BIG Yamato/Star Blazers News!

[Logan Darklighter]

Well now this is interesting! 

(From Tim Eldred: 7-4-11)
 
"Makoto Kobayashi, mecha designer of Yamato Resurrection and occasional
employee of Enagio Studio announced at the closing ceremonies of Anime Expo
that he is currently contributing to a remake of Star Blazers! (He actually
meant Space Battleship Yamato but used the English title for the benefit of
the American audience.)
"This confirms what we learned last December in
Tokyo for Yamatour 2010. At our farewell dinner with the staff of Yamato
Party, we were told that they had seen pre-production art for a new TV series
that would remake the original. Story development had been underway for quite
a while, scripts were written, and designs were being worked on. These are
the pickiest Yamato fans on Earth, and they were very impressed by what they
saw.
"In fact, I saw some of the mecha designs myself by accident; I
purchased several collections of model sheets from Yamato Resurrection last
year, and a few dozen images from the new series somehow slipped in. They're
mostly Yamato interiors,
reimagined with new technology. The exterior of the
ship is largely unchanged and has already been seen by many; we were told
that the 1/500 Bandai model kit released in December is essentially the new
TV version. The designs that fell into my hands also included fighter craft
and a few pages of Gamilas ships. There were also some text documents with
very early concept notes about important points to be developed.
"The
most critical data has not yet been announced: when and how it will
debut. Kobayashi's announcement merely confirms that he is working on the
project for next year. No other details are available, but I'll keep
watching."

I'm cautiously optimistic about this one. Not least of which because it's Kobayashi in such a central role of the production. In case that name doesn't ring a bell - he was one of the prime movers behind the Giant Robo OVAs in the 90s. He's done several designs for mobile suits from Gundam. The Dragon's Heaven OVA in the late 80s was his. He did concept art for Steamboy. Worked on Armored Core: For Answer, was a concept and design artist for Venus Wars. List goes on and on. Mostly I think this is good news because I've seen several interviews with the guy and when he talks about Yamato, the dude just lights up. He's a hardcore fan. If this is done with anything like the respect to the source material that the Yamato Playstation games were (another Yamato project he also had a hand in) then this will go well. 

This is being reported elsewhere I'm sure. But Tim Eldred is about as solid a source on the other little details as you could ask for. He's the web designer and effectively the front man for Voyager Productions - the company that holds the rights to and distributes Star Blazers in North America. He's got "the inside line" as it were. 

[Star Ranger4]

Wonder if this will be a live action, or animated, and if they are planning to get Subs/dubs into the US markets sooner rather than later?
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

[Logan Darklighter]

This is supposed to be an animated remake. 

As to subs/dubs? To early to say. I would -hope- they'd do a new version of Star Blazers to go with it. Heck, I'd love it if they still call the ship "Argo" over here. 

[Bob Schroeck]

Whatever happened to the live action Yamato that we saw all the trailers for six months or more back?
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Black Aeronaut]

From what I heard it was a box office smash. Of course, that means precisely dick to most American audiences. :p

[Dartz]

It'll show up subbed when it comes out on DVD, most likely. It looked epic in trailers.

I can't wait for this to appear. Hopefully with an appropriately dramatic OP.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Logan Darklighter]

Live action Yamato did extremely well in the Japan box office. Was definitely a hit. 

The Yamato Resurrection film did decently. But not as well. I think part of the problem is that Nishizaki (when he was still alive) wanted to continue the story from the already established continuity (such as it is) from Final Yamato (1983). And that timeline is not really people's favorite. Final Yamato was an epic scale finale to the original show, to be sure. But... it had... problems. 

By most accounts, the reception was mixed. Some liked it, some did not. I have yet to see it myself, so I can't have an opinion (though I've seen plenty of short clips and design work - all of which was impressive)

The new Yamato (Neo Yamato?) series is basically looking like they're going all the way back to the beginning (like the live action film) and remaking the original 1974 series. Earth gets planet-bombed by the Gamilons, IJN Yamato is resurrected into Space Battleship Yamato. 148,000 LY to Iscandar. All of that. Just with new animation techniques and probably some tweaking/additions to the original story. But the broad strokes would be the same. 

