Uchuu Senkan Yamato



"Saraba Chikyuu yo! (Goodbye Earth!) Tabidatsu fune wa, (The departing ship is,) Uchuu...Senkan...YA-MA-TO! (The Space Battleship Yamato!)"

- Space Battleship Yamato theme

"We're off to outer space, We're leaving Mother Earth, to save the human race...OUR STAR BLAZERS!"

- Star Blazers theme (uses same melody as above)

In 2199, the surface of the Earth has been bombarded into an uninhabitable radioactive wasteland by an alien race from the planet Gamilon. The Gamilon fleet (Gamila in the Japanese original) is superior to humanity's few remaining warships, and the extinction of humanity is likely within a year. In the middle of a losing battle against the Gamilon fleet, a spaceship from the planet Iscandar arrives and crashes on Mars. Two space cadets investigate the wreck, and discover a beautiful woman, dead, with a message for Earth: if Earth can send a ship to Iscandar, Queen Starsha of Iscandar will give Earth technology that will neutralize the radioactive contamination on the planet, and save humanity.

In response, humanity refits the wreck of the World War II battleship Yamato, lying at rest on the exposed surface where the ocean used to be, into a space battleship, using plans for a star drive included in Starsha's message. The Yamato then sets forth on a desperate quest to reach Iscandar and save humanity....

Originally made in the early 70s, it was dubbed to English under the title Star Blazers, and aired in U.S. afternoon syndication during the late 70s. It was the first Japanese anime series to air in the U.S. that required every episode to be shown in its proper order. The show returned to American airwaves as part of Syfy's Anime block starting April 21, 2011.

After decades of dispute, a new film, titled Space Battleship Yamato: Rebirth Chapter, was finally made and released to Japanese theaters on Dec 12, 2009. It ignored the events of Final Yamato and took place in 2220.

A live-action adaptation hit theatres in December 2010. Full-length trailer's here.

Also, starting on April 27, 2012, a remake of the original series called Space Battleship Yamato 2199 began to air. It will be a 26 episode anime based on the first series and divided into 7 films for theatrical release.

Compare to Space Carrier Blue Noah (aka Thunder Sub in english speaking countries) for a thematically similar anime.

