Space Battleship Yamato is a short science fiction, shonen manga series. Shonen means its intended audience is children, teenagers. I do not really engage with this kind of reads because they tend to be simple but I took the risk with this one. Why? Because it is a classic. This series was written in Japanese between 1975 and 1980.
The story follows a starship, Yamato, on a journey to save earth. It is the 22nd century, and earth is dying due to radiation and attacks from the Gamilians, a hostile alien race. After losing most of its space fleet humans receive a message from Starsha, an alien woman from planet Iscandar. Starsha offers humans the knowledge to build a powerful spaceship to travel 148 thousand light years to Iscandar and collect a device which could clean Earth from radioactivity. Reinvigorated with hope humans rebuild Yamato (an old spaceship) with powerful weapons and engines which can travel faster than light. But Yamato's voyage won't be easy as the Gamilians set all their power to destroy the battleship and with it all hope for humanity.
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| Admiral Okita |
Opinion: Considering its intended demographics I think this is an excellent book. Story and art wise. This is a space opera with light sciency elements. This means scientific issues are not discussed in depth, maybe only mentioned. For example at trying to explain how Yamato can travel at warp speeds and what happens during warp the author shows the crew saying they are about to or in warp, the space around changes and we cannot see the stars. Of course I should not be asking for more but I felt the author left a hole there especially because of the vast distances (148,000 light years!!) Yamato travelled in a matter of days. Aside from the science, the technology depicted in the story seemed to me old fashioned. But I didn't mind, the art for the technology and landscapes is great. I cannot say the same about the drawings of people. I think the designs of the Admiral and main crew are cool but the rest are forgettable.
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| The AI and the doctor |
The story is a classic epic tale with the heroes fighting their way through the stars to save earth. The Admiral is a character who greatly influences the rest and who would become a legend. Susumu Kodai is the hero, brave and courageous who revers and follows the Admiral's steps. This is most evident in the second part of the book were the earth government goes nuts and ignoring obvious dangers decides to go against its own heroes. This is a bit of political commentary I appreciated. The Doctor, who loves sake, provides an element of childish humour, a nice touch ever now and then.
And the robot was a great surprise to me. It teams up with the Doctor in some of the funny panels as it gets "drunk" with sake. Despite its silly behaviour this robot (an artificial intelligence in an old fashioned robotic body) has some brilliant interventions where it wants to risk it's "live" to get something done. The AI says it is a man and no one objects. I think it is because in that society people co-exist with AI. Understand they were created in the image and likeness of the human brain, so in essence they are the same as humans. Anyway, this is not part of the story, but something I thought after reading it. Actually this is what I like about reading science fiction, it provides food for thought and more questions.
My edition was published in 2019 by Seven Seas and it has 647 pages.
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