Letter from Mr. H, Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture:
I read the “frontpage” article by Leiji Matsumoto in the early August issue while playing the Space Battleship Yamato LP that had just been released. I was so moved by the sentence “Starsha, the incarnation of the immortal woman I believe in…” that the words became blurry. That’s what I thought.
Letter from Mr. f, Toshima Ward, Tokyo:
I am thrilled that Space Battleship Yamato will be shown not on TV but in theaters. Yamato on the big screen and on roadshow [nationwide release]. Yoshinobu Nishizaki and Toshio Masuda did a great job. And Mr. Leiji Matsumoto, please keep up the good work.
Review by film critic Takashi Namiki
The idea of making the battleship Yamato fly through space with great seriousness is exciting. The inside of the battleship is thoroughly scientific, and the outside is somehow evocative of the old battleship. (It even has a waterline, and its colors are gray and red.
Only those who can accept this film’s basic concept as a “man’s romance” with great enthusiasm can stay with it until the end. For those who are fond of research and lament the unscientific nature of Japanese SF films compared to foreign SF films, concerned about everything from smoke trails to gliding space fighters, I don’t recommend these manga-like domestic films.
Now, while we’re on the subject of movies, this is a collection of famous scenes from a 26-episode TV anime of the same name. a collection of battle scenes without episodes. The ending has been changed slightly, but the rest of the film is a combination of the same sounds, line, and shots, so it can hardly be called a theatrical animation.
When the work was made for broadcast, each part of it went from script to drawing to coloring on a tight schedule, and critical mistakes occurred one after another during shooting and recording. This work was said to be an example of bad conditions for TV animation production.
However, except for the broken ink lines, which give the work an overall rough look, it can be said to be well done. I can say that it connects well. Differences in the characters’ faces, which are not noticeable on TV because of the one-week gap between episodes, can be seen from shot to shot. If you keep watching, you’ll understand.
The “man’s way of life” depicted through Captain Okita was seen in the TV series. Kodai, who is feuding with him because Okita left his brother to be killed, is a man of action. After many battles, he succeeds Okita. Okita’s old samurai, patriarchal, stubborn, cool-headed, and calm “man” comes through in this re-edited version, but the episodes of human relationships were omitted, the crew members only appear when needed, and human beings are not the main characters.
So, what is the theme? When the city of Gamilas is destroyed near the end, the main character (?) says, “We should have talked with them before fighting them.” It seems to be anti-war, but then he immediately affirms war by saying “It can’t be helped.”
As far as we can see in the movie, Yamato itself is the theme. For boys after the war, Yamato was the most powerful ship in the world when it was built. (Today’s missile cruisers don’t look strong at all.) Numerous images filled the boys’ magazines of about 15 years ago, turning Yamato into a symbol of the postwar boys’ magazine culture. Yamato could be the most common dream of those of us who grew up with it.
I had no complaints about the music in the TV series, but the same BGM is used continuously in the battle scenes, and I got tired of it. Leiji Matsumoto’s characters were also not well organized. Even if they used the exact same material, I would have liked to have seen some re-shooting and re-composition of the film with new music effects. If this work, which is technically no different from the so-called “TV manga,” can be marketed successfully, it will not be surprising if many other TV works are also shown in theaters.
However, I still want to see a work made for the theater. If you’re going to make a sequel to Yamato, I definitely want you to make it for the theater. Not a TV hand-me-down.
Review by film critic Kosei Ono
As I write this, more than 100,000 advance tickets have been sold.
It’s good that the film is popular, but it would be a disaster if too many people rush to the theater and cause an accident. Cinema owners have even said they should cut back on publicity. There are over 30,000 members in fan clubs, so in this case it’s better to say that Space Battleship Yamato has become a “phenomenon.” This is the power of TV to crush everything.
On the other hand, the popular American TV series Star Trek has become both a live-action and animated program, and Star Wars, a space action entertainment film that seems to have been born as an extension, has become an unprecedented hit. This phenomenon shows that science fiction and fantasy are not limited to novels, and have permeated every medium to become a major part of youth culture. I can also feel it invading other areas.
As if to symbolize this trend, a 352-page color edition of The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (352 pages in color) has been published in the United Kingdom. I have just received a copy of the book. It is a visual encyclopedia of science fiction culture from the past to the present, not to mention TV, radio, and film. This is a new visual concept (or picture novel, if you will) within the realm of science fiction. Combined with the emergence of pulp magazines in America, I am not surprised to have a (somewhat exaggerated) desire to see the film in this context.
This is why Yamato has both a newness that is appropriate to the times and a great feeling of antiquity, which is interesting because it is a Japanese film. The story is basically about a space-going fortress-like warship that flies all the way across the galaxy to defeat aliens who are trying to take over the earth.
What is refreshing, first of all, is that the swarms of super-futuristic weaponry that appear in this space war are so carefully drawn and presented to make them look like they work in a plausible manner. Radar screens and other devices flash attractively in an ingenious composition, and the colors of weaponry and the darkness of the universe have depth without looking cheap. (I first praised the film for this in the program book.)
The old points are, first of all, that there is no humor (this is a manga movie) in this two-hour film, and the humans are all part of a military system in the future. The humans are lost in the lonely beauty of the machines (although maybe not so much in the TV version). In this futuristic story, as in past war movies, the Earth defenders drink a cup of water before the decisive battle. In this respect, the film is rather suffocatingly Japanese in its sentimentality.
The way in which the film heightens the melancholy feeling of a kamikaze movie, reflecting the nostalgia of a war-era filmmaker, makes me want to say, “Oh, come on!” I wanted to know what the future crew of the Yamato would eat, for example. There should be more women on board. I think that would be a somewhat futuristic point of view, for women to play an active role.
This is just a story of self-indulgence in a man’s value system and the whole thing moves in the tempo of a TV show, so it’s monotonous. But I guess TV fans don’t care about such things.