"Narrator: Hurry, Star Force! There are only 103 days left! Audience: Wait! At the bottom, in Arabic numbers, it says 187!"
 * Adaptational Badass: in the 2010 movie, Analyser is a belt-mounted PDA/"Mother Box" before being installed into his traditional robot body - except it's over 20 feet tall.
 * Alien Invasion
 * Anime First: One of the earlier examples. Some fans claim that the whole idea of anime as a medium of its own and not just an outlet for manga started with this series.
 * Anime Theme Song (Uchuu Senkan YAAA-MAAAA-TOOOOOOO...!)
 * And the dubbed US version was pretty catchy, too...
 * Anyone Can Die:
 * Applied Phlebotinum
 * Artificial Gravity
 * The Asteroid Thicket
 * The Yamato can use its naval anchors to build one as a shield around the ship.
 * Award Bait Song: Steven Tyler's Narm Charmy "Love Lives", for the live-action film adaptation.
 * Back From the Brink: As described in the lede.
 * Backup Twin: Sasha and Starsha appear to be identical twins. Yuki also looks suspiciously like them, apparently by coincidence; Starsha actually briefly mistakes Yuki for her sister when the Yamato arrives at Iscandar.
 * Fighter pilot Saburo Kato sacrificed himself in a mission near the end of the second season, and had an identical twin show up to fill his role. (Since Kato's Star Blazers counterpart, Pete Conroy, never died, the replacement issue never came up.)
 * The Battlestar: Both the Yamato itself (which is one of the earliest, in 1974), and more obvious by the Lexington-class Battleship/Carrier hybrid.
 * Bee People: Literally. A bee-like insectoid race from the planet Beeland.
 * BFG: Wave motion gun. Need I say more?
 * Maybe the fact that some later ships carry TWO wave motion guns?
 * Blind Idiot Translation: The closing credits to the dub refer to the original Japanese version as "Space Cruiser Yamato". "Cruiser" in Japanese is "jun'youkan", whereas "senkan" refers to a battleship, hence "Space Battleship Yamato" is the correct translation of the Japanese title.
 * This likely comes from the compilation movie of the first series having the Gratuitous English title Space Cruiser Yamato, either because it sounded less threatening to the foreign audiences or (legend has it) because Nishizaki fell in love with the English word "cruiser" after he bought a boat.
 * The Bridge
 * Canon Discontinuity: Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato which led to a remake of the whole Comet Empire arc in the second series.
 * The Bolar Wars to some extent as the story in the movie Final Yamato took place in 2203 (events in Space Battleship Yamato III took place in 2205)
 * The Captain: Okita/Avatar
 * Comic Book Adaptation: There were four comic adaptations set in the Star Blazers universe. The latest is the webcomic Rebirth.
 * Composite Character:
 * Continuity Reboot: Space Battleship Yamato 2199 retells the story from the beginning with higher production values, a different character designer, and both Adaptation Distillation and Canon Foreigners aplenty.
 * Contrived Coincidence
 * Cool Starship
 * Creative Differences: Yoshinobu Nishizaki and Leiji Matsumoto both claim they are the sole creators of Space Battleship Yamato. (The court system has sided with Nishizaki.) Both have made their own separate Yamato projects between 1983 and their settlement in the 2000s.
 * Cultural Translation (or Woolseyism or Macekre, depending on who you ask): In "Star Blazers", the scenes showing Wildstar's backstory go out of their way to avoid mentioning that he lived in Japan. His home is called "Great Island" and sushi (clearly shown on screen and looking like nothing else besides sushi) is called "chocolate cake".
 * Dead Guy, Junior: Starsha's sister Sasha dies in the first episodes getting her message to Earth. In New Voyage and Be Forever Yamato, we find out that Starsha and Kodai's brother Mamoru named their daughter "Sasha".
 * Death Is Cheap: Dessler
 * Demoted to Dragon: Desslok in The Comet Empire
 * Deus Ex Machina: A literal one at the end of the first Comico licensed comic book series.
 * Disney Death:, regardless of how it's portrayed...
 * Dub Name Change: This actually happened twice, with different names.
 * First the original English dub of the movie, called Space Cruiser Yamato (or sometimes just Space Cruiser), which is fairly obscure. The most glaring change here was the renaming of Daisuke Shima to "Shane O'Toole" and making him a Token Minority Irishman.
 * Then the much better known Star Blazers, with its Luke Nounverber heroes and the elimination of all the Nazi-Germany-derived names among the bad guys. Not to mention the ship itself becoming the Argo.
 * Earthshattering Kaboom: The destruction of planets Gamilas and Iscandar (by a Self-Destruct Mechanism) in The New Voyage
 * In a Kick the Dog moment, the Comet Empire pauses on their invasion route to blow up a planet inhabited mainly by dinosaurs. Strangely, the weapons used to do this are never actually used against Earth.
 * Elaborate Underground Base
 * The End of the World as We Know It
 * Exactly What It Says on the Tin:
 * Exact Time to Failure ("There are only X days left!")
 * The dub into English was rather hilarious in this respect, because they left the original Japanese characters in there, so you'd get something like this (the specific numbers are made up, but the effect still happens):
 * Exact Time to Failure ("There are only X days left!")
 * The dub into English was rather hilarious in this respect, because they left the original Japanese characters in there, so you'd get something like this (the specific numbers are made up, but the effect still happens):

"Nanbu: Enough for one shot. But like I said, if we fire it, the Yamato will-
 * Explain, Explain, Oh Crap: in the live-action movie, Kodai as acting captain asks Nanbu if the blocked wave motion gun has enough energy to fire.

