Crown Jewels of Anime: Space Battleship Yamato

In this exclusive series our guest author Tim Eldred picks the top ten crown jewels of anime:

As a guy who started watching anime in 1980, I was lucky enough to catch the virus when the medium was in a creative upswing the likes of which simply hasn’t been seen since. Of course, there was great stuff before that, but never in quite so much abundance. The early 80s in particular were chock full of shows that had the power to make me (A) cry like a baby or (B) leap out of my chair like a sports fan. And any show that could do both became a crown jewel in my eyes. They haven’t all been officially exported yet, which means a lot of people still have an opportunity to experience them for the first time. Here’s number 1 on my top ten list:

Space Battleship Yamato

How does one objectively describe an anime saga that changed one’s life? You can’t, so there’s no point in trying. Space Battleship Yamato is simply the greatest of them all. The proof of this is that you didn’t even have to see it for it to change your life. If you became an anime fan after the year 1977, you have Yamato to thank. That was the year the first movie hit theatres in Japan with the same impact that Star Wars had here. (It was a compilation of the inaugural 1974 TV series, but that’s beside the point.) It was the first ever ‘anime boom’ and everything that’s come out of Japan since then has been an echo of it.

What evidence backs such a claim? Before Yamato, no anime property had brought together such a wide audience and opened the doors for so much merchandising. The marketing of Yamato was as big as the anime story itself.

Multiple companies piled on to catch some of the windfall, some with virtually identical licensing contracts that put them in direct competition with each other to come up with better stuff. Out of this fray came numerous formats for books, music, toys, home video, model kits, games, etc. This was the birthplace for the modern anime goods market that we still wallow in over 30 years later.

All that would be enough, but it doesn’t hurt that Yamato has some of the most enthralling stories, appealing characters, coolest designs, and entrancing music you’ll find in any series either before or since. And there’s a lot of it, too; from 1974 to ‘83, three TV series and 5 movies kept audiences riveted. Star Blazers, the English-language version, worked pretty much the same magic in the US even without all the extra hype, creating an entire generation of anime fans that still can’t get enough of it. If you’re one of the few who still hasn’t experienced this jewel of jewels, I am insanely jealous of you. Get yourself over to www.starblazers.com and fix that immediately!

Below: Destroying the Comet Empire, just a typical day for the Star Force!

Tim Eldred is a graphic novelist, TV animation artist, and hopeless fanboy. You can see his work at www.starblazers.com and www.greasemonkeybook.com.