[ordnance11]

Now that I'ved read what happened to IJN Yamato, it becomes hard to suspend my disbelief about resurrecting the ship. The ship is currently in 2 big pieces and the front end is ripped open due to the bow magazine blowing up. Be easier to resurrect the Bismark. That ship is intact.
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[Logan Darklighter]

*laughter* Ah yes. THAT little amusing and inconvenient detail. 

Well see - the original series was made in 1973-4. Long before they had ever discovered the remains on the ocean floor IRL. So, not knowing what had happened to her, they simply assumed the wreck was in one piece. Not unreasonable. But sadly wrong. 

Which is an oddly similar situation to the relation between Clive Cussler's novel "Raise the Titanic" and the real situation - Titanic breaking in two and then sinking in two pieces - as discovered by Bob Ballard nearly a decade later. Also "invalidating" the premise of his story and the 1980 movie of the same name.** 

So yeah. The wreck in real life doesn't support the original premise of the show. Fans of Yamato/Starblazers pretty much deal with this in one of two ways: 

 - Ignore it. It's an alternate universe. In THAT continuity, the Yamato DID sink keel down and in one piece. We move on from there. 

- Or come up with some rationale that fits the premise together with reality. 

One popular theory that makes the fanfic rounds sometimes goes a little like this - that the Earth Defense Command forces knew approximately what size of ship they needed to build. But had no facilities for anything that large (Yamato is at least 3 times longer than Captain Avatar's battle cruiser from the first episode.) that could be defended or hidden. And came up with the idea of building the Space Battleship Yamato in the spot of the old wreck as an effective disguise. It's NOT the original ship at all (though some versions of the theory say that the raw materials/metals from the wreck are recycled and re-smelted as an alternative to mining them from elsewhere, thus preserving the metaphysical link). It was built in place from scratch with the shell/disguise of the wreck over it. And it was made in the proportions it was partially because in ground scans, the Gamilons would chalk it up to "oh - we already know there's a big concentration of metal there. We know what it is already. Nothing unusual here." ("This is not the space battleship you're looking for." "This is not the space battleship we're looking for." "Move along." "Moving along to the next site!")

And then there's the truly strange idea Bruce Lewis once came up with - that the message capsule from Iscandar had not just the PLANS for the wave-motion engine, but that it was something like a "nano-tech seed" for growing it and much of the ship structures in place! They just plug the thing into the wreck of the Yamato and it uses the raw materials and it builds most of the ship by itself! I think IIRC that his idea was that the Iscandarian tech was semi-telepathic and it got the idea for what the ship should look like from people around it that knew what the ship looked like originally combined with what it needed to do to it. Think "handwavium" but on a truly grand scale! 

Personally I think that last idea is -really- reaching too far myself. But I thought I'd pass it along anyway. *shrug*

But now that you bring it up - I wonder if a remake of the show will try to address that? Or just ignore reality and go with the original premise?

-Logan
--------------------

(**The movie based on the novel "Raise the Titanic" is sadly not very good for the most part. It has some truly miscast actors (particularly the hero) and a poor script that has some exceptional groaners in it. There are three things that stand out though. One is the actual effects sequences depicting the raising of the ship herself, which - although dated by today's standards, were very well done for the time. The other is the music score by the late great John Barry. If you are curious, find a clip of just the raising sequence itself on Youtube. John Barry's score combined with the effects shots turns what is otherwise a patently silly idea into something that will send chills up your spine. The third thing is a cameo by Alec Guiness as one of the last survivors of the crew of the Titanic. He only has one scene about 10 minutes long. But his portrayal is a real gem. In 10 minutes he out-acts every other person in the film by a league and really evokes the wistful nostalgic melancholy of Titanic and a bygone age. )

[Star Ranger4]

I actually dont have much of a problem with the Wavium writ large bit myself, but thats because the story truely is about the Crew and the perils they face on the way to Iscandar and back rather than about the waving err rebuilding of the Yamato/Argo herself
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children