Space Battleship Yamato

[Noname Given]

lol - true that. I'm also glad Shadow Chronicles kind of faded away... that still pisses me off.

Shadow Chronicles was just plain B A D (in a bad way too)

As for Starblazers, looks like that's next up on the SYFY Anime block. Problem is, I think the art style is too primitive to hold modern audiences (Cartoon Network never finished airing the original Gundam series because of this) I hope it lasts a while on SYFY as it's been nearly two decades since I've watched any of the "StarBlazers" version of "Space Battleship Yamato" - so it would be fun to see it again.

 

[Leroy]

As for Starblazers, looks like that's next up on the SYFY Anime block. Problem is, I think the art style is too primitive to hold modern audiences (Cartoon Network never finished airing the original Gundam series because of this)

This is what I'm afraid of I still remember when CN pulled first Gundam off the air due to low ratings citing 9/11 as an excuse.

 

[Lynn Minmay]

lol - true that. I'm also glad Shadow Chronicles kind of faded away... that still pisses me off.

Shadow Chronicles was just plain B A D (in a bad way too)

As for Starblazers, looks like that's next up on the SYFY Anime block. Problem is, I think the art style is too primitive to hold modern audiences (Cartoon Network never finished airing the original Gundam series because of this) I hope it lasts a while on SYFY as it's been nearly two decades since I've watched any of the "StarBlazers" version of "Space Battleship Yamato" - so it would be fun to see it again.

Tonight's the night!!!

SyFy will air two episodes back to back. I've got my DVR set to record the entire series.

I highly suggest you ladies and gents watch this classic of Sci-Fi/Fantasy Classic Anime.

 

[Lookingglassman]

Why are the DVD sets so expensive for this series?

 

[Bishop76]

What time (central) is this airing tonight?

 

[timothy]

it will be coming on at 1 am centeral time from dallas,tx . I've set my dvr, now I wish they put robotech back on that would be awesome.

 

[BillJ]

Any word on a home video release of the movie that released in December?

 

[FalTorPan]

lol - true that. I'm also glad Shadow Chronicles kind of faded away... that still pisses me off.

Shadow Chronicles was just plain B A D (in a bad way too)

I loved Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles. The only thing I didn't like about it is that it wasn't a feature-length pilot to a new Robotech TV series.

I'm not referring to either of you, but when I browse the Robotech.com forums from time to time, I get the impression that diehard Robotech fans are even more impossible to please than diehard Trekkies.

 

[timothy]

I love the first run macross and then the masters invasion and then the invid invasion. I realy did'nt care for the shadow chronicles because they rewrote the ending of the invid invasion which was just fine. but still love robotech series rich hunter greates pilot ever not. and now a serious question when will the live acton movie be ready for a us dvd release? lisa hayes is such a hotty over min me.

 

[Lookingglassman]

I too loved the Robotech show, especially the MACROSS saga. It had a BSG feeling to it - large warship stranded far from home with civilians along for the ride, space battles, romance, etc. I would love to see the japanese make a live action film of this show.

 

[Bishop76]

I had a problem with Shadow Chronicles because it was kind of sold as a wrap-up of the saga where you get to find out what happened to the SDF-3 and the Hunters and it turned out to be nothing more than an aborted attempt at a pilot or a beginning of a new series... where you find out nothing about the fate of the Hunters or the SDF-3 and are introduced to a bland new enemy that doesn't hold a torch to the Zentraedi, Masters, or Invid. That and the rewrite of the end of Reflex Point was pretty unnecessary. Also, the new characters were uninteresting. And the CG was amateurish. I would have rather they cell-animated if they couldn't have decent CG. Macross Plus managed better CG stuff 10 years before this movie came out.

There will likely never be a live-action version and it would probably be really bad if there were. Can you imagine trying to cram all that into 2 hours successfully? Sure, the Japanese did it in Macross: Do You Remember Love? but I don't see any modern companies following that example. I'd guess the singing would be cut out entirely for more awesome 'splosions.

I loved Macross and the MOSPEADA parts of Robotech as a kid and became a Macross junkie because of Robotech. I really wish we could get Macross Frontier released over here though...

 

[Noname Given]

lol - true that. I'm also glad Shadow Chronicles kind of faded away... that still pisses me off.

