Yamato yo towa ni (1980)

User Rating:

7.2/10   

Directors:

Toshio Masuda
Leiji Matsumoto

Writers:

Keisuke Fujikawa (screenplay)
Toshio Masuda (screenplay)

Genre:

Animation | Sci-Fi | War

Plot Keywords:

Anime | Bomb | Honor | Battleship

Cast

Kei Tomiyama	...	Susumu Kodai
Yôko Asagami	...	Yuki Mori
Shûsei Nakamura	...	Daisuke Shima
Shinji Nomura	...	Yoshikazu Aihara
Kazuo Hayashi	...	Yasuo Nanbu
Tôru Furuya	...	Tasuke Tokugawa
Yoshito Yasuhara	...	Kenjirô Ôta
Ichirô Nagai	...	Dr. Sakezô Sado
Kenichi Ogata	...	Analyzer
Takeshi Aono	...	Shirô Sanada
Mikio Terashima	...	Shô Yamazaki
Akira Kamiya	...	Shirô Katô
Osamu Kobayashi	...	Keisuke Yamanami
Taichirô Hirokawa	...	Mamoru Kodai
Masatô Ibu	...	Heikurô Tôdô

Also Known As:

Be Forever Yamato (International: English title)
Space Battleship Yamato Forever! (International: English title)
Space Battleship Yamato Into Eternity (Japan) (literal English title)

Runtime:

Japan:145 min

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Company:

Office Academy

Trivia:

Yamato Captain Keisuke Yamanami is named after the historical Shinsengumi warrior Keisuke Yamanami (1833-1865)

Movie Connections:

Followed by Uchû senkan Yamato: Kanketsuhen (1983)

Soundtrack:

Life Of Love

Wonderfully animated, but creatively bankrupt

Let me ask you a question. What happens when you take a 15-minutes worth of plot and expand it to 2 and a half hour movie?

You get trouble.

Although this 1980 movie is beautifully animated, it soon becomes quite tedious. Yes, fight scenes are well animated, but this remains entertaining only for so long, folks.

You have your run-of-the-mill bad guys with red eyes who want to take over the Earth. Hmmm, I didn't see THAT coming. They plant a huge double-nucleus bomb on Earth that will mess up people's minds if it ever goes off. Of course, the valiant crew of Yamato is once again to save the Earth from ruthless conquerers.

The biggest problem with this film is that all of it feels incredibly trite. And on the top of it all, melodramatic scenes are, uh, PLENTIFUL, and they're pulled off in such a silly way that I dare to say that this movie has pure comedic genius. I mean, if you like Pythonesque thingies...

Have I mentioned that one character takes four (FOUR) minutes to die?

The ending of this movie was way over the top and it had me in stitches. It has to be seen to be believed.

Mid portion of the movie is garnished with Star Trek influenced geekery and reuses stock footage from previous movies. I think we could've done without that.

Although overlong, this film is still a pretty eye candy. Nothing more than that, though, because you can't take stuff like that for serious, but anyone with a healthy sense of humour will probably enjoy this.