Final Yamato Meta

There are some interesting bits of meta this time. The first little bit is this film is almost immediately after the third Space Battleship Yamato season, Bolar Wars. That is a pretty unique season. One where it’s a Bolar Empire vs Dessler’s new Gamilian Empire face off. The Earth is a bit of a victim of being in-between the conflict. I mean, the Earth’s sun has been struck and humanity might need a new home. Mostly inconsequential thing when it comes to this film because Dessler is barely a part of it and the enemy empire is an original one. Still, these things are important to the franchise’s lore and that is context needed when discussing this film. 

The second thing is that Final Yamato was the longest animated film for over 36 years. Final Yamato’s longest cut is 163 minutes in length. Something that’s still quite insane to this day. This film came out in 1983 and the record was broken in 2019 with In This Corner of the World’s extended cut. A film of 168 minutes in length. Considering the context of this film, it makes sense for this one to be long. It concluded a popular franchise in a powerful, wonderful, and explosive way. That is what Final Yamato is about. 

The Origins of Life on Earth 

What better way to start a finale than opening with how life started on Earth. Do you know about the Noah story from the Bible and other stories about a great flood? Kind of related is this series making the case of a wandering water planet called Aquarius that flew by Earth one day a long time ago. It dumped enough water on Earth to start life on it. Out of that starting of life comes humanity and another related race called the Danquil. Everyone, meet the plot of this film and the villains. 

The planet Aquarius is on its way back to earth, but it’s supposed to be there in 6000 years, not 20 days. The Yamato investigated the collision of multiple galaxies and saw Dessler and Gamilius’ new home was destroyed. They had to make an emergency jump to escape, but the Yamato jumped just in time to see a planet being flooded by Aquarius. They already encountered the Danquil and were completely destroyed. In the end, the Yamato only made it back because of the Yamato’s automated jump system. An incident that allowed the Danquil to decide to use Aquarius to flood Earth and then wait to use it for their own home. 

So not only is this the standard sort of space war movie that the Yamato franchise is good at. There is an insane power in the franchise for it being able to add nuance to a situation where there usually isn’t much. It’s also a countdown movie as this time bomb of a planet is on its way to destroy all life on Earth. Considering how the Yamato saw this happen to a race of people randomly and failed to help anyone, the tension is high. Can the Yamato stop the Danquil and possibly make peace or will the Earth die out? This is the supposed final film after all so who knows? Anything can happen and it’s wonderfully presented. 

Challenges never seen before 

I think it’s a cliché thing to say that this Yamato movie has to separate itself from the rest of the franchise. This is the final film and so many things of different varieties have happened in Yamato that it’s hard to make it any bigger. In fact, the Yamato has already been destroyed in some forms in other films. Especially the second one. And the Yamato has always had so many people die on it to face the next threat. So what is the best way to handle a finale and give it the final feeling of goodbye? The answer that Final Yamato came to was not just saying goodbye to the ship, but Captain Okita himself. 

The first Yamato series and film ended with the death of Captain Okita. Well apparently he was only mostly dead. Sure, whatever. This is a franchise that has fast moving roaming planets that travel faster than light. So Captain Okita led the Yamato for the last time. Good for him. It only makes the finale hit harder. At the end of the film after fighting to save the Earth, Captain Okita and the Yamato die and sink on Aquarius. All the crew do is watch as everything they believe is not just badly damaged, but gone. Everything they loved and bled for is now just gone.

What hurts more is how much Susumu Kodai and the others put their entire worth and personality of being on the Yamato crew. This is the man who failed at making decisions in the beginning of the film that actually saved people. A man that withdrew from being a part of the Yamato crew but immediately regretted it  because that’s where he finds his entire worth. I’m sure the rest of the cast felt the same way because the Yamato is their ship. Now that their identity is gone there are the only relationships they had beforehand to make some kind of future. Yuki and Susumu have a future and the Yamato was the thing that stopped them from getting married.

Some alien races are just dicks

There is a lot of work to give the Danquil at least a personality. As mentioned before, the Earth was what gave these people their existence. The scene of the beginning with the Yamato crew trying to save them gives their civilization an air of being a tragic people. Only one person was saved. At the same time, their ships use radiation torpedoes that no one ever has before. It’s a legitimate threat that has eliminated fleets of people and has become such a worry. Saving the Earth meant finding a way to deal with the radiation or it’s just death outright, 

I also feel like the Yamato crew just being there was the reason why the Danguil people just went after Earth. They felt pretty petty to me and that’s great. Same with the emperor of the Danquil people who wanted his son to destroy the Earth and carry on his cause. So clearly, the cast were so small and vulnerable compared to the other empires that the Yamato crew faced. If they didn’t have radiation weaponry, the Earth would have finished them. That sense of a microscale makes them so relatable. Never mind the technology to move a planet travel faster than light. Not all of it hit, but it was a great idea. 

Makes the film feel personal on some level because it’s a grudge situation. A superficial one, but still. To me, the final encounter between Susumu and the Danquil emperor really cemented that. After so many battles on land and space, this was the final jump before Aquarius made it to earth. What if the Danquil and humanity lived on Earth safely together? But the emperor refused to the very end. That also led to him killing his son while trying to shoot Kodai because that’s who the Yamato saved in the beginning. That was the moment the emperor realized how horrible he was and the Danquil people died there. Only the planet they sent to Earth remained, 

Goodbye for now

Final Yamato is just gorgeous. There is such a flex in the beginning jumping from the collision of a galaxy to the Danquil planet flooding to the Yamato hit with radiation torpedoes. Already, there are so many complicated backgrounds, Yamato actually looked great trying to survive so many things. A wonderful set of explosives too. Of course the film just kept going on that level and kept going.  As a goodbye to everything, the production crew went whole hog on everything and it’s not only one of the longest movies in animation but one of the most gorgeous films. 

Man, this film was good. Great even. It did the best job to pluck at my soul and it did. We even got to see Dessler again as well as just had another epic, sad space adventure. One with a lot of heart and meaning like the rest of the Yamato franchise. The cast grew quite a bit since the first Adventures to now and there were some losses and growing along the way. Quite a tear jerker of a film because One Piece isn’t the first time someone has cried over a ship dying. You can say that about this film too. Watch it and love it if you at least watched the other films. 

Next post, we jump into the next film in the Yamato series from 2009. Yamato really was closed for a while. It took a lot for that seal to open once again and now the show is at full speed.