After the one-two Black Nebula Empire punch of Space Battleship Yamato: The New Voyage and Be Forever Yamato, it seemed the Yamato series was indeed following that titular advice – it was new (retconned), and would seemingly be forever. Production history sure seems to bear that out, as it wasn’t even a year after Be Forever that the third Space Battleship Yamato television series (“Space Battleship Yamato III”) was released. (Let’s see how long I can stretch these entries simply by writing out “Space Battleship Yamato” repeatedly…)
Made in 1980, “Space Battleship Yamato III” concerns the latest travails of Space Battleship Yamato. It features the fourth or fifth freaking humanoid warring alien empire in as many years – the Bolar Empire. No, wait, we can do better! How about two new freaky humanoid warring alien empires. And our second contestant is…the Galman Empire (the Galmans being the antecedents to the Galimans from earlier entries – confused yet?) Once again, Galiman Lord Deslar (though sometimes Lord Desslok, for we need that confusion) makes an appearance, battling the Bolans.
Earth’s crisis for this year, 2203 A.D., is that our Sun is about to go supernova, having been hit by a Bolan death missile. This puts us in the unenviable position occupied only by all other alien races in Yamato – we have to evacuate Earth and find a new planet to live on, a difficult proposition considering the rents in this universe. Having not seen this TV season, I can only hope the animators take the opportunity to portray Earth as potentially villainous, because at its best Yamato has a seriousness about it not shared by most other space operas, anime or no, even while it wholly embraces the utmost silliness of its various genres.
Even at this point, Yamato could continue on indefinitely, Earth facing a new humanoid warring – you know – every annum, all until the filmmakers exhaust the color wheel (humorous skin tone being the only distinction between races in this franchise). They could do that, but there’s still that compulsion towards quality, which rather spits in the face of the notion of a perpetual series. So once again, producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki and Toei Animation sought to create a natural, decisive ending for Yamato, just as they did for the non-canonical Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato – but this time, there would be a whole respected series behind it, so fans would be receptive to the idea of a conclusive Yamato film.
Final Yamato, as they titled it just to get the point across inarguably, would not simply be slapped off. A full three years separate Final Yamato from “Space Battleship Yamato III,” with director Tomoharu Katsumata’s fullest effort to make it the best Yamato the series could support. Actually, the production was still remarkably hectic, with additions and changes made to the film even after its official release date. The “final” Final only truly showed up on VHS a whole…one month later! That’s a speedy turnaround! (Given these changes, certain important scenes do not appear in the “official” version I saw, such as the wedding and consummation of Kodai and Yuki. So be it.)
Despite the rush and challenge, the animation quality would be at an all-time high, and…well, the story would be as silly as ever. But with a few extras: themes. This is the true Final saving grace. And what do we have to choose from? A sci-fi combo of Darwinian and antediluvian allegory, plus notions of fatherhood, war tactics and sacrifice. It’s all pretty good.
The biggest problem with Final Yamato is simple: it’s the longest animated movie ever made. The thing is nearly 3 hours long, and I watched the short version. It employs the sort of patient pace of 2001, meaning plenty of static animation – to be sure, a series-wide critique. Most scenes, even the Bruckheimerian space battles, move at a glacial pace – there surely isn’t enough content to justify a 3 hour movie here, and I’m sure my write-up will reflect that.
It’s the year 2203 A.D. now, meaning our annual ultra-disaster is [drum roll] the collision of the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies. Wait…that’s not supposed to happen in 2203 A.D. It’s supposed to happen in 4,500,000,000 A.D. And it shouldn’t happen without warning! So, slightly off in their scientific accuracy, I guess?
But the reason for this event is to destroy some green planet, which good-evil Lord Desler calls home. So he’s dead – for the third time. Battleship Yamato arrives too late to do anything but mourn. Captain Susumu Kodai holds a touching funeral in Desler’s honor.
