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Starcraft II Strategy Game Features 'Yamato Cannon'

The new real-time strategy video game Starcraft II features a space vessel called the Battlecruiser whose weapon, the Yamato Cannon, appears to be a reference to the anime Space Battleship Yamato. The anime is also known as Space Cruiser Yamato or, in its English dubbed form, Star Blazers.

The cannon shoots a beam of energy from the front of the ship, not unlike the Yamato ship's Wave Motion Gun. The official web profile on the ship (load the link twice to bypass the splash page) features the weapon's description and a video example of it firing. The page also calls the Battlecruiser ship an "old" but "enduring" design, perhaps in reference to the Yamato anime itself, which has been seeing a revitalization in Japan. One Battlecruiser's commander is depicted wearing a traditional military uniform and bearing white facial hair, a possible reference to Yamato's Captain Juzo Okita ("Captain Avatar" in the English dub).

The original Space Battleship Yamato anime series aired in Japan in 1974 with director/designer Leiji Matsumoto and director Noboru Ishiguro. In 1979, the series aired in the United States under the name Star Blazers. Recently, the series has seen a resurgence in popularity in Japan thanks to a 2009 anime movie titled Space Battleship Yamato Resurrection and an upcoming live-action film starring Takuya Kimura, of the Japanese boy band SMAP, as protagonist Susumu Kodai (Derek Wildstar in the English-language version). This past April, a Japanese astronaut named Sōichi Noguchi wore a shirt bearing Kodai's signature markings on board the International Space Station.

Thanks to Mohammad Abdulhadi for the news tip.

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© Brian Huang / Blizzard Entertainment
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