Star Blazers Series 1: The Quest for Isandar - Still the best, 30 years on

I pity the kids today. With the onslaught of media bombarding them from all sides, little things like Television is mundane and common. With stations like the Cartoon Network on twenty-four hours a day, animation is no longer special. Saturday Mornings - getting up at the crack of dawn with a big bowl of coco-pebbles is alien to them. They miss out on cool rituals like this:

I remember the late 70’s, and how I exactly had how long it would take to get out the door and run the half mile to school. It was an exact science, fine tuned to the moment. At 7:30 AM - like clockwork - I would park myself in front of the TV set, splurge on half an hour of anime (not that we knew it by that name back then), and then *JET* out the front door at 7:55 to get to school by 8:15.

What as the show that consumed my attention as a child? Why of Star Blazers, of course!

Here, let me use the opening from each episode to set up the premise:

In the year 2199, Earth was under severe attack by the mysterious planet Gamalon. Gamalon planet bombs covered the Earth with a deadly radioactive pollution - and as a result, within a years time, Earth will become unlivable. But, on the planet Iscandar, there is a machine that can remove the radioactivity. Queen Starsha offers it to the people of Earth. A team of star blazers called the Star Force undertakes the perilous journey. But can the Star Force travel 148,000 light years and back in just one earth year . . .

In 1975 (or there about), Yoshinobu Nishizaki and Leiji Matsumoto crafted a science fiction series that ran on Japanese television to marginal success. The ratings were meager, and the series was destined to become a footnote in the annals of anime history. Then a little independent film that you may have heard of – Star Wars - changed everything. Suddenly Science Fiction was HUGE, and anything with robots and spaceships was in demand. When Yamato was rerun on television, it was a ratings smash.

It didn’t hurt matters that the story was actually pretty good too.

And so along with Robotech (AKA Super Dimensional Fortress Macross), Speed Racer (AKA Mach Go Go Go) and Astroboy (AKA Mighty Atom), Star Blazers joins the pantheon of anime shows that stands the test of time.

Why? The ship is filled with characters you care about – even the secondary characters get some pretty beefy development. One stand out example is how Homer, the Star Forces' radio operator, gets a whole episode to himself as he intercepts messages from Earth about how bad the readioactive polution is getting. It’s all a Gamalon ploy to undermine the morale of the Star Force, but it’s still some pretty heavy stuff. The action is really good, with some suspenseful moments and hair pulling cliffhangers. The soundtrack, amazingly untouched during the American localization, is top self stuff. In short – well, I’ve summed it up as an animated Japanese Babylon 5. It’s not quite as involved and detailed, but it’s a pretty close parallel.

THE AMERICAN LOCALIZATION -
In 1978 Westchester Corporation bought the rights to the first two seasons for broadcast in America. The soundtrack was dubbed and the animation was edited to meet broadcast standards and practices of the time. However unlike the painful hack jobs that most imported cartoons undergo, the voice acting in Star Blazers is really well done. Voices like Desslok, although not the most masculine sounding of villains, is filled with suave charm and a sinister determination - adding quite a bit to the series.

The show retains some very strong Japanese themes - content and plot, character development, and philosophy remain more or less intact from the original version. Time and again we get moments of personal tragedy, funeral scenes for fallen friends and the extermination of the human race on a global scale. Some of drama has been scaled back, but more often than not the original shines through.

THE VIDEO -
The most recent format, the DVD releases from Voyager Entertainment, have been . . . how shall we say, spotty. The very first volume has no menus to speak of, chapter stops laid out in a strange manner (not at the end of the 5 episodes on the disc), and features no extras. Even the box art was from the third movie and featured characters that never showed up in series on. Recently VEI went back and re-mastered the disc, bringing it in line with the rest of the series. From volume two onward, the discs do feature menus, correct chapter stops, a handful of extras and so on.

Understandably, the video is not high quality. That’s only natural, given the nearly prehistoric nature of the series. Compared to the tapes releases however, the DVD looks golden. Also, keep in mind that the series IS old - nearly 25 years now, originally show in Japan in 1977. This means that the animation is not up to the level that it is today - closer to Speed Racer than Akria.

The audio is serviceable - dub only, no Japanese track. While it may anger the purists, the dub is really well done - on par, in my opinion, with the cowboy bebop dub.

THE EXTRAS -
Each individual DVD has a smattering of extras on it, ranging from character biographies, details of battles and planets visited by the Star Force, and a virtual tour of the Argo. The most unexpected extra appears on the insert - a listing of the original Japanese names, adapted slightly to the American series ("Argo Braves Death! Destroy the Gamilon Reflex Gun!" and so on). This is a very cool touch. The DVD box comes with a 22 page booklet with profiles and interviews with the Japanese production team, and some pre-production art. Not a bad package, considering the treatment some anime series tend to get.

THE BOTTOM LINE -
For all those people who mock anime for being nothing more than random acts of demon ninja samurai raping women for two hours - SHOW THEM THIS. Crafted nearly 30 years ago by the masterful hand of Leiji Matsumoto, the creative vision behind Captain Harlock, Galaxy Express 999 and so many others, Space Cruiser Yamato is one of his best works.