Last December, the live action adaption of the classic anime series Space Battleship Yamato, known as to US audiences as Starblazers, opened in Japanese theaters. Although no US distributors have picked the film up yet, we’re giving you this advanced review of the film.

From the opening moments of Space Battleship Yamato, a live action adaption of the long-running Japanese anime franchise that was imported to the US in the 1970s as Star Blazers, it is apparent that this is not your father’s cartoon series.

It is the year 2199 and a ragtag fleet of battleships representing the last vestiges of the Earth’s forces against an alien attack mount a desperate but ultimately futile defense near Mars. An explosion on one of the ships first hurtles a helpless crew member down a hallway who is then sucked out into the vacuum of space through the resultant breach in the ship’s hull. While there was death in the original animated series, it was never as up front as this scene in the film’s opening moments. And the film keeps up the body count to a point that could upset many of the franchise’s long-time fans by the time the credits roll.

It’s been five years since the aliens known as the Gamilas suddenly appeared and began bombing the Earth. In that the time the planet has been reduced to a radioactive wasteland, forcing the survivors into underground cities. But after receiving an offer for help from an alien race, the military decides to take a desperate gamble and send their last remaining battleship, the Yamato, to retrieve the offered technology that restore the planet.

By necessity, the film version is a rather compressed telling of the original animated series. There series creator Yoshinobu Nishizaki, had 26 half-hour episodes to tell its story while this film only has a little over two hours to cover roughly the same material. As such, it pretty much barrels along from its first frame to its last as its cast race across space to retrieve the technology that will save humanity.

The film does deviate from the text of the source material especially in its second half. As noted, there are a number of character deaths, to the point where I suppose a comparison could be made to JJ Abrams’ recent reboot of the Star Trek franchise, if he had gone off and killed a number of the well known bridge crew of the USS Enterprise. Other changes include the depiction of the invading Gamilas, the gender of two characters and a few other things that would be too spoilery to reveal here. Still, the film does manage to remain true to the original animated series’ spirit and themes of honor, duty and sacrifice.

Director Takashi Yamazaki shows a much stronger hand at handling genre material in comparison to his last science-fiction film, 2002′s The Returner. The use of handheld cameras throughout the film may remind some of the style the recent version of Battlestar Galactica, which seems only fair as the original Galactica television series featured elements first seen in the animated series. There’s also a minor plot point that seems lifted from Galactica as well.

The script does a good job of sketching out a number of relationships between various members of the crew. However, it tries to pay off a number of those relationships in one scene in the film’s climax. However, since that scene is in the midst of the final battle to save Earth, the net result is that it stretches things far longer than is credible.

But on the whole, Space Battleship Yamato is still an entertaining, if somewhat darker, adaption of the original anime. Hopefully an American distributor will pick up the film  soon so States-side fans can enjoy it.

This past week, the live action version of the classic anime franchise Space Battleship Yamato, better known here in the United States by the title it was syndicated to television – Starblazers.

Ain’t It Cool ran a fairly glowing reader’s review yesterday which allayed some of my concerns that collapsing the original series storyline down to a two hour movie wasn’t going to be a disaster.

But this morning, I found the following new comment on a previous post here on Film Buff Online about the film that presented a different view of the movie. So take it away “Howling Hank” -

Just came back from watching the movie, and while some things worked, too many things didn’t. There was no sense of urgency in the film. The Gamilions, were as uninspired as Spielberg’s WotW lazy ass ID4 alien ripoffs, and a very very big letdown, which pretty much squelched this movie for me. I was looking forward to Leader Desslar and Starsha and what was substituted were Gamilons in name only. Some of the effects looked unfinished, giving the the whole movie a small uneven TV special feel to it, not an epic motion picture which it’s supposed to be- IMHO the equivalent of Star Wars in Japan. There was too much of a BSG riff here and there, and it felt like there were 42 people on the Yamato at all times, instead of hundreds or dare I say thousands – seriously only 5 Marines? Perhaps 7 or 8 fighters? If I have to fight my way through alien occupied space and back, I’m gonna be armed with enough weapons and personnel to leave a trail of destruction that would put the Death Star to shame! Watch the anime you won’t be disappointed, watch this and you will be saying WTF again, and again, and again. This movie didn’t deliver it all for me nor my wife.

Well, I can’t say that I’m not disappointed to hear that Hank and his wife didn’t like the film. As Starblazers was one of those seminal cartoons of my own youth, I really want this movie to be good, but with the positive review at AICN and the negative view here, it looks as if the jury may still be out on this one.

So the new full trailer for the Japanese live action adaptation of the classic anime series Space Battleship Yamato, known to most English audiences as Star Blazers, has no English subtitles. I don’t think we really need them here though to get a feeling for what the movie, hitting theaters in Japan in December, will look like.

Visually, director Takashi Yamazaki (The Returner) is going for the big, epic look needed for the film. True, the effects might not 100% photo realistic, but this is probably been made for a fraction of what Hollywood blockbusters are cranked out for. (I believe that the recent 20th Century Boys trilogy, where all three film were produced simultaneously, remains one of the Japanese film industry’s most expensive projects at a budget of 6 billion yen or approximately $67 million dollars.) But then again Japanese cinema isn’t plagued with the bloated, budget-inflating salaries that many big names in Hollywood command.

Via Twitch.

I have to admit, the teaser trailer below for the upcoming Japanese live action adaptation of the classic anime Space Battleship Yamato gets my geek blood a-pumpin’. Known as Starblazers here in the United States, I grew up watching the show with friends every day after school in the early 1980s, a daily dose of a drug called space opera for us kids already hooked by Star Wars.

This film only started shooting in the middle of last October, so I am a bit surprised that there is already a teaser trailer, short as it is, out already. The producers must think they really have something to start the hype so early in advance of the film’s Japanese release next December. From the small glimpse that we do get, it looks like they are indeed on the right track.

They’re back off to outer space, defending mother Earth and saving the human race.

The crew of the classic anime series Space Battleship Yamato, known in the United States as Star Blazers, is set for a new big screen adventure. But instead of their familiar two-dimensional, hand drawn appearance, this new film, which started shooting in Japan last week, will sport a  real life, flesh and blood crew.

The film, budgeted at over two billion yen or $22 million American, is being directed by Takashi Yamazaki, the director best known to Western fans of Asian action cinema for the time travel action film Returner. Popstar-turned-actor Takuya Kimura is leading the cast as Susumu Kodai, the character known as Derek Wildstar to American audiences. Reports state that this live action version will make some changes to the original animated version. Two characters – Aihara (known as Homer to English-speaking audiences) and Dr. Sado (Dr. Sane) – are getting sex changes in the transition, becoming females.

Premiering on Japanese TV in 1974, Space Battleship Yamato told the story of the crew of a starship racing across the galaxy to retrieve a cure for the radioactive fallout from an alien invasion’s bombardment that is slowly poisoning the Earth. It was brought over to America in 1977, where it was embraced by an audience already excited by the space opera of Star Wars. Two more television series and several animated films followed.

A live action Space Battleship Yamato/ Star Blazers adaptation was close to being a reality a little over a decade ago. The project was in development at Disney through most of the 1990s, with a script having been written by Tab Murphy. You can read our less than glowing review of it here. And while the script took several liberties with the story that would probably not go well over with fans of the original, the project was ultimately shelved after studio head Michael Eisner departed.

The film is set for a December 2010 release in Japan, but as of now, there is no word if any US distributor picking up the film for release here. I would think, though, that there would be a viable enough audience between anime fans and those, like myself, who remember the original series from its syndicated runs years ago to support at least a DVD release if not some limited theatrical distribution.