that. Dessler comes off as a good leader from the start. Some of his generals seem alright. Dommel gets to show off his tactical leadership in battle the first time we see him. We are waiting to see how they do the Galman Wulf sub commander, who was one of the cooler characters of the Yamato III series.

Adding more women helps as well as there was always the complaint of Yuki being the only woman on a ship full of men and doing pretty much every non-combat job on the ships, from food planning, to away mission specialist, to radar operator, to nurse, to ship's activities planner, and laundry. She did practically every job on that ship at least once. Now they've spread some of her larger tasks up (radar operator, analysis, nurse, fighter pilot (live action film)).

While the Nurse (Makoto) certainly has fanservice appeal, it seems to be Yamamoto that is getting the most attention after Yuki. Yuria and Niimi seem to be getting stories as well in the next two Chapters, with Makoto still being mostly just the nurse that cares about how others feel.

The story this time around is faster paced and things seems to have moved on faster while still telling the same amount of story, while adding even more to it. That would sound impossible until you think that the original was sort of slow paced for the first half of the series with several redundant episodes that basically told a similar tale a second time, or there was a lot of narration about the story so far, or the place they were going (some of which is now quite wrong since space exporation has come a long ways since 1974). With a lot of that either cut out, or the explainations handed over to the characters, the pacing is faster with less redundancy.

Since episode 7, the story has drifted farther away from the original stories. They were about the same for the first six episodes, with some differences, but seven was were things really started to change. Sure they are still going to the same place for the same reason, but how they go about it and what happens along the way are changing. You might find a new episode's plot to be similar to one of the older plots, but things are becoming more and more different. We have had one story that is nothing like any previous plot, and one that is only marginally similar to two or three other plots while being a completely different story (using an element of an other story with an element of another story, and then making a new plot that has those elements within it).

Take episode 10 for example: There are elements of three stories from before in there.
A. A captured Gamilon pilot (first time humans have seen the Gamilas in person).
B. Trapped in a Space Graveyard
C. Trapped in a region of space with one Gamilas ship that shows them the way out (though that was not on purpose in the original)
These elements are combined and altered so that only the elements are similar to the original series. You have Yamato get trapped in a weird dimentional pocket that is a ship's graveyard, with one Gamilas ship that can help them escape. To foster confidence with the humans, a lone pilot is sent to do face to face meeting (first human contact with a Gamilas citizen). Those are the use of those elements, but the story is not like any of the three episodes those elements were from originally.

So it is the same...but also very different. And it works.

 

Not much I can add to Ithekro's comment. I pretty much agree with everything. Its basically the same story updated for 21st century sensibilities. Even though I confess I'm not too fond of the men getting spiffy uniforms while most of the women get stuck with those yellow thong bodysuit things. Ah well, just something we have to tolerate in the name of fan service I suppose.

I love that instead of redesigning everything they've basically updated the ships and uniforms just enough so that they don't look dated and silly by modern standards. I wonder if they're going to redo the old bee people episode?

I confess that since anime switched to cg coloring, I've hated the tendency for shows to have a wierd soft focus, blurry look. Not here. Everything is perfectly clear, and it seems like they've gone out of their way to make it look like old school cel animation.

If it weren't for the whole "Destroying Earth with meteor bombs" thing, I could find the Gamilas quite admirable. Allowing conquered people to become citizens and even officers in the empire seems a lot like the old Roman Empire.

Good to hear the shows doing well. Makes the odds better that we'll get a second series. Hell they're already making references.