And that’s the last we’ll ever hear about galaxy collisions. You’d think something like that would hold a little more weight, but oh well…
Instead we’re at the Unfa Fixed Star Galaxy, on Dinguil, the fourth planet…or whatever. The Unfans being our token humanoid warr- Okay, they’re the bad guys. And sadly for them, they seem to have entered a Roland Emmerich movie. In a heady combo of The Day After Tomorrow and 2012 (that is, basically the same thing), Dinguil is deluged by planet-shattering space-floods, whole cities vanishing under waves. (We’ll learn, in the upcoming dribbling of exposition, that this has nothing to do with the galaxies.) The Yamato randomly warps to the land of disaster animation, as Kodai swears to sweep up as many survivors as possible. Sadly, he is able to save a single non-Gainsborough blue boy, at the cost of hundreds of his own men.
This tragedy shall plummet Kodai into a galactic spiral of depression, as he questions his own competence to captain a metaphorical futuristic WWII battleship. We can focus on that later. For now, I wanna do an info dump, and work out what happened to Dinguil…
Aquarius happened! See, Aquarius is a space-planet, understandably made of space-water. We learn, over time, that it even paid Earth a visit once, some 4 billion years ago. Hence it visited upon us the same space-watery devastation we just saw – further extrapolated as the source of Earth’s various flood myths, from Noah to Babylon to Atlantis. To counter this, Aquarius also has a Darwinian side, as its space-water in turn was the spark of Earth’s life and evolution – never mind the antediluvian stories propose a prelapsian population, as does later exposition in this story.
Aquarius travels on a wildly elliptical space-orbit, having now reached the opposite end of the space-galaxy to drench Dinguil. And now it’s turned around, and is headed back for Earth…
With help! The surviving warrior populace of Dinguil is tailing Aquarius in their Uruku Urban Satellite – basically, it’s an Imperial Star Destroyer from Star Wars. It leader is the dread Lord Lugarl I, whose son Lugarl II heads their military. Good and illogical Nietzschians them, the Urukans (or Unfans, or Dinguili, or whatever the 12 different translations want me to call these guys). Whomever dies deserves it, in their straw man mindset. And Earth deserves it next, seemingly, because they’re using a warp device to send Aquarius over to us – a mere 20 days out. Apparently, the logic is that the Unfans (that’s it, I’m calling ‘em the “Unfans”) prefer a just-flooded planet to settle on and – Wait! Why can’t they just resettle on Dinguil, and save all this trouble?! Well, there’d be no story there, for one… Also, maybe it “exploded.”
[Phew, that’s a lot of back story!]
Meanwhile, Yamato returns to Earth, so Kodai can have another of his exceedingly common reunions with fiancé Yuki Mori…Well, actually, first up she thinks he’s dead (he’s really just space-unconscious from space-radiation). Like any good and proper emo teen, Yuki decides to instantly stab herself – Been readin’ “Romeo & Juliet” a bit too much lately, eh Yuki? But Kodai’s buddy Sanada stops her idiocy just in time and –
Look, suicide is a theme in this movie. More specifically, sacrifice is a theme. (It’s what separates Earthlings – read: Japanese – from those honor-deprived Unfans – read: Americans. Don’t get me started on this shallow and self-serving allegory, which handily ignores Japanese warfare tactics Americans would consider deviously underhanded, and vice versa.) Anyway, we need something early on to get us thinking about sacrifice and honor and whatnot. It’s simply a shame this has to be it.
Kodai resigns.
As it’s now the dawning of the age of Aquarius – sorry, I had to say that at some point. Earth evacuates. All our military technology (but for Yamato, natch – ‘cause it’s “damaged”) is put to aiding evacuation. Thus all our military technology is swiftly destroyed, for the third or fourth year in a row, by a sudden ambush at Pluto by those dastardly Unfans. Once again Yamato is our only hope, making me wonder why we even bother rebuilding our entire war machine every year.
So the whole regular crew is brought aboard Yamato. Kodai is even tricked aboard, where he’ll swiftly recover from self-doubt. He won’t be captain, though, for that duty has done to none other than…
Okita! Wow, death really has no hold in the Yamato universe, does it? I mean, the great Captain Okita perished (of old age – a franchise rarity) in the very first entry. They even erected a big freaking grave to him in the sequel! But Dr. Sado now explains that – actually, he withholds explanations for dramatic convenience. (“Explanations later.”)
