Our Star Blazers!

One of the perks of my early morning workouts is I get to watch programs in which Lisa would have zero interest. Tomorrow I'll receive the first disc of Star Blazers. I fondly remember Star Blazers from my childhood, when I was steeped in fanaticism for Star Wars and the original Battlestar Galactica. Star Blazers was another early Japanese anime import like Speed Racer and Marine Boy, the latter of which was one of my favorite cartoons. But unlike those shows, Star Blazers was much less of a kid's program.

Star Blazers, aka Space Battleship Yamato, was a serialized show about the crew of the Argo (renamed by the American translators who decided to gloss over the Yamato's WWII Japanese Navy history) who were off to save the Earth from destruction. The first two seasons only aired where I lived, but there was a third with a cast of different voice actors that is available on DVD. There were also movie versions that offered slightly different variations on the TV series. I've seen Arrivederci Yamato, which was The Empire Strikes Back of the series - darker, moodier, and almost everyone dies. After its success it was converted into the show's second season, The Comet Empire, (good, but the movie's superior) where the characters lived and the franchise continued.


Of course, the draw for me was the villain. Like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, the protagonist of Star Blazers, Derek Wildstar, was sort of a twerp. But the villain was evil, icy, cool. Desslok, the Gamilon leader bent on the destruction of Earth in Season 1 and the returning anti-hero in Season 2, was a regal, blue-skinned, blonde military genius clad in a an over-the-shoulder cape. In an inexplicable move by American translators, he was voiced with a fey, lilting falsetto. The effeminate, bored voicing of this ruthless general made him all that more chilling and mysterious. I think you'd truly have to see it to appreciate it, but Desslok by far is my favorite sci-fi bad guy.

I initially was going to skip right to Season 3, but decided to start at the beginning. That means I've got 12 discs to view before I get to the all-new-to-me third season chronicling The Bolar Wars, but as long as my memory of the series hasn't betrayed me like it did with Speed Racer's campy goofiness, I think I'll relish every episode.

Go to StarBlazers.com for a lot more info on the show, and check out their all-new online comic book serial, Star Blazers Rebirth. It's kind of a Star Blazers: The Next Generation play on the series, and so far it's been pretty darn cool.