[StarForce Nightmare 1 12 Full Version
Oludare Padilla
Star Blazers consists of three television seasons. Each is an English-language adaption of its Japanese counterpart Space Battleship Yamato. However, the Japanese saga entails more than just these three television seasons, and part of this missing portion of the saga occurs between Seasons Two and Three, in the movies Yamato: The New Voyage and Be Forever Yamato.
The second season takes place one year after the Argo returns to Earth with the Cosmo DNA and Earth's ecosystem is restored. It now faces a new, dangerous enemy, the Comet Empire, led by Prince Zordar. Unlike Gamilon, which was seeking to capture and colonize Earth, Zordar simply wants to conquer and annex Earth to his Empire. Desslok, the Gamilon leader, also joins forces with Zordar, mainly because he wants revenge on the Argo for having destroyed Gamilon. The series revolves around the Argo, now commanded by Deputy Captain Derek Wildstar, working with the Earth Defense Force to face Zordar.
In the third season, the Argo is caught in the middle of a war between the Galmans (the reformed Gamilon Empire) and the Bolar Federation. A stray missile fired during the war causes the sun's thermonuclear reactions to go out of control. Unless it can be stopped, the sun will destroy the Earth in one year and the entire solar system in three. Now officially in command of the Argo, Derek Wildstar is charged to help find a new home for Earth's population.
In 1977, before the debut of the American Star Blazers series, the Japanese anime film Space Battleship Yamato (or Space Cruiser Yamato as it was known at the time) was dubbed into English and retitled Space Cruiser. This film was sold and released in several countries, including the United States, Britain and France. The American release was extremely limited, and eventually ended up airing on television in the Los Angeles area in 1978.
Following this, the Westchester Corporation identified the first Space Battleship Yamato anime series from 1974 as a potential "kids' property"[4] and bought the rights to the first two seasons (season three had not been made yet). Dubbing and editing were done by Griffin-Bacal Advertising and production and syndication was handled by Claster Television. The Japanese language elements such as series title and scene captions were replaced or removed. New opening credit rolls were created featuring the "Star Blazers" logo. The series premiered in the San Francisco Bay Area on September 17, 1979 as part of the weekday show Captain Cosmic on KTVU 2.[5] Star Blazers initial broadcasts received high ratings, and subsequent rebroadcasts contributed to build anime fandom in northern California.
Being marketed to a school-age audience, this animated space opera was bowdlerized by the American editors in order to satisfy the broadcast standards and practices offices of American television stations.[6] However, far fewer edits were made than with another 1970s anime, Battle of the Planets (an edited version of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman). Even in its edited American form Star Blazers retains practically all of its uniquely Japanese characteristics in terms of content, plot, character development, and philosophy.[7]
Many fans regard Star Blazers as more "adult" than other cartoons shown in the United States at the time, as personal tragedy, funeral scenes for fallen comrades, and the extinction faced by humanity were left intact. The very Japanese theme of "the honorable enemy" was also a tremendously important aspect of character development; in particular, the major villain of the first series, Desslok, during the second and third seasons, as well as in the later movies.
The most significant change made by Griffin-Bacal was purely narrative: In the original series, the Yamato and its crew were regarded as a single entity, the narrator each week urging "Yamato, hurry to Iscandar!". In English, the significance of the name Yamato as a word the viewers would identify with, signifying the land, people, and spirit of Japan, is lost, so in Star Blazers the crew were named the Star Force and became the focus of the series. The ship is still the historical Yamato and is referred to as such in early episodes (although the ship's backstory is edited out), but is renamed the Argo (after the ship Argo of Jason and the Argonauts); the crew keep calling "it" (not "her") Star Force and the ship becomes merely the vessel in which they travel.[6]
The first two seasons (The Quest for Iscandar and The Comet Empire) were broadcast in 1979 and 1980. By the time the third season of Yamato was released, the original voice actors were unable to be reached by the American production company. The third season (released as The Bolar Wars) played to a small test market and was not as widely seen until its release on video and DVD. It remains less popular than the first two seasons. Many of the original English voice actors have since been tracked down and interviewed for the more recent Star Blazers DVD releases.
Christopher John reviewed Starblazers in Ares Magazine #8 and commented that "Starblazers is well worth more than one viewing, even if it is run at 6:30 in the morning. It may be the only chance you'll have to see a beautiful and exciting work of art."[9]
During the mid-1990s, Walt Disney Pictures optioned the rights with the intent to produce a Star Blazers live-action movie from producer Josh C. Kline. An early draft of the script by Oscar-nominated writer Tab Murphy was leaked on the Internet in the late 1990s.[10] The story was a retelling of the Season One plot, and followed a ragtag crew of misfits (most of whom are not named after any of the original series' crew) aboard the rebuilt United States battleship Arizona on a mission to save Earth. The project was abandoned by Disney following the departure of David Vogel, Disney's President of Production. In April 2006, it was announced that another attempt at creating a live-action version of the story would be made, but no movie ever came out of it.[11][12]
The first adaptation was a set of books presenting the original first season in five volumes using the original cel animation.[20] It was published in 1983 by West Cape Co., Ltd. under their imprint, W.C.C. Animation Comics. The books use digest footage that was already laid out and published for the Japanese market as "film comics". The translations relied heavily on the English dialog of Star Blazers, with minor modifications. The English language editions were printed in Japan and distributed by Books Nippan of Los Angeles, the American branch of Nippon Shuppan Hanbai. The title of each book includes "Original Title: Space Cruiser Yamato" as a subtitle.[7]
From March 1995 to May 1997, Voyager Entertainment (under the Argo Press imprint) published 12 issues of Star Blazers: The Magazine of Space Battleship Yamato before publication was halted due to poor sales.[23]
Star Blazers Rebirth is a webcomic formerly featured on the official Star Blazers site. Although similar in storyline, it is not to be confused with the newest Yamato film, Yamato: Rebirth. The art and story is by Tim Eldred, who was also responsible for the Voyager Entertainment series. The Earth is once again threatened by a menace from space headed for the Earth 25 years after the first series; this time in the shape of what appears to be a moving black hole. At first, Earth's government does not believe the information, on the basis that black holes aren't supposed to be able to move. However, they eventually agree to send Earth's newest and most powerful ship, Andromeda II, to investigate. Upon reaching its destination, Andromeda II is quickly destroyed with all hands on board, though not before transmitting data to Earth. Shocked by the disaster and the lack of response from Earth's government, Wildstar remains out of service. He is now in his 40s, with gray hair and a beard grown in deliberate homage to the late Captain Avatar. He is haunted by nightmares both of his past and alternate pasts- the nightmares come but different people die, or familiar faces have new names. Finally Wildstar and Sandor devote their wealth and energies to rebuilding the nearly shattered Argo. The ship had been encased in ice and left floating in Earth orbit at the end of Final Yamato. Since most of the old surviving bridge crew of Argo are now captains in command of their own ships, many of the new crew members are the children or grandchildren of the original Argo crew. Earth's evacuation to numerous colonies has left Earth's forces stretched far too thinly, with several colonies beginning to break away from Earth's control under command of Captain Nenezich. Short on supplies, Argo heads toward the center of the galaxy in an attempt to learn more about the mysterious black hole and a rash of attacks on Earth's colonies.
DVDs of the three television seasons were released in 2002 by Voyager Entertainment, entitled The Quest for Iscandar, The Comet Empire and The Bolar Wars.[26] Each season is contained on six discs, and each disc included bonus footage or material. The discs are available individually or as collections, in three separate boxed sets of six discs each.[27]
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