Review:
The original Star Blazers of the 1970s was my favorite of the early anime to hit North American after-school reruns - neither Voltron nor Battle of the Planets could compare to the dark tension and underdog tale of the Yamoto, her brave crew and their nearly hopeless mission.
The story was rebooted in 2019 as Star Blazers 2199 by Yoshinoby Nishizaki, with Michio Murakawa bringing it to Manga. Dark Horse then did us English readers the favor of bringing the manga North American readers as a 2-colume set.
The premise is straight-forward, even as the odds of success are as slim as ever. The Gamilans have arrived from space and bombed humanity almost out of existence. The remaining survivors have fled underground but the radiation will reach and kill them in another year. But a distant civilization on planet Iscandar has provied humanity with the Wave Motion Engine and a promise of a way to cleanse and restore the Earth, provided they can travel the vast distance and back in time.
Our Earth heroes resurrect and render space-worthy an old navy battleship and set out to cover the 300,000+ light year return journey in a year.
The situation is dire, the journey long and fraught, the mission critical and highly time-sensitive. And yet volume one is in no hurry. The creators keep a tight rein on the pace, allowing the characters and relationships to develop. It's a casual, nonchalant pacing, punctuated by bursts of intensity - the Operation M gambit, the conflict on Jupiter, the close call of even getting the Yamoto into space before another Gamilan bomb destroys it.
In fact the pace is so casual that at the end of volume 1 our heroes have only reached Saturn. As though Odysseus had only reached the second stop sign down the road on his classic journey. There is still so, so much space to be covered by our intrepid band of heroes!
The visuals of this manga volume are wonderful - by times fun, intense, even gratuitously if mildly sexy and suggestive. The sternness of the captain, the goofiness of the doctor, the sweet intensity of other characters. One place where Murakawa's art falls a little flat is in the emotions of grief in characters' reactions to the death and sacrifice of others. They must be entirely focused on their earth-saving job, as there are often few visual signs of what would be a natural emotional struggle.
Given how much of the story remains to be told, be ready for a jam-packed second volume!
Update: It has come to my attention that publisher Dark Horse does have plans to release a third and fourth Omnibus collecting this series. So the rest of the story does not really need to fit in volume two, as stated above. I have not been able to confirm a date for that release, so keep your eyes on the comic shops!
Description:
2199 will be Earth's final year--unless the voyage of Space Battleship Yamato can succeed! The alien Gamilas have devastated the biosphere, determined to reshape our planet into their own new home. But a third force has intervened, as an emissary from the distant Iscandar has given humanity the plans for a faster-than-light drive. If the Yamato can battle its way through the Gamilas fleet to reach Iscandar, their technology can heal the Earth--but the odds against us are literally astronomical...
The classic 1974 anime TV series Space Battleship Yamato became a fan phenomenon in North America under the title Star Blazers. Now the epic tale of a legendary WWII battleship retrofitted as a spacecraft on a mission to save Earth has been remade by the generation of Japanese creators that grew up inspired by it--with staff including Yutaka Izubuchi (Cowboy Bebop: The Movie), Nobuteru Yuki (Kids on the Slope), and Hideaki Anno (Evangelion)!
Collects: English translations of original Manga volumes 1 and 2
Authors: Michio Murakawa
Artists: Michio Murakawa
Published By: Dark Horse Manga
Published When: Aug. 27 2019
Parental Rating: PG-13
ISBN: 978-1506712208
Pages: 376 pages
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