 |
Originally created in 1974, known as Uchuu Senkaan - Space Battleship
(lit. cruiser) - Yamato in Japan, this series must be credited as the father of today's
anime.
Many now criticize this Leiji Matsumoto and Yoshinobu Nishizaki classic
as being out of date, inferior to today's higher animation standards,
but on a cold day in early January of 1978, I turned on to TV38, WSBK
in Boston and my trip down the anime road was secured! The american
version, renamed as Starblazers, was a soap opera set in space with
illustrations and animation that overshadowed other cartoons of the
day like Woody Woodpecker or the Jetsons.
While the premise was a bit ludicrous, I mean an old WWII battleship in space??, for an
impressionable eight year old this was pure magic. The music was truly magnificent and
intensified the emotions of the story line ten fold. (I have the CDs - check the links
below) So many questions too... Why didn't the Gamilons destroy the ship 10 times over?
Why didn't Lysis (Dommel) SMITE the ship all the way back to Earth? Why didn't someone
fire at the damned bridge? Why did Desslok turn blue in the middle of the "Ecto
Gas" episode?
Although, we'll never know who all the voice actors were in this series,
they made the American version, period!
I would like to thank each of them for the emotion that they put into
their acting. This truly made Starblazers a series that I will always
remember and have a great deal of nostalgia for! No other anime series,
no matter how good, will ever take its place in my mind.
|
