I first came across Space Battleship Yamoto as a 10 year old tourist on a visit to North America many years ago. It was in its American incarnation of 'Starblazers' but it captured my imagination as the animation was similar in style to Battle Of The Planets, another Japanese Anime that had been altered and dubbed for the western world, that I adored as a kid. It's premise is similar to Battlestar Galactica, or more recently the Babylon 5 spin-off series Crusade, which deals with a dying home planet and the warship and her crew that has been dispatched into deep space to locate a cure/find sanctuary.
After three decades Space Battleship Yamoto has been given the big-budget, live-action treatment...and it's pretty darn cool. Now, when it comes to space opera, far future space ships, interstellar dogfights, alien civilizations and intergalactic empires, I'm pretty biased; I'm going to like it to some degree it no matter how shoddy it gets, but this space adventure holds up pretty well.
The visuals are great. The effects, while minimised to keep the budget in check, are epic in scope and of sufficient quality to make this worthy of the big screen. It's got a suitably Manga feel to the production design and costumes and unlike it's not afraid of it's wild outer space/far future setting. While the dialogue can be a little corny at times (a cultural thing?), and the film is a little too talky (a bigger budger in needed), it's generally well paced with some huge world-in-jeopardy action sequences thrown into the mix.
Great stuff (but of course I would say that.)
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