October 19th: 7:30pm
October 27th: 5:00pm
It's taken 3 years, but Space Battleship Yamato comes ashore to the US for your viewing pleasure. Two screenings this month with one for this weekend.
Space Battleship Yamato is not unlike the American Battleship, a big cast of celebs, big special effects and weird aliens. Unlike it is the nostagial factor of many an anime fan or a Japanese who grew up with the show as a child. The anime is well known that even to this day it's brought up in current anime and video games.
The live action film is a high action farce with cheesy moments of sadness and action that manages to make it a gem to watch as another action flick.
Don't go into this for a distant or well-though out story. Yamato is an action film with all the call backs of anime shows and their insane ideas.
Spoilers
Yamato starts off with an Earth nearly dead of radiation caused by evil alien race called the Gamilas. Our would be hero, Susumu Kodai is a scavenger on the surface. Susumu joins up with the crew of the Space Battleship Yamato bitterly as he blames the Captain for his brother's death.
(The Captain does look very much like his anime version)
The Space Battleship Yamato is altered by alien plans given new tech and given the ultimate weapon the "Wave Motion Cannon". Along the way we meet the crew of Japanese celebs and learn that Susumu use to be a great fighter pilot. With radiation sickness affecting the captain Kodai takes command. Yamato's last mission is to seek further help by finding out more from the aliens that gave them the new technology leading to special effect-laden space battles and on the ground war scenes.
Yamato blasts on the screen as a sci-fi war movie with heavy sacrifices. Based on anime it's both a struggle to find itself in a live action setting and to cut down so much source material into a few hours. The film captures some key elements of the series and changes much for a fast action movie approach.