(everyone looks at Kodai with realization)"


 * Find the Cure
 * Five-Man Band:
 * The Hero: Susumu Kodai (Derek Wildstar)
 * The Lancer: Daisuke Shima (Mark Venture)
 * The Big Guy: Fighter ace Saburo Kato (Pete Conroy); Space Marine Hajime Saito (Sgt. Knox)
 * The Smart Guy: Shiro Sanada (Sandor)
 * The Chick: Yuki Mori (Nova Forrester)
 * Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon: the Wave Motion Gun is pointed straight forward.
 * Floating Continent: Trope Namer. There was one floating in Jupiter's atmosphere.
 * Forgotten Superweapon
 * Frothy Mugs of Water (The Trope Namer, after Star Blazers and Doctor Sane's "spring water".
 * Gas Mask Mooks: Gamilon space suits, including Dessler when he wears one
 * Gender Flip: Aihara (Homer), the communications officer, and Dr. Sado (Dr. Sane) are both females in the 2010 Live Action Adaptation.
 * Composite Character: Both characters fill roles held by Yuki Mori (Nova) in the original series -- Bridge Bunny and medical care, respectively.
 * Yuki was the nurse, the (old) doc seems to have been made into the Chief Engineer, he and the (new, female, still boozer) doc share several drinks with Kodai.
 * Half-Human Hybrid: Sasha from the movies The New Voyage and Be Forever Yamato
 * Heel Face Turn
 * Heel Race Turn
 * Heroic Sacrifice: The whole point of
 * In the 2010 movie,
 * The death of Kodai's brother Mamarou is retconned in the 2199 remake. In the original series, Mamarou refuses to retreat due to Honor Before Reason, since he can't live with the shame of retreating. This leads to his death being a arguably pointless one. In 2199, his death is played as a straight Heroic Sacrifice with him staying behind to ensure Okita's ship can withdraw safely.
 * Hey, It's That Voice! : Most of the other Star Blazers voice actors were never heard in anything else, and a few remain unidentified. The big exception is Sgt Knox who is voiced by Chris Latta (in what may be his very first voice acting role) who would later become legendary as the voice of Cobra Commander and Starscream. His voice for Knox sounds a bit like Steeler, another GI Joe character that he voiced.
 * Hollywood Cyborg: Sanada/Sandor
 * Honorifics: In the original Japanese version, "Leader Desslok" is referred to as "Dessler-sama", which can be best translated as "Lord Dessler".
 * Human Aliens: The Gamilons were indistinguishable from humans in early episodes, but during the first season (perhaps as a Shout-Out to Yellow Submarine, of all things) their skin color was switched to blue. Dessler actually goes from pink to blue before our very eyes. The traditional joke is that Desslok had the original animators taken out and shot.
 * The Deingilian race from Final Yamato were descendants of humans who escaped from The Great Flood (caused by the water planet Aquarius) by a alien spaceship
 * All the unambiguously good aliens (Iscandarians, Teresa) look exactly like humans.
 * Keep Circulating the Tapes: There's still no western release for the three seasons of the original Japanese version.
 * Luke Nounverber: Only in Star Blazers (like "Derek Wildstar", for example)
 * Made for TV Movie: The New Voyage, which basically established the format for anime.
 * Mecha Show
 * Meaningful Name: Comet Empire villain Sabera's name in Star Blazers is "Invidia", the Latin word for "envy". The alien planet Iscandar is apparently named after the Egyptian city of Iskandariyya, an important capital of ancient Hellenistic civilization.
 * Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: The Yamato's attacks push the volcanic activity of  up to a point that the planet explodes. When they arrive at Iscandar, the learn that
 * Mis Blamed: Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato is advertised as "the film that almost got Matsumoto lynched". Leiji Matsumoto was actually very much opposed to the Kill'Em All ending that Yoshinobu Nishizaki had insisted on.
 * Military Mashup Machine
 * The Movie: Currently five movies with a Revival movie (after years of rights disputes) released in late 2009, plus a 2010 Live Action Adaptation.
 * Mythology Gag: Dr Sado's cat appears just once in the series when he's sending a message home; in the 2010 movie, it's with the doctor on the Yamato.
 * Similarly, the resemblance between Starsha and Yuki is lamphaded with
 * A Nazi by Any Other Name: Dessler and the Gamilons in general.
 * Never Say "Die": Averted...except in episodes where it isn't. In general, the dub was inconsistant about this. One episode addresses that several crew members had died, however, in the final Iscandar episode, the poisonous gas used by the Gamilas/Gamilons is portrayed as "radioactive sleeping gas", implying that anyone infected would come out of it at some point, yet Kodai/Wildstar's (and the rest of the crew's ) reaction to Yuki/Nova clearly indicates that she Then later in the same episode, Captain Okita/Avatar is directly portrayed as
