Star Blazers: Space Battleship Yamato 2202 - Reviews

Man, just when I had come to terms with accepting this title never getting noticed by the majority of anime viewers, despite being quite good, here comes the sequel to make it unworthy of being recommended. The first season was brilliant in what it was about. This one is a mess of ideas with no proper pacing or time allocated for each idea in order to be fleshed out properly. Did the director of Rahxephon go back to his usual style of not giving a shit about the great concepts he is given? Although a lot of things happen, none of them feel properly introduced or developed, so when the resolution comes, you don’t care about anything because they were not treated as they deserved.

If I am to compare the remake of the second arc, which most refer to as the Comet Empire, with the original version from the 70s, I can say it is an even looser adaptation. It becomes its own thing, mostly by making the new bad guys far more than generic alien conquerors. The bad part is, despite their weird origin and philosophy being complex and fascinating, they are also not explored properly as stated above. Gatlandians are now basically Zentradi (the Macross aliens for the ignorant amongst you) and have a grudge against love and compassions, shown in how they prefer to reproduce through cloning and despise all lifeforms that place emotions over cold facts. That’s a really cool concept, as well as amazing fan service for retrofans like myself, but when it all boils down to having long boring dialogues and a scatterbrained plot, it very hard to appreciate it as far as execution goes.

At least the visual presentation is as stellar as before. They didn’t lower the production values as they usually do with second seasons. Everything looks equally great.