Space Battleship Yamato: Resurrection

Plot

The film opens as the Earth flagship Blue Noah leads the First Emigration Fleet to Amare. Suddenly, thousands of unidentified ships appear and open fire. The warships of Earth's Fleet (EDF) counterattack, but are quickly overwhelmed. Blue Noah is damaged critically. On one of the failing support ships, Captain Yuki Mori Kodai, wife of the protagonist Susumu Kodai, orders her ship to do an emergency warp, but she vanishes mysteriously afterwards.

Thirty-eight-year-old Susumu Kodai, having quit the EDF sometime after Final Yamato, becomes captain of the cargo vessel Yuki. He picks up the distress signal from Blue Noah and quickly arrives at the wreck with a boarding party. Without warning, three enemy ships arrive. With Kodai at the helm, Blue Noah has just enough power to cover a small distance and fire one shot. Kodai's precise timing and maneuvering destroys all three ships.

Later, at the headquarters of the EDF, Commander Sanada discusses with Kodai about the approaching black hole. Kodai also learns that his wife became lost in the battle. Sanada wants Kodai to lead the Third Emigration Fleet, saying he should follow his wife's example of volunteering.

Kodai returns home, and is met by his daughter, Miyuki, who blames him for the supposed death of his wife. He is then called immediately back to HQ with news about the Second Emigration Fleet being destroyed by three different fleets, the Beldel and Furide and Ethos, not including the enemy fleet earlier. This means Earth now has four enemies. Kodai accepts command of the Third Emigration Fleet, and Sanada reveals his ship: the Yamato itself, newly rebuilt in the Aquarius ice asteroid. On the other side of the galaxy, a meeting took place, the leader of the Alliance and the fleet that attacked the Blue Noah and the First Emigration Fleet is revealed to be the SUS. Metzler, the Admiral of the SUS Fleet, the other Leaders, Amare, Beldel, Furide and Ethos were present. Metzler deceived the leaders that Earth is an invader, and they are barbarians showing the leaders footgate of Escort Ships from the First Emigration Fleet firing their Wave Motion Guns destroying many SUS Ships stunning the Leaders However, one leader—Gouri, admiral of the Ethos fleet belonging to the planet Ethos—is unsure.

The Yamato takes off and joins the Fleet, taking its place at the front as Flagship. In the planning room, the crew lays out the mission. The plan is to slingshot around a small black hole, BH199, and boost the arks and warships into high warp, propelling them to Amarh much faster than usual. Gouri watches the first group of arks slingshot and warp, and then, still unsure, orders an attack. Soon, the Yamato detects the Alliance Fleets and Kodai promptly orders all fighters on board to launch and the Emigration Escort Fleet to split into two groups to fight the Beldel and Ethos Fleets while the Yamato will fight the Furide. Soon, the Furide Fleet begins their attack with the Yamato drawing first blood on a Furide Ship. The enemy responded with a barrage of missiles only to be stopped by Shield Rockets fired from the Yamato.

Production

In March 2002, a Tokyo court ruled that Yoshinobu Nishizaki legally owned the Yamato copyrights. Nishizaki and Matsumoto eventually settled; Nishizaki began work on a new movie, while Matsumoto planned a new Yamato series, both to take place after their respective stories. However, additional legal conflicts stalled both projects until August 2008, when Nishizaki announced plans for the release of his film on December 12, 2009.

The production makes ample use of CGI for the space battle scenes. Out of the 1860 cuts (shots) in the new film, 700 were produced with computer graphics. In particular, the battle scenes use composite 3D sequences and computer graphics; Nishizaki had established a new studio called Enagio in 2008 just to produce this film.

Technology

The Yamato's size will be mostly unchanged at 263 metres in length and 62,000 tons in mass. The Yamato's signature wave-motion gun, which can take out an entire fleet, but which then leaves the ship drained of power — and vulnerable, has been improved to optionally fire six smaller shots in succession.

The film sees the reappearance of the Yamato's counter-attack missiles, not otherwise seen since the mission to Iscandar (first TV series). The defensive shield which forms upon detonation is now energy-based. Other defensive features include the battleship's armor, which is far stronger than originally depicted during the Battle of the Rainbow Nebula—in the film, the Yamato withstood a massive concentrated barrage from both Furide and Beldel Fleets and survived, and suffered minor to moderate damage during the battle against the SUS Dimensional Fortress. The armor finally gave way when the Yamato fired all 6 wave motion beams together, creating many holes in it.