…
But I won’t! Okita was cryogenically frozen…That’s it, actually. It takes our heroes a full five minutes of pure retcon, though, to explain this in their particular sci-fi idiom. In short, though, the character motivation makes little sense. (All plot holes aside, it is rejuvenating having Okita back, as he was and is the most interesting character in the series.)
Much of what follows goes by standard Yamato guidelines – space battles. This is a series constant I have never warmed to, mostly because of how long these battles are. Thankfully, in an example of what Final Yamato does well, these scenes afford further thematic exploration as well, where we can debate the relative merits of how Unfans and Earthlings wage space-war. (Of course, today’s baddie also needs his own seemingly-insurmountable super weapon, in this case “radiation missiles” that are most notable for glowing a silly green.)
For one brief battle moment, Kodai is lightly wounded. Yuki considers killing herself again and – Give it a rest, girl!
Let us spend some time with the evil Lugarl I, as he does what he does every day – lounge about his TV-free throne room, alternating between motionless glowering and monologuing. It is by his monologue that we learn a bit more exposition re: Aquarius. What, more?! It turns out the Ungans and Earthlings have a common ancestry – Earth, before Aquarius ravaged it. So much for Aquarius’ water giving our planet life, eh?
Like he said. Furthermore, the Ungans were evacuated from Earth by a sudden, never-explained spaceship – this started their life of space-evil, as they proceeded to wrest control of Dinguil from whomever was there before. I make the further assumption that their planet’s recent space-flooding has to do with some mistake the Ungans themselves made, masters of Aquarius that they are – it helps to think this, to give the villains a “downfall by hubris” sort of thing.
Yamato makes its Yamatan way along over to Aquarius itself, near the Unfan Satellite. They all gawk in awe at the space-water space-planet, which is a thing of beauty – it’s space-watery doom only comes from the inexplicable rings of space-water orbiting. So Yamato lands on Aquarius’ Edenic surface, resembling an English pastoral scene. Then a voice announces “I am Aquarius.” Oh geez! Here is another nymph/goddess type immaterial wastrel anime chick – can’t get enough of ‘em! She gets her big exposition about water and life on Earth, for all those viewers strolling in 1 hour and 45 minutes late. Also, she extrapolates that Earthlings are descended from Aquarius’ survivors, 4 billion years hence. In overcoming this trial, they earned the true and good Japanese “kill yourself repeatedly” ethic, which forever eluded the egotistic Unfans. Well, there you go.
Along come some Unfans now to make trouble. Soon enough, Yamato is at the Uruku Unfan Satellite thingy, making extended battle. To give you an idea of how endless and slow this movie is, keep in mind my screen caps are all separated by a good 20 minutes or so. The image coming up is from halfway through Yamato’s climactic battle, and it’s an image that is so very common in this picture, I’m surprised it’s not burned into my screen.
Let me try to cover the highlights: Lugarl II, the lesser Lugarl, is killed off (by his own father) in the use of a neutrino beam shield something-or-other. Yamato flees the shield, is surely doomed, when Sanada realizes a wildly incomprehensible technobabble solution which would make “Star Trek” blush. It’s like putting too much air in a balloon! So…Yamato survives neutrino bombardment, due to a misunderstanding of neutrinos on all sides. They land on the Satellite, face off against Lugarl I on a freaking unicorn, and summarily destroy the towers responsible for warping Aquarius. So…that’s it then, right? And with 50 minutes of movie still to go!
Actually, nope! You thought this battle sequence would clock in at a mere half hour? Hah! There’s a secondary warp device, located in the evil Lugarl’s evil, evil shrine of evil. Off goes Kodai, and only Kodai, to resolve this issue. Tagging along is the blue boy he saved from [checking my spelling above] Dinguil, who proceeds to recognize Lugarl as his father. (There’s a lot of “father” stuff in Final Yamato, from Lugarl to Kodai’s connection to Okita, to some father-son stuff I haven’t mentioned concerning a character I haven’t mentioned.)
