Space Battleship Yamato 2199

[Nephtys]

Spoiler

Spoiler

A nice, interesting touch: Desler's bridge launches away from the ship after his wave motion gun explodes in Ep25. So he's going to be back in those sequels..

[Elfdart]

I know this is late, but I finally got to watch the rest of the series. Yamato 2199 is hands down the best sci-fi TV series ever. Every time you think the action and drama on the show have peaked, they turn it up to 11 in a way that makes sense plot-wise (as opposed to just shoveling more onto the pile). Lesser shows might have climaxed with the Battle of Balun, or with the destruction of Adm Drama Hands' fleet, but the Yamato's attack on Gamilon and the twist Spoiler

where they save the people of Gamilon after Dessler just went all Hitler-in-the-bunker on them

was brilliant.
Spoiler

Now the Yamato and her crew are heroes of Gamilon while Dessler and his loyalists are fugitive traitors to be hunted by Captain Badass Mustache

The final shot of Kodai and Yukii in their spacesuits looking out at Iscandar (ep 23) is a masterpiece, something no Hollywood filmmaker has matched in over 30 years.

Dessler's revenge attack on the Yamato is was fast-paced and exciting, with Yamato finally driving off Dessler after many casualties. I like how the engineer with white sideburns has a pistol that sounds like the one Han Solo uses (having white sideburns automatically makes one awesome, of course). The coolest part is when the pilots use a dismounted machinegun from one of the fighters to mow down Dessler's battle droids. Oh, and now Dessler is Quadaffi with his personal bodyguard-babes?

Once the fighting is done, the whittled-down crew staggers toward Earth but as they get closer, the drama builds far more than you could get from all the pew-pew action, no matter how well done the fight scenes might be. I have never seen a TV show -let alone a cartoon!- with not one but TWO tearjerker moments, and we get them in the final episode.
Spoiler

Where Kodai breaks down in front in front of Snow White's glass coffin, and where the doctor salutes the Captain one last time.

A word about the music on this show: They didn't just re-record the old music from the 70s, they added new cues and variations. Sure there were some real howlers, like the prog-disco theme for the Comet Empire:



But the ratio of great themes to dated ones is about 20-1. In the scene where Kodai drops to his knees out of grief in the last episode, the violins kick in so perfectly you'd have thought Max Steiner had returned from the dead.

All in all this series puts to shame every other sci-fi TV show ever made. So much so that I'm underwhelmed now that they've announced a live-action remake by Christopher McQuarrie.

[Vympel]

Where can I find a version with english subs?

edit: found one - but some episodes missing. Goddammit.

[Vympel]

Finished watching the series earlier this week. That was pretty awesome. Didn't really understand why Dessler got crazy at the end though - why didn't he try any of that shit before the Yamato came? I don't really see what changed.

[jollyreaper]

I don't think they entirely explained his beef. The original show and sequels tended to drag him back and forth between handsome and charming psychopath and ruthless but loves his people in his own way.

In this remake, I think his character is still kind of inconsistent. The wiki says he's been dictator for 100 years so evidently these guys age more slowly than humans.

I had assumed on first watch that he was a hereditary ruler who inherited an empire from his parents. That would seem to explain his first boy comfort with and casual use of power. If he earned his position, that's something else. And by earn I mean do whatever it takes to become the big cheese. Plotting, murder, betrayal, etc.

At first he seemed like he was a self-possessed sociopath who knew exactly what he was doing and bad the twin goals of staying on top while amusing himself with people and planets as playthings. Imperial expansion was just the means of keeping the lights on. As the series progressed, he seemed to become the madman-in-chief, obsessing over the yamato and losing any semblance of legitimate authority. A lot of the line officers seemed to be able to justify what they did as civic duty and keeping civilization going even while outright psychopath commanders in the very same military are dropping planet busters as a performance piece.

I would say Dessler behaved as the plot required but never quite moved beyond a plot device to become a real character in his own right. But given that the whole thing is written as space opera and a really broad one at that, I don't think subtle is what they were going for.

[Lord Revan]

personally I think he broke cause Yamato was the rogue element in his plans he couldn't control, but they could have shown it better by having him show signs of "cracks" beneath the surface even before the final breakdown.

