Trailer: Battleship Yamato (Live Action)
As a kid, there were certain cartoons that I always watched when I would get home from school. Those were Speed Racer, Battle of the Planets and Starblazers (Battleship Yamato in Japan). I find it interesting that in the late 70′s, when the word anime was almost completely unknown, that three anime shows captured my interest above all others and that they were even on American TV. I still have a soft spot for all three so it’s a good day to learn that there is a live-action adaptation of Battleship Yamato in the works. For those who were wonder, Nic Cage is not in this one. You’re welcome.
For those of you who don’t know the plot, Starblazers is set in 2199 with Earth on the verge of extermination by the evil Gamilon. With only 1 year left before Earth becomes a radioactive waste land, the Star Force dredges up the Japanese WW II battleship Yamato and transforms it into a spaceship with a big-@$$ space canon. How could you not like that?
Check it:
Sure it has a rough around the edges feel, but damn, when the Yamato opens up it’s incredibly exciting. I’d love to see this come to the Angelica theater here in town, I’d definitely go and drag my kids.
(Fun fact: My interest in Starblazers probably explains why I like The Ayes Of Texas so much. In it, the US WW II battleship Texas is pulled from her permanent on the Houston Ship Channel, outfitted with all sorts of high tech weaponry and set upon those pesky, unsuspecting Soviets. Remember the Alamo!)
[via Fanboy.com]
Tagged with: Battleship Yamato • Starblazers
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I completely agree with you about this entire post. I grew up watching all three of those shows. And somewhere, packed away, I have the VHS tapes of all 3 seasons of Starblazers (they only showed the first 2 seasons up in the DFW area).
I also agree about “The Ayes of Texas”. I have all the “Texas” books by Da Cruz, but that one is my favorite. Back to reality, I hope that they can do something about the drydock situation for the Real USS Texas and get her repaired.
I love Starblazers and can’t wait to see this! I can still sing the enitre theme song: “Evil men with evil schemes, they can’t destroy all our dreams…” Not sure if that’s cool or just pathetic.
The Wave Motion Gun mechanism looks fantastic in that clip and Captain Avatar looks great. Wish there was more to it. Any idea when it’s coming out?
Anime made it across the Atlantic too, but like you said, none of us had even heard of the word at that Time. Ulysses 31 was one of my favorites. Used to race home from school on a Thursday to catch that. How sad is it that twenty years on I can still remember all the characters’ names from Battle of the Planets?
Starblazers and Battle of the Planets were staples of my childhood TV watching.
A couple of years ago on a whim I wandered into an anime store in a local mall here in Vancouver and asked the kid behind the counter if he had any Yamato models. He looked down his nose at me like I was some kind of wannabe and after saying he didn’t have anything in stock he started to lecture about how the show had been popular back in its original heyday of the early 1990′s. For a moment I thought I hadn’t heard him correctly. But as he kept going on he said 90′s again and again. After a while I smiled and said I’d been a fan when the show first hit the air – in the 70′s. That made him rethink things a little.
Back to the present day… judging by that clip, this version could be pretty cool. I’m hoping one of the theatres in this neck of the woods will pick it up, although I’ll probably have to settle for a dvd.
As a kid, there were certain cartoons that I always watched when I would get home from school. Those were Speed Racer, Battle of the Planets and Starblazers (Battleship Yamato in Japan).
I was a teenager at the time, but my buddies and I spent quite a few afternoons hanging out in my friend Rob’s rec room, watching the same three.
Weed may have been involved.
Starblazers was about as cool as things got for a kid in the 70′s. Well, that and the Japanese live action awesomeness that was “The Water Margin”.
I remember star blazers from my youth this movie looks better than most stuff Hollywood is making.