Lately I have been obsessed with a ghost from my childhood. You may have known it as
STAR BLAZERS, as I did - an americanized version of a Japanese anime from 1974. It seems like almost all of my friends somehow missed this as a kid - I am still trying to see if anyone else remembers. Of course it could have gotten lost among the flashier He-Man, Thundercats, Go-bots and GiJoe cartoons.
I had largely forgotten about the show - which was pretty cheesy and poorly animated, until I was watching one of my favorite shows last year. 'Dogfights' from the History channel ran a segment recounting the sinking of the Japanese flagship Yamato in WWII (See
Death of the Japanese Navy). I immediately recognized
the lines and proportion of the ship as the spaceship from Star Blazers.
Looking through Netflix watch it now (oh how I love thee) -
I found a movie version of the original Japanese story. It was condensed from the long epic series, so I watched to see what I remembered. As it turns out, not much, since the version I saw had been severely butchered.
The Japanese version of the story (
Space Battleship Yamato) isn't just a silly kids cartoon - there are some real stakes and adult situations, even some graphic flashbacks to world war II. The scope and the feel of just the 2 hour movie was so different than what I remember, barring one or two terribly cheesy storylines and characters.
I am not sure it is the material or the viewer, but I was floored at the themes that the story suggests, especially after watching the Dogfights episode. If you view the cartoon through the lens of a country that experienced that naval loss - the story of Space Battleship Yamato takes on all kinds of significance. The last hope of a great power sets out on a last-ditch effort to strike at a far stronger adversary...but in SBY the underdog wins.
The story still apparently has some resonance - I found a trailer for an
upcoming CGI laden version coming out of
Japan this year - if it has even half of the strong points of the cartoon I underestimated as a kid - it could be pretty gripping. Now I just hope it makes it here, eventually...