 * New Powers as the Plot Demands: Sanada seems to invent amazing devices on the fly to get out nearly any situation. For example, Dessler's last attack in the final Season 1 episode, firing his Dessler Cannon at the Yamato, only to have the blast reflected by a device based on Gamilon technology.. never before seen before that moment on the Yamato, and never mentioned again.
 * In fairness, by that point he had had months to tinker new stuff together without interruption. There's no reason we would have seen it until the ship was finally attacked. Still doesn't explain why it doesn't return in the second season.
 * Notable Original Music
 * Nuclear Weapons Taboo: Gamilon Planet Bombs; also the whole Wave-Motion Energy concept.
 * Oh Crap: Deslar gets one at the end of the first season, when the Yamato.
 * Deslar gets back at the Yamato crew for that in the second season by merely warning them.
 * He later provokes another one in episode 23: the Yamato is preparing to launch the last, desperate attack at the Comet Empire when a Gamilas bomber materializes before the ship, signaling that not only Deslar is back in battle but that he's using one of the more devastating tactics of the series, one that the Yamato survived the first time only due to sheer luck.
 * Deslar apparently loves causing Oh Crap faces: in the third season he provokes a series of them by.
 * Old School Dogfighting
 * One-Woman Wail: "The Universe Spreading To Infinity". The Wail also appears as backup vocals for some versions of the theme song.
 * Only One Female Mold: Due to Author Appeal. Males sometimes have a token Gonk just to skew the ratio.
 * Painting the Fourth Wall: Halfway through the movie Be Forever Yamato, the film changes from 4:3 to widescreen just as the Yamato emerges from a Negative Space Wedgie into the mysterious home galaxy of the film's villains. (Promotion for the film only described this as "Warp Dimension".)
 * Peek-a-Bangs: Fighter pilot Yamamoto/Hardy goes into combat with one eye obscured. This is probably to be expected in a series by the creator of Captain Harlock.
 * Plot-Relevant Age-Up: Sasha Kodai, the half-human infant daughter of Mamoru and Starsha who appeared in the New Voyage special, physically aged into a teenager in the one year between then and the movie Be Forever, Yamato (thanks to Bizarre Alien Biology).
 * Post Script Season
 * Pyrrhic Victory
 * Ramming Always Works: The Yamato rams Dessler's ship in Farewell Yamato and the remake, season 2, and all it did was bend some metal. Dessler's ship fares worse in the remake: the engine is actually damaged by the ram rather than Kodai running through the halls, shooting robots and grenading the engine to kingdom come.
 * Yet, at the end of Farewell Yamato, ramming works completely correctly: a titanic fireball.
 * Real Time: Sort of. The Yamato/Argo has one year exactly to complete its mission -- i.e., one season -- and at the end of every episode, a countdown of how many days are left before the destruction of Earth is displayed.
 * Redshirt Army: The Earth Defense Forces.
 * Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: The Yamato was renamed the Argo in Star Blazers, for the Greek mythological ship in which Jason and the Argonauts set sailed upon.
 * Ridiculously-Human Robots: Analyzer/IQ-9 has a perverse sense of humor, and the hots for Yuki/Nova.
 * In the Star Blazers dub, some perfectly humanoid alien opponents are called "robots" to minimize the heroes' body-count, thus making them "ridiculously human" on at least two levels.
 * Robo Speak
 * Rubber Forehead Aliens: Every alien race in the series has a body similar to humans, but a different skin color
 * Except the Bee People, who get to look a little more insect-ish. Their traitorous queen looks much more human than the rest of them.
 * Saharan Shipwreck: What the audience first sees of the Yamato itself.
 * Screwed by the Network: The first season was supposed to have 39 episodes, but was reduced to 26.
 * A bigger example was that the number of episodes for the Bolar Wars was originally 52 episodes, but was reduced to 25.
 * Secret Test of Character: When they reach Iscandar, it's revealed that Queen Starsha
 * See the Whites of Their Eyes: Even the damn Wave Motion Gun has to be fired at spitting distance.
 * This was a plot point in the Comet Empire series: the Empire's Wave Motion Gun-like ship outranged the Earth fleet, picking off ships without needing any other weaponry.
 * Suprisingly averted in the 2010 movie: . Then brought back once more in the finale when.
 * The Smurfette Principle
