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Forum - View topicUnjustly Ignored — Why Star Blazers 2199 is More Than Worth Your Time
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John Thacker
Posts: 1009 |
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Ridiculous claim, considering that in real life there are plenty of sycophants in these situations. It's inappropriate to make them all sycophants, and the show doesn't, but it would be unrealistic to have no sycophants. For American audiences, there's an interesting reference to the [url=https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/442nd_Infantry_Regiment_(United_States)]442nd Infantry[/url], the famous unit of Nisei Japanese American soldiers during World War II. Second class alien citizens of Gamilas, naturally. |
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2668 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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While I haven't seen the 2199 reboot, I did enjoy the classic manga version of Yamato that Seven Seas released, but it is very easy to see why 2199 has had trouble finding an audience with English-speaking fandom. In fact, the article itself addresses it very early on:
It's always treated as a special event in Japan, which isolates its reach with the rest of the world. The theatrical airings it always gets in Japan essentially kill any chance Yamato 2199 & its sequels can have at ever finding that immediate fandom, which is primarily curated today via simulcasts. Combine that with the fact that it took five years for 2199 itself to even receive an easily-accessible official English release to start with, and the franchise as a whole has essentially been dead in the water since the beginning for English-speaking fandom. This also doesn't take into consideration smaller factors, like the insistence on using the "Star Blazers" name (despite it not having any real cachet in literal decades), its generally hard sci-fi aesthetic (which, despite some outliers, has definitely fallen in popularity), etc. I do have 2199 via FUNimation's box sets, though, so one day I'll definitely join in on that bandwagon, because I do know that it's an excellent series, but I'm not surprised at all at why it's been unable to find even a decently-sized English-speaking fandom. It's essentially too iconic in Japan to be treated as anything other than a special event over there, even though treating it like any other anime would have ironically made it a bigger deal everywhere else. |
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BenFotomi
Posts: 12 |
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Hello Kevin,
It might only be a geograhical streaming issue, but both seasons of Star Blazers are available to stream in english for free on Funanimation: https://www.funimation.com/shows/star-blazers/ I really enjoyed someone finally posted about this great remake show! I'm old enough to have seen on TV the original version (I was a young kid, didn't understand anything  ), plus other series like Harlock and Grandizer (Was very popular with us, French Canadians). Later on, I was lucky enough to be able to watch Macross (aka Robotech) as a teenager, which had a huge impact on me! It was the first time I watched a "cartoon" that was not episodic and was hooked instanly.
Getting back on Super Battleship Yamato, when I saw the original announcement on ANN, I was super happy, but caustiously hyped. I wonder how they could bring this old space opera story to a new and broader audience. Sadly, the japanese anime business is still very late in the streaming and world wide distribution, so I had to dig a lot to be able to get my hands on it, but it was SO worth it. I showned the show to many of my friends whom love scifi stories and they all enjoyed it. The movie quality level of animation is amazing, the story is well adapted to a 2010+ audience. Not perfect, but a better watch than a lot of scifi TV shows I've seen. I just wished I could have seen it in theater, like the japanese audience. I'm very happy that japanese animation is getting a bigger audience now, I can watch the most popular movies in theater (sometimes just 1 or a few showing). Scifi is still a niche audience, so I'm keeping my hopes in check. 
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MFrontier
Posts: 13719 |
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I'm still waiting for them to (I guess?) release the current movies as episodes so Funimation can (I assume) start subbing and releasing them. |
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Abraham Omosun
Posts: 158 |
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I feel there are ways to praise a show's artistry without using a metric that is not known for 90% of anime (which you did for the rest of the article making its use more confusing). More on topic, this is one of those shows that is constantly in my "I will watch it when I have time pile" so it will take sometime before I get it. Question: is the series dubbed and how good is it (if the answer is yes?) |
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Anime World Order
 Posts: 390 Location: Florida |
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This is exactly it, and much of this also applies to Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These. We don't get to experience Yamato concurrently with Japan the way that we now do for Gundam. The Yamato business model is "sell movie tickets, then sell Japanese-priced Blu-Rays to audiences right as they exit the theater," which means they don't want an inexpensive streaming option or lower-priced US Blu-Rays (which are Region A, same as Japan) quickly available. That's why we're lucky if we get them within a year; heck, the Odyssey of the Celestial Ark movie that bridges the first 2199 series with the second 2202 series never came out here at all, and it was released in 2014. The quality of the show--and it IS high quality--doesn't even enter into it. |
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The_Daytona_500
 Posts: 105 |
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There's probably a lot of people that won't watch it until some streaming service puts out the tv broadcast version that has the awful Isao Sasaki and JAM Poo songs replaced with masterpieces like UVERworld's Fight For Liberty and Yasuda Rei's Best Of My Love. I myself am one of said people.
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Doctorkev
 Posts: 87 Location: Scotland |
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It's not so much the presence of the sycophants themselves that's the problem, it's that they are stereotypical and cartoonishly snivelling. They seemed like characters more suited to a show for much younger viewers and made it more difficult to take the antagonists seriously. |
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Doctorkev
Posts: 87 Location: Scotland |
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Thanks for pointing that out! I did not realise it was free to stream, as I'm a Funimation subscriber and it doesn't specify what's free and what isn't when you subscribe. So there's really no excuse for folks not to watch it! |
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blooperboy
 Posts: 138 |
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Upon moving in with new people there has been a slow exchanging of 'okay you HAVE to watch this' and Star Blazers is what was forced upon me. I loved it.
I had zero knowledge of the franchise before starting it, and enjoyed it. I also really liked all the call-backs that were explained to me, to the point that I've considered going back and watching the original series so I can REwatch this version and enjoy it on a deeper level. |
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Doctorkev
Posts: 87 Location: Scotland |
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With Space Battleship Yamato, it's almost like comparing a Disney theatrical animation release with your average Adult Swim animation. Yes, both may have other artistic merits, but the supremely obvious bells and whistles purchased by Massive Volumes Of Cash really are blatant. You just don't see action sequences like Yamato's in other anime without them splurging an enormous amount of cash. Also, yes both Star Blazers 2199 and 2202 are fully dubbed in English, and it is a fantastic dub. I did not watch either of these seasons subtitled as my son can't read fast enough to keep up. If only Funimation would also dub Star Blazers 2199 The Movie - Odyssey Of The Celestial Ark... |
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timeldred
Posts: 32 |
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The show certainly wasn't ignored over at my website, CosmoDNA. I covered the entire release of Yamato 2199 in real time, hoping to give American fans a comparable experience with Japanese fans. The site is ourstarblazers.com and it goes all the way back to 2002 (marking 20 years this summer).
Please join the party over there. I update on the 15th of every month and there's already well over a thousand pages of content. |
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DerekL1963
 Subscriber Posts: 1121 Location: Puget Sound |
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Back in 2018, Funi and Crunchy did a joint release - an episode a week. Myself and another blogger took on the massive task of weekly episode-by-episode coverage.
Sadly, despite massive efforts on both out parts, it went largely unnoticed. Feel free to check it out: https://apprenticemages.com/tag/star-blazers-2199/ |
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kgw
 Posts: 1181 Location: Spain, EU |
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I watched 1978 movie when I was a kid, but I the TV series was never released, so it's ignored at this side of the world.
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Doctorkev
Posts: 87 Location: Scotland |
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Hi Tim! I found your website while looking for background information about the show, and found it absolutely invaluable. It's a fantastic website full of so much information, thanks for maintaining it so well! I'll be looking at it regularly from now on. |
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