Fridae

There is something embarrassing and cringe-worthy about Leiji Matsumoto’s creations. It might have something to do with the taste of overpowering cheese that permeates the characters and their over-dramatic dialogue or the hamfisted preachiness of the plot. So naturally when I learnt that there would be a live action reboot of Space Battleship Yamato (Star Blazers in the US), I couldn’t help but line up to relive my worst childhood memories.

Playing the anti-authoritarian protagonist Kodai, Gatsby model Takuya Kimura leads a cast of veteran television stars on a mission to save the earth from certain doom. As in the original series, the endgame phase of a space war with an alien race has Earth slowly irradiated to a dry, glowing, lifeless crisp by alien missiles. As second in command of the refitted WW2 battleship, Koda must run the gauntlet of the alien enemy force as the ship races from Earth to the Large Megallanic Cloud to find the cure for doomed humanity.

While technically a space opera, Space Battleship Yamato has the heart of a disaster movie. True to the original series, the film repeatedly preaches stoicism and the virtues of taking one for the team. Characters of varying importance have a habit of making grand speeches before expiring heroically on screen while they are saluted by teary-eyed colleagues. Moments like this are made even more poignant by the tendency of the cast to go for broke every chance they get to overact in typical Japanese sci-fi television style.

When done to these extremes, the film does serve as a campy tribute to an embarrassing 70’s animated series. This is topped only by the retro set design of the spaceship, which uses periscopes in lieu of a radar screen, walkie talkies for ship communication, gun grips with actual triggers for a targeting system. The combination of an overserious premise played for keeps by an overacting cast in a retro set ensures that this film will be a camp classic years from now.