 * Apparently imposed by Word of God in the middle of the first season. Several (unnamed) female crew members were seen in episode 10. Then producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki decided that Yuki was the only woman. The others were never seen again.
 * As the only woman on this ship, Yuki's duties include serving tomato juice to other (male) crewmembers and doing their laundry. Her title in the EDF may as well have been "Mom". Even worse, in the episode the showed her washing the uniforms, most of them suffered Clothing Damage later, mocking her efforts.
 * Averted in the Live Action Adaptation, in which some main characters receive a Gender Flip, including Aihara and Dr. Sado. There are also a number of women seen throughout the ship in various interior shots.
 * Tim Eldred's Star Blazers Web Comic (see below) lampshades how many unrelated jobs Nova was shown performing and says she is acclaimed as a brilliant jack-of-all-trades Rennaissance woman.
 * Someone to Remember Him By:
 * So Once Again the Day Is Saved: "There are only X days left!"
 * Space Clothes
 * Space Is an Ocean / Space Sailing: Refurbished wet navy ships, complete with anchors and anti-fouling paint below the "waterline". Though it's a bit jarring to see a ship in the first episode "sinking" into the distance well before the obligatory explosion.
 * Justified by the fact the ships are expected to land in and operate on water as well as space, and the fact that the titular ship is a wet-navy ship in the first place.
 * Spoiler Title: Only in the original Japanese series
 * Standard Starship Scuffle: Unavoidable, given the Space Is an Ocean setting. The battle near Pluto in the very first episode especially stands out as an example.
 * Starfish Aliens: The 2010 movie does this with Gamilas/Iscandar, who either possess humans or create humanoid interfaces to deliver dialogue.
 * Stay in the Kitchen: At the start of the third season, it initially looks like the show is going to avert The Smurfette Principle by having a lot of females (mostly nurses). However, once it becomes apparent that the mission is not going to be just exploration but will also involve a lot of combat, all the women except one (guess which one!) are sent home on a transport ship that appears out of nowhere. (Please someone tell me if this only happened in Star Blazers. I don't have access to the original version of this season.)
 * Nope, it happens in the original Japanese version too. There's even a shot of all the women waving at the Yamato when it leaves.
 * Supernatural Aid: In the first episode, the Earth is told of a gift that will save the planet, and the season is then all about the journey they have to take to retrieve it.
 * And again in both the Movie and TV series versions of the Comet Empire story. The final, massive battleship of the Empire is defeated not by the then-crippled Yamato, but by Trelaina.
 * Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Captain Yamanami (for Okita) and Sasha Kodai (for Yuki while she was playing Damsel in Distress) in Be Forever Yamato.
 * Talking Is a Free Action: Used egregiously in the final battle of Be Forever Yamato with the sudden death of Captain Yamanami and Kodai's Heroic BSOD over sacrificing Sasha to defeat the Dark Nebula Empire.
 * And in the 2010 movie with
 * Take Our Word for It: In the final episode of the first series (the Iscandar arc), we never actually see the Cosmo Cleaner D/Cosmo DNA being used to save the Earth. We're meant to assume that the device worked like it was supposed to, and that the Earth was saved, but considering that the original Japanese airing was in 1974, and no other installments came until a couple or so years later, one could originally never be sure it did work on Earth as effectively as it did . For all the Japanese viewers knew at the time, the device may have only worked partially, if not at all.
 * The English version ends with the narrator speaking over the closing shot of the ship above Earth, saying definitively to the accompaniment of triumphal music, "In the year 2200, the Star Force returned... and saved Earth." It's a very satisfying moment, and if it's not present in the original Japanese, then it counts as a Woolseyism.
 * Translation Convention / Translator Microbes / Aliens Speaking English (or something): except for one case early in the series where Analyzer has to translate the Gamilus language for his human friends, all the aliens speak Japanese (and, in the dub, English) both to the humans and to each other, even in the case of different races that you wouldn't expect them to have a common language.
