Space Battleship Yamato

By the time I finished watching and exploring the official North American release of Space Battleship Yamato on Blu-Ray I was a bit on the line about where I stood. 

 

For starters, the picture quality is only nearly perfect. There is a lot of background grain that could easily be disregarded as atmospheric effects- smoke or an artistic representation of humanities living conditions on one leg, but it is definitely a factor. I would even go so far as to say the picture has some soft moments, even if the overall effect isn’t stifling to the film. Overall you’re going to be wowed by the quality that pops up in clothing, some up close shots on character profiles, and especially when it comes to the special effects segments that include space battles. 

 

The film comes with a 5.1 TrueHD channel in both English and Japanese (with English subs). I started off watching the film in English but about halfway through I switched over to the Japanese language track. I think if you dislike reading subs it’s a positive that the film has an English track, but the English track kind of detracts from the film by making it seem soap opera like and extremely cheesy when the film hits on a more patriotic note. The Japanese version gives you the immediacy of the original actors voices and tones and lines up their body movements and facial reactions to the scenarios at hand. It was definitely a more fulfilling experience with the original language track. 

 

I had some gripes with the main menu effects. Not that it’s a huge deal breaker, but the sound effects for the main menu when your clicking over to a different feature is a jarring at first and then annoying after awhile. Again, this is a personal preference thing, but I’m covering all bases here. 

 

Bonus Features offered up 3 Making of Featurettes. The first is Space Battleship Yamato: Pre-Visualization. In this section we get a look at 3D models of the scenes that the actors used to help them get into character and interact with the green screen process. It’s a pretty interesting section that runs about 24 minutes. 

 

VFX “Making Of” is pretty cool. It’s like being able to see the original non-FX segments with the FX being built up around it piece by piece. If you’ve ever shown interest in how this process is done you’ll get a kick out of this one. 

 

Local Yamato is the final FX feature that shows the Yamato flying above geographical locations such as Tokyo and the landmarks thereof. It run about a minute and will probably lose it’s return value after one sitting. 

 

The rest of the features include News Flashes (basically promotions for the film), Premiere Announcements, two Original Trailers, and previews for other live action films from Funimation. Lastly the film comes with both a Blu-Ray and DVD copy. The artwork, intentionally or not, looks reversible. On one side you have the cover art and info on the back and on the other a mini-poster of the Yamato.