I honestly hate when they do commercials like this. When Gibli made one for Mr. Bug goes to town it made enough sense to understand. I don’t get this jump, jump, jump to a new scene crap.

Although when I heard “Battle Ship Yamato” I got a little excited, I know that name from somewhere.

Holy crap! Why didn’t I know about this until now!?

I grew up on Star Blazers, way back in the late ’70s. It’s one of the things that got me into animation in the first place, it was so different from, well, everything else on TV in those days. Oh, man, I have to see this now.

WOW!! Can this POSSIBLY be for real?! Fantastic!

The updating of the uniforms is brilliant!

I hear you , Feh. The same kind of lamebrained lamentation went on during Astro Boy’s run. It was an excellent updating of a very dated character – I don’t think anyone, including Pixar, could have done it better – and yet a lot of so-called anime fans turned their noses up at it. Biggest bunch of snobs in fandom. Not that many of them saw it, mind you; they made the assumption that since Americans had a hand in it, it was therefore ruined, and they didn’t give it a chance. They’re also the biggest bunch of idiots in fandom IMO.

Scarabim, Astro Boy was scorned because it deserved scorn. It was a watered down adaptation that missed the points of its source entirely. The robots are meant to be sympathetic and oppressed, not comic relief, and softening the relationship between Tenma and Astro completely undermined the meaning of the story (which is the furthest thing from dated). About the only clever thing about it was the Tezuka cameo.

Not that this adaptation looks much better…

Disagree completely, Cameron. I’ve read a lot of Tezuka’s work, seen a bit of the anime (1960′s and 2003′s). I thought the screenwriters did a good job making the story more accessible – and yet still enjoyable – to general audiences and many Astro fans alike. You say the robots weren’t “sympathetic and oppressed”? Who was more sympathetic and oppressed in that movie than Astro himself? And I say thank goodness the relationship between Astro and Tenma was softened – you’d rather it followed the original manga, where Tenma went nuts and tried to take Astro out with a shovel? Yeah, parents with kids would REALLY have gone for that. Besides, Tenma and his motives were changed several times in the various incarnations of the anime. So what’s the big deal if it got changed again – and improved upon, IMO – for the movie? It gave the movie more of an emotional punch and a satisfying resolution. Stories get changed for the movies all the time, don’t you know, that doesn’t mean the resultant films should be scorned, or looked down on. I know Oz fans who still kvetch about the changes the film version made on the original story, but that still doesn’t mean it’s not a great film.

I’m with Feh and Scarabim on this one. I don’t need to say more, they both articulated my sentiments exactly.

Do people actually make time to watch this show? I’m thinking, YES, and where can I join?!

I don’t care what anyone says..this trailer gave me goose bumps – I’m so excited !!!!

Gotta say, I felt the same way about Astro Boy. It was scorned because it was absolutely horrible.

I didn’t turn up my nose at Astro Boy because it was American produced. I turned up my nose at it because it was an atrociously awful “adaptation” no matter which country was responsible for it.

The very second that I noticed pathetic attempts at bathroom humor and incredibly ugly art design (which could have been designed so much better than it was) I knew it was doomed to be horrible. Then I saw it. It was terrible. The movie going public agreed. It was terrible. It bombed, and rightfully so.

Had nothing to do with the fact that the Astro Boy remake was American. It had to do with the fact that the Astro Boy remake was tasteless, insipid and I would have called it garbage even if Japan had produced it.

Which was kind of my point here with this Battleship Yamato remake. It looks woefully stupid.

I don’t care if it’s Japanese or American. The country of origin nonwithstanding, it still looks about as terrible as the other, more infamous adaption recently like Dragonball Evolution, Speed Racer, and Astro Boy.

It seems that even the country of it’s own inception can’t make a decent remake without missing the point, throwing what works into the garbage and the lame tenancy to rebuild everything from the ground up, which… in itself, always has potential to be done right. But never is. Because that takes effort.

Those films had none of that, and Yamato has none of that, from the look of it.

Just more proof that when you transfer one medium into another, it never fits. It’s like pushing the round peg into the square shaped hole.

It’s pointless, it’s naturally a poor idea, it never works well, always comes off as ridiculous, and no one ever seems to put in enough care to find the heart of the original material and adapt something that is WATCHABLE, even if not faithful.

The best anyone can ever do seems to be to compensate with style over substance. Just like Micheal Bay and all of his similar garbage. And that’s what Yamato is looking like, so far. A Japanese Micheal Bay movie.

You couldn’t pay ME to watch this garbage. Any of it.

It’s not about countries. It’s about quality. And it always seems to be lacking in these pointless, waste of time endeavors to turn one medium into another medium it has no business being bastardized into.

How can anyone compare this to DBE? I’ve seen only two first episodes of Space Battleship Yamato but the clip doesn’t feel or look that different from the series. BTW Naoki Urasawa’s manga Pluto, which is based on Osamu Tezuka’s The Greatest Robot on Earth Astro Boy story has been a big success at least in Japan.

Hey, this looks pretty awesome! I was a big Star Blazers fan in the 1970′s and I like what I see so far. It’s interesting to me to think that a Japanese audience saw these characters as Japanese, while the American audience of Star Blazers accepted the characters as American (or at least multi-national). It’s pretty cool to see a cast of Japanese actors take on these parts.

One more thing is that clearly, the reboot of Star Trek has a lot to do with the reboot of this film series as well.

I can’t wait to hear more!
Pierre

La película tiene una pinta cojonuda, excepto por el peinado a lo Camilo Sexto del protagonista.

The movie looks great, except for the Camilo Sexto look of the main character.

How can anyone make an assumption that the makers of this film have missed the point of the original series? How can you dismiss the film based off a 30 second teaser? Half of which is text! Talk about jumping the gun!

People aren’t excited for this because its being made by the Japanese. They’re excited because the images presented look almost identical to the original cartoon. Seriously, at least wait for the 2 minute trailer before dismissing the film.

Hmmm, Captain Harlock? Really makes you think, doesn’t it?

Really, bashing this over a 30 second trailer is just insane. And it isn’t as if the source material was pristine goodness to start with (the space “science” as presented in the Star Blazers dub probably made astronomers weep). But hey, my inner eight-year old just went, “Flying Battleship! COOL!”

Nice shades too.

Pierre Fontaine, you’ve hit the nail right on the head. Rebooting Yamato in Japan is like rebooting Star Trek. Hopefully they have someone as skillful as J. J. Abrams at the helm of this one.

Anyone seen the animated movie yet? Has it been picked up for US distribution?

I am freaking ecstatic about this news. I hope it is dubbed well for us english speaking fans. I too am about to turn 40 and I would feel like a child again seeing this.