 * Furthermore, in what could only be described as a really odd instance of The Queen's Latin, Star Blazers has many of the Galmans in the Bolar Wars series speak in a variety of accents from around the British Commonwealth, some of them pretty bad. (Of course, some of the American Accents are pretty goofy-sounding too.)
 * And how would Analyzer know how to speak Gamilon anyway?
 * Touched by Vorlons: the 2010 movie omits Starsha's message and has the capsule land on Earth instead (in the original series, it landed on Mars), so they reinforce their claim to remove the radiation by curing Kodai despite him being at ground zero of the crash. Dr. Sado is justifiably spooked.
 * This might be a Mythology Gag to the original series, where
 * Unfortunate Names: Philippine fans of Star Blazers snickered when they first heard the original Japanese name of the lead character. "Susumu" sounds exactly like a playful way of saying "Susu mo," which means your nipple. Though he was much more oftenly called by his family name, Kodai, for some reason the subbtitles of the subbed release kept calling him by his first name, making certain dramatic moments Narm. (You hear "Kodai! Kodaaaaiiiii!" while you see "Susumu! Susumuuuuuuu!")
 * Villainous Breakdown: Dessler/Desslok in episode 24.
 * Wacky Wayside Tribe: the Bee People.
 * Wagon Train to the Stars
 * Wave Motion Gun: The Trope Namer.
 * Not to mention Crazy Awesome.
 * Interestingly, the Wave Motion Gun was not treated as something invincible: at the end of the first season Deslar's one was reflected back at him (after coming back, he'd always be VERY careful at using his Wave Motion Gun against the Yamato, taking care to neutralize or prevent the deploying of the WMG reflector before firing), and in second season we have three different incidents of Wave Motion Guns utterly failing in their job (first was the Comet Empire's vanguard fleet flagship firing her Magna Flame Cannon while inside Saturn's ring only for the energy beam to explode against the rings' particles, giving Earth's fleet the time to reach their weapons' range and annihilate the vanguard fleet; then the Earth Defense Force fired ALL their Wave Motion Guns at the Empire's comet fortress and failing to make any damage; third was the Yamato finding herself attacked again by Deslar and charging the gun, only for having Deslar mining the space before the muzzle and getting a good laugh as the Yamato couldn't fire without being destroyed by her own weapon).
 * Web Comic: Produced by Tim Eldred, who was also the artist for the short-lived comic book adaptation by Argo Press. Here, check it out.
 * We Could Have Avoided All This: See Secret Test of Character above.
 * Strangely, this was mostly excised in the dub, making it come across as more warlike than the original. In the dub, Starsha is portrayed as regretting not telling Earth that Iscandar and Gamilon
 * What Could Have Been: Before Leiji Matsumoto joined the project, the Yamato wasn't even in it, instead there was a ship made from a hollowed out asteroid called the Icarus. The show was originally pitched as essentially "Lord of the Flies In Space", with the crew suffering a catastrophic breakdown in discipline during their voyage through deep space. Virtually the only thing both versions had in common was that both involved a quest to find a planet called Iscandar. Fortunately, many of the concepts Matsumoto threw out when he took over were later used to make Infinite Ryvius.
 * The short-lived Star Blazers comic book by Argo Press makes an homage to this by giving the Earth Defense Force an asteroid base called Icarus.
 * Also, the first season was originally supposed to be 39 episodes instead of 26. The extra 13 episodes would have been used to introduced a new series character named Captain Harlock.
 * World of Ham
 * Worthy Opponent: too many to name.
 * Star Blazers even has one bizarre Woolseyism in which a funeral for dead crew-members is translated into a funeral for dead enemies, to show the respect that both sides have even as they try to slaughter one another. It would have worked if you wouldn't have been able to see the obviously human bodies inside the caskets.
 * Xenafication: Yuki/Nova in the 2010 live action film, where she becomes the leader of the Black Tiger fighter squadron.
 * Younger Than They Look: Half-Human Hybrid Sasha, due to her Iscandarian origins, is one year old in Be Forever Yamato despite looking like a teenager.
 * You Have Failed Me: In addition to using a Trap Door to dispose of men who laugh at their own jokes, Dessler is known to shoot subordinates with a gun that is only shown smoking after the act. An exact inversion of Family-Friendly Firearms: in a series where Family Friendly lasers actually would be expected, this guy seems to prefer old-fashioned guns.
 * Your Princess Is in Another Castle:
 * You Shall Not Pass: In the 2010 Live Action Adaptation,