Brilliant! As soon as I heard the Space Batatleship Yamato theme music, I was hooked. I got goose bumps.
Timely in that I've been watching the English Star Blazers on TV lately.
Things I liked: Kodai Susumu / Derek Wildstar. Hot. Even got to have his hair blowing in the wind in his final scene - impressive for on the bridge of the SBB Yamato. Plus very believable as the angry young man with command potential. His supporting team from his earlier military career being on the ship helped a lot in establishing that potential. Yamakaki Tsutomo was perfect as Captain Okita / Captain Avatar. Just as you'd want him to be. The role of Shima Daisuke / Mark Venture was much smaller, but still he was an integral character. Yuki / Nova was almost a tsundere character - and a fighter pilot instead of a med tech - so it was interesting to watch her warm up to Kodai over the course of the movie. The twist on the Gamilas was interesting. I've played an SF game with a crystalline race so it's fun to see how that was imagined. I liked the enemy being intelligent and finding ways to counter the Yamato's new advantages. They did a great job of keeping the story tight: very few things that happened late in the movie didn't have some kind of counterpart / foreshadowing earlier in the movie.
Things that bugged me: Thank god I speak Japanese. I watched it a second time with subtitles to see how it was different. I don't mind the occasionaly wacky translation: that's to be expected. (example from the first scene: Japanese (my translation) - "There's a second wave of missiles coming in. Brace for impact"; English subtitles: "There's a second wave of missiles coming in. Embracing attack.") There were several singular / plural errors but that's because Japanese uses the same word for either and you have to tell by context. The biggest translation problem was they in general used common / conversational English when more formal words were more appropriate.
Other. Imagine what they could have done with the budget of a U.S. blockbuster, but I suppose that would have run the risk of ruining the movie. The special effects were good for how big a budget they had.
I give it nine out of ten in Japanese, eight out of ten in English. For SF fans, it's worth the money. For Star Blazers / Space Battleship Yamato fans it's a must have.
Topic: For those waiting for a US Release of Space Battleship Yamato 2010... (Read 3936 times)