Space Battleship Yamato 2199

Cool. No Andromeda then?

I finished 2199 on Friday and was very, very impressed with the overall series. Quote a lot of action, drama and some decent character work was done in these 26 episodes, and power-slamming the whole thing 2-3 episodes per session resulted in a very tight experience indeed. I don't think I've had this much fun with a sci-fi anime since Macross Frontier.

I'll be watching for these movies now with keen interest. What a great way to redux a show via OVA batch releases (a terrible way to do the same BTW is Sailor Moon Crystal, but I digress). I hope this could set a precedent for similar efforts in the future - Votoms, Dougram, L-Gaim to name a few. Gundam is halfway there with their Origin OVA, but that's more a prequel to the excellent "Gundam the Origin" manga and not a real adaptation AFAIK.

Mark

 

No Andromeda, yet. But this seems like an excellent led up to a second series that should have the twin wave motion gun armed Space Battleship Andromeda.

One question would be how Earth gets around Okita's agreement with Starsha about the Wave Motion Gun? Either the Earth government ignores the agreement, or they fit the ships with the ability to mount a wave motion gun, but they are usually not installed, or on board in a deactived state.

The other option would perhaps be a modification to the weapon that makes it not so much a planet killing WMD, but a fleet killing tactical weapon, by making the beam spread out like a hundred powerful shock cannon blasts (which is what the EDF wave motion guns did in "Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato" and "Yamato: Reserection").

 

More's the point, I was thinking the wave motion core that Iscandar sent was integral to the FTL drive, shields, main gun, AND the cosmo DNA whatsit. I'm guessing that they aren't about to get more from Starsha, so it's simple enough to consider they reverse-engineered the one (two?) they did have into less powerful versions that wouldn't have such devastating effects.

Still, though... Andromeda! The Exclesior-class of that universe! I want.

Mark

 

Me too! Cannot wait to see what that one looks like in this world. If it looks near as good as the others have, there will likely be models and toys of it all over the internet, rivaling the popularity of Yamato herself.

 

Yamato has two Wave Motion Cores (one installed and one not) that we know of. It is possible they find more on the way home, or as part of the package deal with Starsha. Or they get a little trade with Gamilas as reparations for damages to Earth.

The plot of the later film suggests they find some large treasure ship or something on the way home. Maybe a load of Wave Motion Cores to power the Earth fleet? Or all the other Earth ships use a reverse engineered version of the core (or captured/salvaged Gamilas cores) that are not quite as good, but Andromeda gets the blue core Yamato picked up on the way to Iscandar.

They still need those to power an FTL fleet of modern warships. The Gamilas have those, or something similar and yet only one ship had a wave motion gun like weapon. Yamato's Wave Motion Gun was decommissioned to house the Cosmo Reverse System, but keeps the Wave Motion Core and all the other systems intact. Earth has the ability to manufacture all the other parts it seems since there is no indication that Yurisha brought anything other than plans with her, and no core. Sasha's caried a core with a message on it, while the one they found on Beeland had maps and data on the Gate network. We don't know if the devices can all be used for Wave Motion Cores, or if it was just the data on the one was what was needed to operate it. That was not clear.


Andromeda is already the second most popular ship from the series after Yamato. There were a lot of older model kits and some of the very expensive and highly detailed kits in the 2000s were of Andromeda.

Basically there are three very popular ship models that keep getting made in all scales and manner of quality. Yamato, Andromeda, and Desler's flagship from Yamato 2. Everything else gets made from time to time, but those three are the ones that get the high end model kits.

Which reminds me that I expect Desler to have survived Yamato 2199 with the Core ship of his battleship and then get it refit or at least fixed and installed into smaller battleship frame that will make it look like the classic ship from Yamato 2. With a Desler Cannon and SMITE system. I also expect that Yamato will warp/ram it to board his ship at somepoint in Yamato 2199's sequel series, as that seems to be the way of things.

 

You never know - remember that in every previous telling of Yamato the third bridge was always destroyed and its crew killed. In 'Yamato 2199' they did have the classic scene where the third bridge was expected to be lost (thus living up to the tradition) the scene where General Dommel self destructs his ship after paying salute to Captain Akita - but due to the 'Warp shielding' of the Yamato, the third bridge remained intact.

[Just saying it's not beyond them to switch classic elements up a bit ]

 

Of course it helped that an actual main character was on the third bridge at the time.

Also they didn't wipe out all life on the Gamilas in this version that's a pretty big difference.

 

Every change so far has made sense. Having Desler's command ship be a detachable core ship that can plug into a larger ship was technically unnecessary (aside from cool factor), unless there is a plan to use that feature to explain the change to that vessel (better than previously) in Yamato 2.

 

Ah, the poor old forlorn third bridge. I almost suspect that it might be an in-joke in the Yamato world now. So much so that it never got a matching waterline-red paint job in Yamato: Resurrection. The animators probably figured "Why bother?"

 

An American live-action version is in the works - again. (There was a previouly planned version that would have substituted the Yamato for the U.S.S. Arizona. - but I think in this case they should try to keep to politics out of it and just make up a new ship.)

I would ALSO like to see this have a *heavily* international and multiracial cast (after all, it' the fate of the whole *Earth* at stake here) - with a Japanese presence (as a nod to the original) - but I'm not expecting either.

http://screenrant.com/star-blazers-movie-christopher-mcquarrie-ross-102446/

 

In Resurrection, the different color on the third bridge was suppose to be extra armor. They also shifted the interstellar navigation systems down there, with a main crew member. (Didn't help, though in the Director's Cut, the ending if different to continue on to sequels involving finding Earth and probably Yuki).

However in Yamato 2199, they decided that, since the "third bridge" is on the ship's keel, that having that blown off would basically mean the ship is done and could not continue on after having her back broken. So instead they decided to make it the safest and most vital defense system on the ship...the shield and artificial gravity generator systems. They lose that and they are basically screwed.

 

Does anyone know when starblazers.com's shopping site is going to be back up? It's been down since late August and I've been wanting to get some more of the 2199 blurays. I sent an email a week ago and they never responded.

 

Yeah, I've been wondering about when the next one will be out as well.

 

No idea. Maybe they are waiting to get a closer tie in with the release of the two films. "Voyage of Rememberance" comes out next weekend in Japan and at the end of the month in a Los Angeles theater.

A small video they are using as promotional material that shows two new scenes in the film taken originally from Episode 20. A transition scen showing the Gamilas fleet firing on Yamato, and another showing how the Cosmo Falcons are recovered into Yamato.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs4-cv4Znc0

 

I'll purchase these if the prices ever come down. $40 for four episodes is rather steep.

 

I just hope they aren't cancelled due to low sales. Otherwise I'll have to try to hunt down the imports somewhere.

 

$40 is cheaper than the import of version of Yamato 2199. That I think might be down to $60 plus $20 shipping.

 

Yeah, my other Japanese imports for single Blu-ray discs were around $75 a pop.

It's why I only do it for the occasional movie or OVA series we're never going to get here that I really want.

 

All I know is that the people complaining about the cost of TNG Blu-ray's are crazy!

 

Anyone have any experience with this DVD set?