Among the new technological items is a gravity-assisted warp process called a "long warp". The visual special effects for the Yamato undergoing warp have been improved, and now resemble something akin to Farscape's starburst. The Yamato's new multistage Wave Motion Gun can now fire a spectacular spray of tachyon-based energy in a succession of six bursts. Yamato's infamous third bridge is now painted blue, and houses more expensive gadgets to get blown up such as a 3-dimensional navigational cartography room.

As far as other ships go, a new model Earth battleship, "Super Andromeda", appears, as well as the Earth flagship, Blue Noah.

Characters

Veteran

Susumu Kodai (CV: Kōichi Yamadera), Captain of the Yamato, former Battle Commander.

Yuki Mori Kodai (CV: Noriko Yume), Susumu's wife and former Radar/Computer Operator of the Yamato, captain of an escort battleship with the First Emigration Fleet, presumed lost in action.

Tasuke Tokugawa (CV: Tōru Furuya), former Engineer of the Yamato, leaves his position as a commanding officer at the Earth Defense Force's Moonbase to become Chief Engineer of the Yamato.

Shiro Sanada (CV: Takeshi Aono), Secretary of Science for the Earth Federation, former Science Officer of the Yamato.

Jiro Shima (CV: Ryōtarō Okiayu), younger brother of Daisuke Shima, head of the Earth Federation's Migration Fleet.

Dr. Sakezou Sado (CV: Ichirō Nagai) and Analyzer (CV: Kenichi Ogata), remain on Earth to watch over Dr. Sado's Safari Park.

Captain Jūzō Okita (CV: Gorō Naya, stock footage)

New

Miyuki Kodai (CV: Ayumi Fujimura) daughter of Kodai and Yuki, assistant to Dr. Sado.

Kosaku Omura (CV: Chafurin), Vice Captain of the Yamato.

Minoru Goda (CV: Akimitsu Takase), Artillery Specialist of the Yamato, replacing Nanbu.

Atsushi Kobayashi (CV: Daisuke Namikawa), Chief Pilot of the Yamato's Cosmo Pulser Squad, replacing Katou.

Miharu Sasaki (CV: Fuyuka Oura), Ship Doctor and Cosmo Pulser Pilot.

Ryohei Nakanishi (CV: Kappei Yamaguchi), Communication Specialist of the Yamato, replaces Aihara.

Yoichi Sakurai (CV: Kenji Nojima), Radar Specialist of the Yamato, replaces Ohta.

Ryo Kamijo (CV: Kentarō Itō), New Tactical Commander of the Yamato.

Saburo Kinoshita (CV: Kōsuke Toriumi), New Science Officer of the Yamato.

Maho Orihara (CV: Ryōka Yuzuki), Chief Navigator of the Yamato, replaces the late Daisuke Shima.

Sho and So Tenma (CV: Daisuke Sakaguchi), twin brothers, Engineers under Tasuke on the Yamato.

Blue Noah Captain (CV: Osamu Kobayashi), captain of the Space Carrier Blue Noah

Queen Iriya (CV: Atsuko Tanaka) and General Pascal (CV: Kazuhiko Inoue) of Planet Amahr.

Admiral Metzlar (CV: Hiroshi Yanaka) and Commander-in-Chief Balzman (CV: Shōzō Iizuka) of the SUS Empire.

Reception

The film debuted #7 at the Japanese box office but moved slowly off the charts a week later.

A reviewer on SciFiJapan said that he was pleased with the film, and that it gave the series a reboot that it had missed for 30 years. He went on to say, while the romance was definitely toned down, the action made up for it. "Computer enhancement works its greatest magic in scenes of outer space, especially those of black holes. The beauty and imagination of these scenes are nothing less than spectacular." However, he was disappointed by the enemy ship designs. "The weakest visual element in the film is the design of the enemy fleets. Yamato history is populated with dozens of sleek and exciting spaceship designs, so these new ship designs are a rather jarring and unimaginative change of pace." The reviewer concluded with, "SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO: RESURRECTION brings the famed space battleship back to the big screen in all its former glory, setting the stage for a live action version which will hit screen in Japan later this year. 2010 promises to be a banner year for Yamato fans, new and old."

On StarBlazers.com, a positive reviewer said that "I snapped to full attention for the finale. I can't say why, but it suddenly felt more like a true Yamato story than it did before. It gave me an immediate jolt of energy and took me all the way home, which makes it my favorite part." The review finished with this, referring to the character development: "To Nishizaki's credit, he tipped this in his Animage interview, saying his intention was to simply establish the new crew so they can be further developed "next time." I'd love to see a TV series spin off from this, but I have no idea if such a thing is possible. One thing's for sure: I'll be happy to see Part 2 in any Japanese theater."

Other releases

The film was released on Region 2 DVD, UMD, and Blu-ray on July 23, 2010.