Star Blazers: Space Battleship Yamato 2202

solidbatman1★ 2

As the credits finally began to roll for the last time of Yamato 2202 and Yamato Yori ai wo Komete played, I felt a sense of relief that this dreadful re-imagining of the 1978 Space Battleship Yamato II had reached its ill fated conclusion. I had gone into 2202 with incredibly high hopes after the spectacular Space Battleship Yamato 2199 introduced me to this wonderful universe. After completing 2199, I went back and watched nearly every single Yamato series and movie (season 3 is the sole exception here with no decent subtitles existing to my knowledge) I could get my hands on, eager to immersemyself into the trials and tribulations of the Yamato and her crew. And then this series happened. Featuring a different director than 2199, and new character designs, Yamato 2202 failed spectacularly to capture any of the enjoyment and adoration I have for the rest of the franchise. The story is mostly made up of philosophical musings from the leader of the White Comet Empire revolving around the notion of love and humanity that never really develops into anything except a plot device to copy the ending of Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato and give it a new twist. Every time Zordar spoke, I found myself rolling my eyes at how shallow and silly the writing was. I am supportive of attempting to change the formula. After all, this is a re-imagining and not a full fledged remake of the original season 2. The execution, however, is conducted with all the skill and grace of a 12 year old writing a fan-fiction in their head during school as they day dream. The writing thinks it is far smarter and deeper than it actually is. Nothing ever quite comes together smoothly. Characters just die for the sake of dying while newly introduced characters are woefully underused despite being incredibly interesting and full of potential. Characters do not really develop much at all, save the space marines really. One character in particular is able to just magically figure things out and explain them to the audience because the show simply is unable to convey what is going on visually or through actual storytelling. In 2199, we would have been treated to scenes of characters researching and trying to understand things, allowing for explanations to the audience as they shared theories with one another and debated for an answer. In 2202, they just know things and that's that. Visually, 2202 is a mixed bag. The space battles are wonderfully animated surpassing 2199 in the scale and quality and a magical plot device is able to keep Earth in the fight far longer than it had any right to be giving the viewer plenty of eye candy to watch during battles. Unfortunately, the character designs and direction during battles at times is jarring. Characters now look much less crisp than they did in 2199 instead with sketch lines and awkward looking faces due to oddly drawn mouths and noses. As for visual direction, there clearly was some sort of eye fetish going on. Many times in battles or even normal dialogue, the only thing we see is a characters eye/s as they stare in horror at something or just look at something in general. During one egregious part in the first episode, a large battle is taking place. As ships are destroyed, the camera keeps cutting back to Kodai over and over again as he makes the exact same determined, grit teeth, face for about 30 seconds. This sort of weird visual direction takes place multiple times during the show, with awkward, jarring cuts during dialogue and battle. At least the music is solid. If you go into Yamato 2202 expecting nothing on the story or character development front, you are likely to find an enjoyable space action show. Otherwise, steer clear of this mangled mess of a re-imagining. As for me, I am just going to pretend that this was never made and rewatch the original season 2 and Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato film instead. That simple and basic writing of 1978 is somehow superior to the poor attempts of the 2202 team to re-imagine its namesake.