Shadow Chronicles was just plain B A D (in a bad way too)

As for Starblazers, looks like that's next up on the SYFY Anime block. Problem is, I think the art style is too primitive to hold modern audiences (Cartoon Network never finished airing the original Gundam series because of this) I hope it lasts a while on SYFY as it's been nearly two decades since I've watched any of the "StarBlazers" version of "Space Battleship Yamato" - so it would be fun to see it again.

Tonight's the night!!!

SyFy will air two episodes back to back. I've got my DVR set to record the entire series.

I highly suggest you ladies and gents watch this classic of Sci-Fi/Fantasy Classic Anime.

Ditto - again, for people who haven't seen it realize the following:

The first 'Space Crusier Yamato' series (which is what SyFy is airing the start of tonight) was produced and aired in Japan way back in 1973 - so the animation style will be a LOT more primative then what you may have seen if you've been watching say, 'Gundam 00'.

The English dub version (re-titled "StarBlazers" for U.S. audiences) was dubbed in 1978 (and most likely dione to capitalize on the 'Star Wars' craze that was STILL going on a year after bthe original Star Wars was released back in 1977. And while the story still retains the basics, many parts of it were toned down or altered to make it more 'Family/Kid' friendly (although no where near as bad as say, 'Voltron' or 'Battle of the Planets' was at around the same time. They did try to keep the story and a lot of it's aspects/impact intact.

So, even if it looks dated in terms of anime style when compared to today, I hope people will give it a shot and at ;least watch a couple episodes instead of say, dissmissing it after 5 minutes or so. It's the show that really got me into anime fandom. (and te two sequel series wer decent too - so I king of hope SyFy optioned all three - but I still wonder if the ratings will maintain well enough that they finish airing this first series all the way though.

We'll see.

 

[Lynn Minmay]

lol - true that. I'm also glad Shadow Chronicles kind of faded away... that still pisses me off.

Shadow Chronicles was just plain B A D (in a bad way too)

I loved Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles. The only thing I didn't like about it is that it wasn't a feature-length pilot to a new Robotech TV series.

I'm not referring to either of you, but when I browse the Robotech.com forums from time to time, I get the impression that diehard Robotech fans are even more impossible to please than diehard Trekkies.

Protip: Skip anything with name Robotech attached to it.

The original source material is a much better viewing experience.

A little under two hours to go before Star Blazers is on!!!

 

[Leroy]

There will never be a live action movie for Robotech becuase Harmony Gold is incredibly incompetent they aren't even a real animation company most of their profits come from real estate. They know they can't compete with Macross hence they block any releases from being licensed to region 1. HG's attempts at a sequel fall flat since they cannot use Macross related designs for copyright reasons so we ended up with a half hearted attempt at a MOSPEADA/New Gen sequel instead of the continuing adventures of the SDF-3.

I hope Star Blazers does well for SyFy encouraging the network to pick up other old and overlooked anime like first Gundam, and Zeta.

 

[Christopher]

Wow, a real blast from the past seeing Star Blazers again. It's striking how vividly I remember some of the scenes and lines once I had my memory refreshed. "I said 'idiots!'" "Wildstaaaaar!!!" And there were a lot of music cues I haven't thought of in decades, but as soon as I started hearing them, I remembered how they went.

I apparently didn't remember the voices nearly so well, though. I remembered Avatar's voice pretty well, but I'd had the impression that Mark Venture had an English accent, when instead it was just vaguely New England-y or something. And I'd forgotten that Nova was an alto.

And I thought Gamilons were blue-skinned. What's with the pink-skinned Gamilons in episode 2? Was that something they rethought later in the production, or are we seeing a color-correction error in the video restoration?

I think I'd forgotten just how great an impact this show had on me back in '78 or '79 when I first saw it. To see a cartoon dealing with global war and death in battle and images of the destruction of cities and starships and whole worlds... it must've hit me pretty hard, because seeing it again now, it stirred a strong emotional reaction in me. It reminded me a bit of what it felt like to be a child back then, with the Cold War at its height, and to grow up with the awareness that nuclear holocaust could descend at any time. Seeing Star Blazers's first episode must have resonated with those fears. I recognized even then that it was a Japanese show and that its storyline must have been informed by Japan's direct experience with suffering nuclear bombardment.

People have been commenting in this thread about the show's relatively crude animation compared to modern anime, but for me at the time, for someone who'd grown up with the limited TV animation of Filmation and Hanna-Barbera and DePatie-Freleng, Star Blazers looked stunning. Its animation was strikingly vivid and fluid and expressive compared to what I was used to, not to mention the distinctiveness of its design sensibilities. And I still think it holds up very well.

