Uchuu Senkan Yamato III

Leiji Matsumoto is back again fast for the third season of Yamato. He once again, directed his original work along with most of the same crew as before. After watching Be Forever Yamato, this series had much to live up to.
The time setting takes place as a sequel to Be Forever Yamato. A stray missile from a battle going on in distant space goes into the Earth’s sun causing nuclear fusion to inevitably make the sun go super nova. OK, so already a little ridiculous in the overall plot. There are two options in the story: one is to try and control the sun and ... the other is to find another planet to migrate to. Science aside, it sounds crazy either way.

It’s the same crew doing the same Yamato stuff without much change. Although the doom impending on Earth, like the first Yamato, does bring some suspension to the show, there just is not enough variety or anything the audience has not seen before. Even old enemies are brought back. The first 15 episodes almost feel like a complete waste of time once, without spoiling it, a character comes in contact with Yamato. There is a sort of three way war going on throughout the universe of the show, but it is never capitalized on in any proper way.

When it comes down to it, Yamato 3 is an average space opera anime at best. Plus, with Be Forever Yamato coming out in the same year, there just is not enough room in the Yamato universe for this mediocre one. This can be skipped unless you are a diehard fan of the Yamato universe.

Yamato 3 starts out with a pretty ok premise. The Sun is heating up due to a stray missile hitting it and now the crew needs to set out to find a new habitable planet. The Idea is pretty good but the execution is very mediocre and doesn't live up to the previous two series. First the good parts of it, and that would be the new expansions to the universe with the new enemies. Although the bolar federation is not nearly as good of a villain as Gamilus or Gatlantis, they are a massive improvement over the black nebula empire from be forever Yamato.

Now ... for the bad. the show introduces several new characters in which next to nothing is done with. Domon and Ahega are completely flat and dry and I completely forgot Ahega existed for half the show. I was expecting them to be built up as new overconfident rookies who have to learn the ropes and slowly fill their roll on the Yamato, however both get barely any screentime for their development. Even the returning characters feel like they're not even present. The bridge crew seems to have lost all of the personality and character from the previous series. Kodai just feels like the generic space opera protaganist, In Yamato 1 Kodai goes through many emotional struggles regarding his parent's death but here he just has nothing going for him. Shima barely even feels like he's there, he seems to just have almost no screentime whatsoever. The space battle scenes are also not as good and so much of the first half feels extremely pointless.