Uchuu Senkan Yamato: Fukkatsu-hen

-This review may contain spoilers from the movie and from the original series-

When talking about anime classics, there are not many series that rank higher than Uchuu Senkan Yamato, and with good reason, as Yamato is one of the greatest space operas out there.

This movie takes place in the year 2220, 21 years after the original series (which also has a remake now), and it's a direct sequel, where Kodai will again be the main character and will be in charge of leading an inmigration fleet to an other planet because a black hole is approaching Earth, and the days of the blue planet are ... counted.

This completely remade story shows us how CGI can actually be an incredible tool in animation when used well (and when having good budget). Yamato's animation, which uses CGI A LOT, is really mindblowing. Throughout the whole movie, there is always consistent great animation, with very well made battles between spaceships. Yamato is second to none in this.

Music also plays a big factor in this movie, which uses a lot of beautiful classical music such as Tchaikovsky's Marche Slave, Chopin's Nocturne #1 or Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Besides that, there's always the classical Yamato theme played in grand fashion and in various ways and a very nice ending to close the movie.

The story started good, but it did get worse by the second half. Still, thanks to great animation, sound and action, the movie never ceased to entertain one bit. The first half of the movie was pretty good story-wise. Kodai had a clear mission, we got to meet a great enemy general and, while not very complex, things were very good. Things got a little worse when we suddenly got a rather plain villain, making the series almost a simple evil vs good thing. Still action didn't drop one bit, and the Space Battleship Yamato proved to be as awesome as ever, showing its upgraded power to the fullest. The movie put the ship in some dire situations, which resulted in some of the best space action I've ever seen.

Besides Kodai, who enters the movie as a memorable character already, there isn't really any character that stood out much to me. They fullfilled their role well, but they were definitely not as good as the original Yamato crew.

Another slight problem is that for flashback scenes, they actually really just used things from the 1983 movie, which of course, looked very out of place in this 2010 movie. Still, that was just at a very specific moment of the anime, so it's not something that will really hinder the experience in any way. You can actually be positive and use the moment to see how anime has evolved in the last 30 years.

You will notice that some major events happened between the original series and this movie... that'd be Kanketsu-hen, which hasn't been remade. While it's impossible not to notice, and while having watched Kanketsu-hen before would make the experience better, you don't really need to watch it. Just with the original series you should be fine.

This movie's definitely not as good as the original series, but it's still a very nice sequel, and some of the main strong points of Yamato are kept intact. It is something very nice how Kodai has matured as a person between the original series and this movie, as you can see how, little by little, he's becoming more like the legendary Juzo Okita.

And even if its not as good as the original series, if you enjoyed that one, Uchuu Senkan Yamato: Fukkatsu-hen should be one hell of a ride. But again, watching the original series is a must in this case.

Wow, who would have thought that one of the least discussed entries in the Yamato franchise would turn out to be one of the absolute best, and yet here we are.

Space Battleship Yamato: Resurrection achieves what many of the previous movies in the franchise failed to do, by just barely managing to squeeze a coherent and dramatic space opera epic into a single film. Whereas the likes of Farewell Yamato suffered from extremely truncated plotting despite being upwards of 2h30 long, Resurrection skillfully weaves many plot threads together into something that ultimately satisfies. Yes, the film could still perhaps have stood to be slightly ... longer in order to add a little more weight to certain key scenes (and honestly they probably had enough material here to produce a full 24 episode TV series if they had really wanted to), but I will readily accept a film which surges relentlessly forward, as this does, over one which crawls along at a snail's pace.

The story itself is classic Yamato, filled with heroism, sacrifice, and themes of duty, honor and earned respect. This time the sci-fi elements fall slightly more within the realms of reality than the lovably ludicrous premises of previous entries, though it probably goes without saying that this is still fairly cartoonish stuff. The imminent destruction of the Earth due to an encroaching black hole establishes the familiar atmosphere of impending doom for the franchise, but this time the humanoid threat is more complex, and the politics more developed, with an enemy faction made up of many races who are not necessarily comfortable alongside each other. This all provides the backdrop for scenes of valorous deeds and desperate gambits as the Yamato, under command of the now older and more authoritative Kodai, struggles to defend the vulnerable emigrant fleet carrying humanity to a new world. While the main plot is fully wrapped-up, there are some prominent side threads left hanging, presumably for a sequel which sadly never materialized.

Production-wise, Resurrection is superb, with top rate visuals and audio. The ships of course are now CG but they look impressively detailed and thankfully there is no simulated-low-framerate nonsense being employed in the rendering. The characters on the other hand are traditionally animated and move with the high degree of fluidity and expressiveness that you might find in something like Gundam Unicorn or another similarly lavish work. Perhaps the biggest highlight of the film's presentation though is its music - suitably epic reworkings of classic Yamato themes now sit alongside pieces from the classical repertoire, which are all beautifully matched to the scenes in which they appear; the frenetic third movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata being used as the backdrop to a space dogfight is particularly electrifying.

Overall the biggest disappointment with this film is simply that, as previously mentioned, more weren't made. From what I can gather, sequels were planned but scrapped in favor of Yamato 2199, which released three years later. It's difficult to find solid info on this so I can't say for sure how that outcome was reached, but I might guess that its connection to the previous Yamato installments of the 70s and 80s made Resurrection seem inaccessible to younger audiences in a way that the full-on reboot of 2199 wasn't. While it's true that familiarity with these characters will make the film more impactful, I think this could be enjoyed as a standalone experience by anyone who craves a well-crafted space opera anime. Certainly, fans of Yamato should not make the same mistake I did by overlooking this for years, it's great.