10. The flood part 1

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Aquarius is now headed for Earth and Captain Okita explains his final plan of attack to the crew. The background and framing of this scene changed noticably from Version A to Version B.

Emperor Lugal’s remaining fleet is hot on Yamato‘s heels, and they’re much easier to see in Version B.

Dessler shows up just when he’s needed most. His first on-screen appearance differs slightly from A to B. In A he starts with a raised flower (recovered from Yamato‘s earlier funeral offering at his ruined planet) whereas in B he starts with the flower below camera range. Also, the grid on Yamato‘s viewscreen was redrawn for Version B.

A few seconds later, Dessler takes aim at Lugal’s ship with the Dessler cannon. In Version A, he’s been roughed up a bit; scenes were planned that would show him getting tossed around, but they didn’t make it into the film for whatever reason. (For that matter, Dessler and Lugal were originally supposed to kill each other in this battle, but that didn’t happen either.) Since the unproduced scenes were never restored, Dessler simply got cleaned up for Version B and they were never missed.

Yamato escapes while Desslok deals the final smackdown to Lugal. This shot of the bridge was widened for Version B, but the background painting was rather clumsily expanded. Side note: in the movie script, Dessler was to die in his battle with Lugal. Apparently he was pardoned by the governor at the last moment.

Yamato moves to rendezvous with EDF battleship Fuyuzuke. This shot was new in Version B.

After an emotional farewell with Captain Okita, the crew transfers to Fuyuzuke, and we see another good reason to remake a film: Version B corrected a problem with the cel layers.

Something else you can do in a remake: repaint a cel that was originally the wrong color.

Captain Okita takes off on his solo flight toward destiny against noticeably different background paintings.

Another interesting alteration: in Version A he raises his hands in prayer. In B, the hands stay offscreen.

The first two shots of the approaching Aquarius also differ from Version A to B. Unlike some previous shots, however, the rings are present and accounted for.

Next begins one of the most demanding scenes in anime history. The Aquarius flood was incredibly intricate and took a long time to play out. At best, the animators could manage only two cels a day, which put the movie even farther behind schedule than it already was. Understandably, then, Version A shows a lot of errors, such as a foreground cel layer that didn’t fill the entire frame.

In all cases, these scenes were heavily enhanced with color and mist effects for Version B. This served to smooth out a lot of the mistakes.

One of the few scenes from this sequence that was entirely redone: a huge body of water lifts off the surface of Aquarius. Version B offered a much wider view.

As a massive deluge strikes the Earth, things look hopeless. What can one space battleship do against such an onslaught?

Continue to Part 11

One thought on “10. The flood part 1

  1. The water effects animation looked MUCH better before they softened it in the redux. There’s no contrast left in the new version. All the wonderful detail, volumes, and contours are lost. It looks more like amorphous cotton candy rather than water. They should’ve left those shots alone.

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