Fire the Wave Motion Gun!
Whenever anything related to Space Battleship Yamato surfaces, I think back to the days when I caught its Americanized version, Star Blazers, on Toonami’s defunct streaming site called Toonami Reactor. Since it has a special place in my heart, these moments make me happy.
In this case, my great memories of the show came back as Star Blazers: Space Battleship Yamato 2202 pops up on Crunchyroll. With its predecessor, Star Blazers: Space Battleship Yamato 2199, being a remake of the ’70s series, 2202 focuses on the crew facing the Gatlantis Empire (a.k.a. The Comet Empire). While I never got to finish the former, I loved how Super Robot Wars V used it as the main focus of its narrative. As a fan of the original, it drove me to tears when I got to play through the story’s key points in the game.
From what I saw of 2199, it’s a great example of a project where it’s basically the original show with an updated look done right. Sure, there were some changes here and there (such as new characters and the story being altered in some spots), but you could tell that the people involved respected the original Yamato series.
The original space opera and its remake revolved around a group of people traveling to another planet to obtain the technology to restore the dying Earth to its natural form. One of its iconic aspects is their ship’s weapon, which fires a huge beam that decimates everything in sight. Some examples of its inspirations are found in the StarCraft series’ Yamato Cannon and one of Megas’ attacks in Megas XLR.
While we’re still on the topic of streaming, 2202 appeared on FUNimation with an English dub. which is nice of them to provide a second way for people to view the series.
August Ragone [Twitter]
