Space Battleship Yamato

This latest production of Reiji Matsumoto's classic series deserves high ratings for its production value especially considering its low budget of 12 million USD, which is less than a fifth of average Hollywood motion pictures.

In the year 2199 earth is under attack by planet Gamiras and is hopelessly contaminated by radiation. One day they receive a transmission from planet Iskandar with a plan for warp engine and a wave cannon. In their last hope, people of Japan uses this information to transform battleship Yamato - a world war II relic that is now exposed out of a dried up sea bed into a spaceship. They set out to Iskandar which exists in the great Magellan nebula in hopes of finding an answer to earth's problem.

I see touch of Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica in the overall looks and feel of the props, ships and the battle sequences, but it's certainly the very best special effects science fiction I've ever seen to come out of Japan. I'd say that Japanese sci-fi have finally come of age in this movie.

The final sequence of this movie is very Japanese in my opinion, and might be over melodramatic for the international audience, but the movie was made for the Japanese viewers, so I don't have any problems there.

Takuya Kimura has a habit of stretching out the ending of a word when calling out orders, and speaking dramatically which sounded odd at times, and the dead pan acting of Meisa Kuroki could have been more charming, but overall things were believable and didn't mess up the story.

Beautifully done movie with real feeling of being out there in space, with unbelievable special effects considering its budget. This is certainly the best sci-fi movie to come out of Japan, and is Toho's new masterpiece.