Star Blazers is available on DVD if you hunt around, and you can find clips on YouTube. The original Japanese series, Space Battleship Yamato, was remade and modernized in 2012 as Star Blazers: Space Battleship Yamato 2199, which is available to stream on Amazon Prime and Funimation.
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Star Blazers, the English-language adaptation of the seminal Japanese anime Space Battleship Yamato, was — along with Astro Boy, Battle of the Planets, and Speed Racer — likely among the first anime many Western audiences of the 1970s to mid-1980s ever saw. Star Blazers was an Americanized adaptation, with character names and even the series’ signature battleship changed for stateside viewers. It was an epic, melodramatic saga of sacrifice, courage, and love all in the service of saving a dying Earth from alien invaders.
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Star Blazers was a serialized show full of spaceship battles, evil empires, and cosmic adventures that appealed to those Generation X kids in the West growing up on Star Wars and Star Trek movies (back when there was only the original Trek series on TV). Space Battleship Yamato originally ran from 1974-75 before spawning sequel movies and subsequent seasons in the wake of the global phenomenon of Star Wars in 1977. Adapted for U.S. television as Star Blazers — including a catchy opening theme song that recapped the series’ premise — the show ran in syndication from 1979-1984.
In 2199, Earth is so poisoned by radiation bombs launched by the warring Gamilons that humans now live in underground cities. The planet is ravaged to the point that all life will become extinct in one year — until a messenger arrives from a distant planet with an offer of hope. If the Earthlings can reach her planet, Iscandar, Queen Starsha promises them a technology (“Cosmo DNA”) that can heal Earth. And not only that, since Iscandar is many thousands of light-years away, she even throws in the plans to build a Wave Motion Engine that can help them travel there and back in time. The humans retrofit a sunken World War II battleship — in the original it was the Yamato, in Star Blazers it’s the USS Arizona — with the Wave Motion Engine as well as the Wave Motion Gun, which can obliterate anything in its path. The Star Force assembles a crew, led by the venerable Captain Avatar, and set out in the newly rechristened spaceship Argo on their mission to save Earth before it’s too late.
Obviously, the erasure of the original Japanese elements is problematic by modern standards (and there were other alterations made for U.S. television), but, for the time, Star Blazers retained far more of the original’s stylistic elements than what happened to other imported anime – such as Battle of the Planets – with U.S. censors mainly removing some of Yamato’s violence. (Not that American kid viewers knew it at the time.)
The soap opera dynamics between the characters helped keep the on-board drama engaging during the Argo’s long voyage. Its crew included the vengeance-minded Derek Wildstar; his pal, navigator Mark Venture; the multi-talented Nova; science officer Sandor, who has bionic limbs; wacky Dr. Sane and his pet cat Mimi; and comic relief droid IQ-9. Later came the Space Marines (long before Aliens!) and brawny Sgt. Knox. The villains included Desslok (an urbane, blue-skinned Space Nazi) and later the Comet Empire and the Bolar Federation.
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The crew’s trials and tribulations, loves and losses — the series was unafraid to kill off characters — added depth and heart to a show deemed “a good kids’ property.” All of which made Star Blazers an engrossing treat for young U.S. viewers hungry for more star-warring and star-trekking in-between film releases. While Star Blazers is more in line with the ship-centric, jargon-filled Star Trek than the more mystical-minded Star Wars, fans of both beloved franchises should find much to enjoy about this pulpy sci-fi series, as well as the groundbreaking original anime. Enjoy the journey!
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Binge It! is IGN’s recommendation series. Movies, TV shows, books, comics, music… if you can binge it, we’re here to talk about it. In each installment of Binge It!, we’ll discuss a piece of content we’re passionate about — and why you should check it out.
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Jim Vejvoda is the Executive Editor of Movies. Follow him at @JimVejvoda.
Source: IGN.com Binge It! Star Blazers, the Anime That Hooked Gen X Star Wars & Trek Fans