[Parallax]

I think Revan is right.
Dessler was clearly a control freak, with every single member of his inner circle under complete control (even when they thought they weren't, as Captain MuttonChops found out). Dessler's grip on his empire seemed to be pretty damn absolute.

And then a solitary ship, from some shitty planet that had already been decimated dares to stand up to the entire Gammilon Empire.
And refuses to surrender or be blown up? And no matter who or what Dessler sends against it, the Yamato just keeps on coming.

I can see how that could severely mind screw someone with Dessler's perspective.

[Laudon]

I think Dessler´s mad love for Starsha (who gave wave motion engine to the terrons after all) may contribute to his madness...

[Elfdart]

I hope they make a second season with the Andromeda, because a ship with double-barrel wave motion guns is just too cool:

[Parallax]

Not so much a second season but a movie has just hit the usual sites - Odyssey of the Celestial Ark. It's mainly set after the Yamato takes off from Iscandar (but before it gets back to Earth) and involves the Galatanteans, who have developed a nasty new weapon.

It seems to have the destructive power of the Wave Motion Gun (or near enough to) but they seem to fire it and generate a portal at the same time - and then have the other end of that portal open up elsewhere, hitting the enemy from an unexpected direction and distance.

[Borgholio]

Holy Necro, Batman!

[Parallax]

Random thoughts as watching said movie for the first time:
Spoiler

Admiral Okita laughing? What is this!? I don't even...
All the women seem to be throwing themselves at Kodai.
The Comet Empire have a few similarities to Klingons, of all these.
I have Captain Thunderclap gained that nickname from his fighting prowess and not from an STI he caught.
I do like how they're including the fates of people from the series, such as Old Gamillion soldier guy (Melch!) and Berger, and including some new Yamato characters.
Klingon similarities? Yep. The Comet Empire ships fire things that look exactly like photon torpedoes.
The Yamato doesn't need to be in space to warp, it can do so while in a planetary gravity well. Though doing so seems to royally screw said planet right up.
Lots of references back to episode 14(?) when everyone got mindscrewed by the alienelf (Jirellen?) chick and the ship was left adrift.
The Stork: It's a shuttle! It's a boat! It's a submarine! It's a landrover!
The Stork makes it ... Avatar land, with giant tree base and everything.
... and they find the original WWII Yamato on the planet. Well, this is a bit of a mindscrew. And its emergency red lighting is still on.
The illustrations from the story are really beautiful. Though the story does blatantly telegraph the plot.
That red dress leaves pretty much nothing to the imagination.
I really do like one thing that this series does well - humanise the supposed bad guys. Sure, they're the enemy and clearly so but at least you can sympathise with where they're coming from. You understand why they are the way they are, where they've come from.
Any moment 'Hotel California' is going to start playing. This is a damn trippy place.
I have no idea what is happening at this point. Jirellian super magic tech? Time travel? Cyclical species origins?
But that's alright, Captain STI reappears to blow stuff up.
It seems the Gatlanteans kind of suck on their own, their big new Firestorm weapon was built by Gamillion science slaves.

Ah, space battles. That's what we want to see.

Holy ... the size of that structure. How is that even ... whoa. And it cloaks. And warps.
That male pilot smiles exactly like an anime cat. That's really freaky.
And despite not doing much in this story, Okita finishes it in style.

Overall, entertaining though probably not up to the level of the series itself.
Recommended.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

I'm interested in seeing this series, but it doesn't appear to be on Netflix or Youtube, and the prices on amazon seem remarkably high. Please recommend a (preferably legal) place where I can watch or buy this series?

[ZGundam]

Bob,

The place where I saw it subtitled is on gogoanime.com

Up to you if you want to watch it there.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

Thanks for the tip!

...The way you say that makes me wonder what kind of site it is, though. Is it a safe, legal site?

[ZGundam]

Bob,

The site is safe. It is just that they also sub new series episodes when they also come out in Japan.

[Elfdart]

Random thoughts as watching said movie for the first time:

Overall, entertaining though probably not up to the level of the series itself.
Recommended.

I just saw it and it was good but not great. Oh, and how did that Gamilon officer get hold of Kat Dennings' dress from the 2012 Emmys?