Although there was something very wrong with the video transfer or something on the first episode, so that any rapid movement seemed jerky and stuttering. It practically induced motion sickness. Fortunately the problem wasn't there with the second episode, so hopefully we've seen the last of it.

 

[Lookingglassman]

I managed to snag the first series off of ebay for like $40 bucks and it was in Japanese with English subtitles and played on Region 1 DVDs. I liked it because nothing was cut out of it like they did the US version.

 

[Noname Given]

People have been commenting in this thread about the show's relatively crude animation compared to modern anime, but for me at the time, for someone who'd grown up with the limited TV animation of Filmation and Hanna-Barbera and DePatie-Freleng, Star Blazers looked stunning. Its animation was strikingly vivid and fluid and expressive compared to what I was used to, not to mention the distinctiveness of its design sensibilities. And I still think it holds up very well.

I'm the person that mentioned this, and again the only reason I did it was to try and get the younger folks who may not have experienced earlier anime to give it a shot. I agree with you that, for it's time, and compared to what Hana Barbera, Filmation, and the rest were doing, 'Starblazers/Yamato' did look amazing in terms of style and what they were attempting to do stoory wise. (And, yes, Star Blazers is heavily edited, and a lot of times they just took out the background sound effects when people were speaking - not so with the original Japanese 'Space Cruiser Yamato' verrsions. Some of the scenes removed are of Earth ship being hulled and crewmembers being sucked out into open space here and there. Also, the reason you hear 'Star Force said so much is they had to replace cjharacters saying 'Yamato' a lot in the dialog - and again the U.S. version didn't want to include ALL the dialog the captain spouts about the Yamato's WWII history - so that's why you see a lot of inane filler dialog like:

Captain: "So Wildsatar, the StarForce needs men like you..."

Wildstar: "So, this is what the StarForce is going to fight in? This ship?"

(All the above aftyer the Captain has described the ship when Wildstar and Venture first walked on te bridge; and after Wildstar shot down the approaching enemy Carrier ship.)

So, yes, the dialog can get a bit strange at times as I'm sure the script writers liked teh original Japanese story, yet were being told - remember, we're aiming this at kids...

But, again "StarBlazers" was what initially really got me into Anime fandom, and starting to look at the original source material from Japan.

Alsthough like some others, there were classic elements that I forgot - like the 'countdown' at the end aka:

"There are now only 364 days left..."

If people who haven't seen "StarBlazers/Yamato" before, you'll now be seeing the updated countdown at the end of EVERY episode (and that's what the Japanese did in the original too. )

 

[Kai "the spy"]

And I thought Gamilons were blue-skinned. What's with the pink-skinned Gamilons in episode 2? Was that something they rethought later in the production, or are we seeing a color-correction error in the video restoration?

I actually haven't seen Star Blazers, but a fansub of the original Japanese edition. The Gamilons had the same skin color as humans, but that changed around episode 11 or 12 (not sure), when it became a kind of blueish green (or greenish blue, if you prefer).

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, it's cool to be able to see this knowing about the censorship and being able to read between the lines, which I couldn't do when I saw it as a kid. Right, Dr. Sane -- suuuuuure that's a motion-sickness remedy in that sake bottle.

 

[I Grok Spock]

The subtle (and not-so-subtle) differences in the original (assuming the subtitles are accurate) and the U.S. version are interesting. Like this exchange between Wildstar (Kodai) and Venture (Shima) just after they crash their interceptor in Episode 1:

Kodai: Hey Shima, you alright?

Shima: Why don't you worry about yourself?

Kodai: What a pity, even if it's just one unit, I wanted to gun it down myself!

----

Wildstar: Are you alright Venture?

Venture: Yeah, I think so. What about you?

Wildstar: What lousy luck. If this bucket of bolts had just held together another minute...
-----
Shima's not too interested in Kodai's concern is he? Plus, Kodai's regret over not downing the spy plane is a bit sharper than Wildstar's.

In addition, Wildstar/Kodai's brother's death is cast completely differently in the two versions. In Star Blazers, he sacrifices himself to protect Avatar's retreat. In Space Battleship Yamato, he refuses to retreat because he'd rather die taking as many enemy as he can down with him.