Just a little cute fact. Yesterday I watched the first episodes of Yamato 2199 with a friend of mine who knew absolutely NOTHING about this series. She had never heard of it, she didn't know the original series, absolutely NOTHING. So, when the Yamato sets sail, it was absolutely delightful to hear her say: "But it's that old ship! And it's flying !!!" And she was very, very, very sad about how the aliens had devastated the Earth . And she was very pleased when Yamato destroyed the base on Pluto! "They deserved it!!!"
Always interesting to hear the POV from someone who is completely unfamiliar with a show when seeing it for the first time. Glad it hooked her.
It’s an old Sci-fi trope. Every “empire” has its own color palette to differentiate themselves from each other in a fight. Wars does it, Trek does it, B5 and so on.
The surface of their planet is very green. They could hide ships on the surface without people noticing.
Well for Space Battleship Yamato it was a little bit more political on the Japanese production side. The broadcaster didn't like that the enemy looked human right down to the color of the skin. They wanted to be sure the audience knew who the evil aliens were so they asked that the skin color of the Gamilas be changed so that the kids watching would be able to tell who the bad guys were instantly. That's also when they introduced the pure Gamilas as opposed to the 'second class citizens' of the Empire. By the time Mobile Suit Gundam came around, I guess that attitude had changed.
I think by Gundam they had realised that the audience could identify with Dessler anyway, even with blue skin. After the second film and series he had become quite popular.
Ah! The Gamilon skin color oddity! This has fascinated me for years. I don’t think the “lower class” Gamilons were designated in the first run of the show. In the beginning, they almost all looked like (white) humans with no skin color variation, with few exceptions. Then, something happened and Desslok was shown walking along in his Great Hall and his skin changed from white to blue (along with all his soldiers flanking him), and we started seeing consistently blue-skinned Gamilons after that (again, I’m referring to the original 70’s-era series). I was fortunate enough to get the complete Deagostini Yamato Fact Files many years ago, and I found one page that discusses it. Still hoping I can find someone here who knows Japanese who can tell me (us) what this means, as it seems to specifically answer this question..
From what I remember, around the production of episode 10, the show's producer wanted the Gamilas to be blue so the the audience might not sympathize with the aliens, and so that when they capture one later the captured pilot looks different from the ships crew (yet he is still basically human). The art department, not willing to argue with a command from the top, decided to come up with a way to "explain", visually, why Dessler, who had been seen before, was suddenly blue. So they come up with the lighting transition scene to shift him from Caucasian with brown hair to blue skinned with blonde hair. The PS2 games made the Pluto Base soldiers blue and for some reason it didn't sit well. So for Yamato 2199, it was decided to have the Pluto Base personel be second class citizens from a race that had been conquered by Gamilas. Which brought with it a very interesting angle to the whole thing.
Another trailer for Yamato 2205. This one seems to be previewing a new song for the episodes: Gamilas is officially and literally getting pounded.
A program interviewing the new cast members of Yamato 2205 And a poster for Part Two, Which appears to be coming out February 4th, 2022. "SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO 2205: A NEW JOURNEY" PRE-CHAPTER-TAKE OFF- POPULAR SCREENING (starblazers-yamato.net)
Part One: Good. (Need subtitles for clarifications on details) Good use of new characters. Seeming reasonable situations (again, depending on subtitles for clarification) Ending....will have you demand February 4th comes NOW.
I think the Blue-ray booklet comes with some good mecha schematics. Someone put those up on their website for those interested in the Earth ships and Marine mecha from Yamato 2205: Part One. 『宇宙戦艦ヤマト2205 新たなる旅立ち 前章 －TAKE OFF－』 メカニカルデザイナー対談 玉盛順一朗×明貴美加 [宇宙戦艦ヤマト紀行] | V-STORAGE (ビー・ストレージ) 【公式】 (bnarts.jp) The article is an interview with the mechanical designers for Yamato 2205.
As far as we know, there will be only two parts to Yamato 2205. A remake of the OG New Voyage storyline with changes due to the 2199/2202 timeline. But just two parts already doubles the runtime from the original TV movie that was New Voyage in 1979.