Akira_Zion_★ 5

**Contains spoilers** Yamato 2199 was great, but not perfect: though the pacing could be better, some plotlines led to nowhere, and Desler was way worse than his counterparts in all versions and remakes of the original anime (except his counterpart in the 2010 live-action), the character development and animation, alongside the spectacular soundtrack remade by Akira Miyagawa, the son of Hiroshi Miyagawa, the original composer of the OSTs, plot and dialog, made 2199 a great space opera and remake of the original. As a result, 2202 was expected to be even greater, bigger, and better than 2199, given how great its precursor was and how amazing theoriginal material is. However, it would be no easy task, 2202 had to remake two different - yet complementary materials, Farewell to Yamato and the TV series Yamato 2. While Yamato 2 had to stretch the 2-hour long story of Farewell to Yamato into a 26 episode series (and make a new ending), it succeeded in many aspects and failed in others: the overall plot of the series was better and alongside the new OST and mecha, allowed Yamato 2 to feature many new facets unexplored that the original TV series and Farewell, such as villains subplots, good battle strategies, and the Yamato being unable to do anything in some situations. However, Yamato 2 failed to impact audiences with the same drama that Farewell had and some subplots were boring, e.g. Shima and Teresa's love story. With that in mind, 2202 could easily take the strong points of the originals and 2199 to craft a good sequel and remake. However, 2202 fails at it; "Soldiers of Love", except for the battle at planet 11, the presence of the space fireflies, and some other minor points, almost fully ignores the majority of the strong points of Yamato 2. No villain subplots, no iconic mecha from the series (eg. Earth's aircraft carriers), none of the battle strategies, and none of the memorable character moments. The new director Nobuyosh Haraba and scriptwriter Harutoshi Fukui chose something different: they would take the original plot of Farewell to Yamato and add their new elements to the mix. However, the idea backfired: Yamato 2202 turned out to be a mess. Firstly, the insertion of the new philosophical element into the series isn't done in a smart matter. Indeed, some might argue that it represents Nishizaki's vision of love (vision of which bothered Leiji Matsumoto so much to the point where he reportedly refused to work on the final scenes of Farewell Yamato due to his own feelings on the subject), but what one truly observes is that it, practically speaking, only serves as a way to explain plot devices and to allow Zordar to make some nonsensical and monotonous dialogs. The blaring and unstoppable talking about "love" more alienates viewers than highlights the themes of the series. When one talks about characters, the core aspect of the originals and 2199, the results are sad: almost none of them develop that much, characters that were much stronger and charismatic, such as Kodai and Kato, are incoherent to their previous counterparts of the remakes, Yuki and Akira now don't have half of their personalities, and Desler, which surprisingly gets a retcon of his version from 2199 and whose return is not explained at all, is boring. New characters also don't get any better, Zordar is a philosopher with a terrible motivation, Sabera, and all Gatlantis officers are only plot devices, Teresa, Saito, Hijikata, Yamanami, as well as the whole Andromeda fleet (which were supposed to be a big thing in this season) are underused, and the Ginga shouldn't even exist in the first place. The only character that gets some decent development here is Kiman, who is unfortunately affected by the occasionally clucky dialog of the series. As for the action, the use of CGI in the show is good, but not perfect: ships sometimes feel weightless and the Yamato doesn't get the same level of detail on its big scratches after every battle as it did in 2199. 2D animation, fortunately, is in the same standard as it was in the first season. The mecha designs are a mixed bag: while some are good and detailed, adding a lot to the series, others have a debatable quality, such as the Earth's new aircraft carriers, the Ginga with its glass dome, and the Comet Empire's new "true form", which completely obliterated the original design (the same here applies to Zordar dreadnought, although this one might have happened due to budget reasons). The direction of the action scenes is good, despite the overuse of the Wave Motion Gun (which caused a loss to its dramatic effect) the action here is one of the best things in 2202, however, given how there's little emotional attachment to being found between the viewer and the characters, especially new ones, some scenes are often very bland. As for the drama, it is even more diluted than the one in Yamato 2. Characters here die for the sake of dying, Saito's, Kiman's and Higashikata's deaths don't have a fraction of their original deaths. And Kato had a death so mediocre it was comical. The soundtrack is absolutely the best thing of the series, although Akira Miyagawa's style is somewhat different than the one from his father, being more bombastic and colorful, his additions are often amazing (cf. Tsubasa). Overall, Yamato 2202 is a disappointment for a show that had everything to be great but turned out to be mediocre as a show and as a remake. If you want modern action scenes, go for it, but if you want a better sequel to the first season, I think both Farewell to Yamato and Yamato 2 are more worth your time and investment.