Kodai faces off against Lugarl, where minutes’ worth of ethical debate must surely precede whatever battle takes place. Then Lugarl simply fires – and the unnamed blue boy takes the shot. Like an inordinate amount of movies I’ve seen lately, Final Yamato is resorting to killing children. But there’s a reason. Little boy blue has learned in his time among the Earthlings, that the only honorable thing to do in life is to kill yourself for something you vaguely think is “noble.” God, no wonder Japan was so suicide-happy in the coming generation!
Oh, and Lugarl simply wanders off, unharmed. Kodai is also unharmed. And Aquarius is warped along anyway, directly within Earth’s orbit, so this was all a bust.
And the Satellite of Hate self-destructs, allowing for an “exciting” dozen or so minutes of Kodai returning to the Yamato and it taking off, all while stuff go boom. (Presumably the idiotic Unfans survived their own explosions, ‘cause it wouldn’t be like them to kill themselves for no reason – that’s more of an “Earth” thing to do.)
There are a few hours remaining before Earth goes the way of Dinguil. Why, that’s enough time for our heroes to wrestle out their latest inexplicable technobabble scheme. Basically, out of respect for Aquarius, Okita will destroy Aquarius – due to a series of plot contortions I do not follow (what a time for Final Yamato to under-explain something), Yamato must be sacrificed to destroy Aquarius, and Okita alone must be aboard. Yeah, yeah, it’s basically the same basic ending as Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato, only acceptable now to fans (if not Unfans) because there’s a series behind it. And perhaps to add in some of that tasty allegorical goodness from the first two Yamatos, Yamato is outfitted to be “a floating H-bomb.” So, nuclear parallel, lone man’s sacrifice – yup, it’s the original Godzilla ending again, which is a fine source to plunder.
There’s only one problem: Lugarl! So…he did survive, and now Yamato is unable to defend itself (H-bomb and all, apparently). This looks like the end, for the twentieth time in this entry, when –
Oh look, Desler’s alive!...Again. Is this guy a cat?! Desler uses his war machine to destroy Lugarl’s war machine, then turns right around and buggers off. Alrighty then. (All this was as “thanks” for the lovely funeral Kodai gave Desler – Give me a nice funeral, and I’ll kill a guy for you too.)
Okay, that’s out of the way, now we can proceed with Okita’s suicide. Understandably, this is a source of great grief for all the other characters, who cry in such extreme amounts, methinks Aquarius isn’t the only threat to flooding Earth. (Somehow, Yuki can withhold her kneejerk suicidal tendencies for once.) It is a genuinely moving moment, as the crew watching from the windows of their evacuation ship as Yamato sails off for good. Emphasizing a point, Kodai intones towards Okita: “Father.”
Our final moments are spent with Okita, who prays for Earth as he flies for Aquarius’ core. Naturally, the Yamato’s sinking is stretched out and milked, though it is a weighty moment, and deserving of this treatment. And we’re now ready for such an ending (unlike Farewell), so it’s very satisfying.
Aquarius is bested. Yamato sinks beneath the waves.
Yamato cannot continue without Yamato, and the series’ major character arcs had been fulfilled, so indeed Final Yamato was the final Yamato…for well over two decades. Some form of Yamato rebirth would take place in 2009 with Yamato Rebirth – I love how self-explanatory these titles are. There is even a live action remake of Space Battleship Yamato: The Movie expected later (in Japan) this very year! Based on the trailer, this one looks legitimately exciting. I’d love to say “until next time,” but that won’t be immediately forthcoming. The 2009 Yamato is still mostly unavailable State-side, while the live action entry isn’t even done yet. Trust me though when I say Yamato shall rise again, and when that time comes I’ll be there to greet it.
Related posts:
• No. 1 Space Battleship Yamato: The Movie (1977)
• No. 2 Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato (1978)
• No. 3 Space Battleship Yamato: The New Voyage (1979)
• No. 4 Be Forever Yamato (1980)
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