English Dub Review: Star Blazers: Space Battleship Yamato 2199 “Forever War”

Final battle…FIGHT!

Overview (Spoilers Below)

While the Gamilans engage in the start of what appears to be an inner conflict, the Yamato is making its return trip back to Earth with what is essentially the planet’s last chance of survival. Out of nowhere, Dessler shows up, boards the Yamato with a slew of robot soldiers, and kills Yuki along with a few others. Kodai is devastated, but the Yamato deploys a few secret weapons that allow it to destroy all of the robot soldiers as well as the horse that Dessler rode in on. The ship narrowly escapes to our own Milky Way galaxy for the stretch home.

Our Take

Pretty killer final few scenes, I think the show did a good enough job of establishing Yuki as a main character so that when she did die, we would care. That’s an impressive feat considering there are SO MANY characters on this show that you have to account for that in some instances you completely forget about them until they show up. I DON’T think they did as good of a job in investing that much time in Dessler’s relationship with the other Yamato stowaway that was killed off at the same time as Yuki, certainly not enough to explain why Dessler wanted to board and then leave the ship unceremoniously in the first place. There are some really well sci-fi elements here, but I would’ve liked to have seen SOME sort of a reaction from Okita as well as enemy soldiers were boarding his ship.

A couple of fewer characters could’ve done this series wonders earlier on to help expand background stories for those that perished.

Score
7/10