There's a scene late in this Japanese epic
Space Opera 'Space Battleship Yamato' where our hero, acting
captain Susumu Kodai (Takuya Kimura), walks down to his crew
to tell him of his daring plan to save the day. His crew
doubts he can do this, despite his amazing fighter pilot
skills. Kodai-san raises his eyes, smiles a crooked grin
and says 'Look at my hair… It's feathered, full bodied, bouncy
and amazing… with hair like this… I can do anything.'
And his crew applauds because they know this to be true.
Admittedly the subtitles I was reading didn't say anything
near that, but I'm almost positive that's what Kodai-san
said. Because his hair is amazing. And 'Space
Battleship Yamato' is a long, often drawn out, melodramatic
opera replete with soaring strings and long inspirational
speeches and gosh darn if that approach doesn't completely
work for this movie.
It is the future and The Gamilons have attacked, and we were
ill prepared. They have these awesome radioactive
meteorite balls they launch at our planet, and while the fleet
has managed to take out quite a few, some have hit the planet,
completely irradiating the surface making human life on the
surface impossible. It's just a matter of time, a year
maybe, before all life on Earth ends.
But not so fast my friends! Kodai, a former fighter ace,
now a surface scavenger, has found something that looks like a
map to a distant star. The powers that be have
determined that this map leads to some kind of device which
can de-radioactivate the Earth and save us all, but how in the
world are going to travel to this distant star light years
away?
Say hello to the Space Battleship
Yamato. A state of the art war vessel complete with warp
capabilities and the most awesome weapon of Mass Destruction
we've seen in the Wave Cannon. Fortunately for the
Yamamoto, Kodai has chosen to come aboard for the
mission. He is the best fighter pilot ever. But
it's helmed by Captain Okita (Yamazaki Tsutomu)
who Kodai blames for the death of his beloved
older brother, so there will be conflict. There will
also be conflict between Kodai and the second best - but most
adorable - fighter pilot ever, Miss Yuki Mori (Meisa Kuroki)
as she is none too happy with Kodai abandoning the crew back
in the day, due to his grief issues.
Now adventure is afoot. The ship is on its mission but
the Gamilons are hot on their tails. Kodai, the hot
head, will butt heads with Captain Okita every step of the
way, but we know mutual respect is about to be earned.
Kodai will also have to deal with Miss Yuki and her issues
with him, but we know love is just around the corner.
Also around the corner is death, destruction, melodrama,
inspirational speeches, random awesomeness and the fate of the
entire planet Earth.
Director Takashi Yamazaki's 'Space Battleship Yamato', based
on a classic anime of the same name, is an interesting film to
examine. For instance, this is a film that has big stars
in it, at least as far as its host nation is concerned, has
some spectacular special effects… and some that are a little
suspect… and runs a lengthy two and half hours, but yet has a
reported budget around twelve million dollars. This
would no doubt be a150 million dollar movie if it was shot
over here in the United States. And it's not like Japan
is some kind of third world economy where everything is cheap,
so I'm just curious about the financial gap is all.
It is the length of this movie which had me concerned starting
out, as sitting around for two and half hours watching a space
opera did feel a bit oppressive, but to director Yamazaki's
credit, he did a fine job of pacing his movie with the
spectacular action sequences mated along with the required
melodrama. For that matter, even the melodrama wasn't
nearly as tedious as I thought it would be, mainly because of
the quality of the actors delivering these overwrought
melodramatic moments. It also helps that these weren't
melodramatic moments just for sake of melodrama as it usually
led to some critical plot element, or some crazy space battle,
or some kind of wild shootout.
The special effects were also pretty good. For the most
part. All of the space battles and space explosions were
about as good as anything I've seen, though I doubt a
spaceship in zero gravity can turn a corner like they were
doing in this movie. But there were these series of
scenes near the end that takes place on the alien planet that
seemed to push the capabilities of that Athlon processor past
the limits it could handle. And these were the money
shots with all of the aliens, car crashes, explosions, space
shuttles and laser blasts littering the scenery.
Still, for a melodramatic space opera, I was surprised at how
much I enjoyed the mission that the Space Battleship Yamato
embarked on. Well acted, well produced, often exciting,
this was a sci-fi adventure I can easily get behind.
