Space Battleship Yamato III - Star Blazers - Bolar Wars (Season 3) 480p - (1980 (1984 USA) Lang: English)

Seminal anime. Classic.

This was the best animated series of its time. Star Blazers was made at a time when American cartoons were trite junk like "The Super Friends" and "The Brady Kids." When Star Blazers hit syndicated TV in America in the early 1980s, it was still categorically more engrossing than any American cartoon, any American science fiction... heck, it was better than 90% of American TV period.

In case you missed the plot summary: hostile Aliens (the Gammalons) attack Earth and defeat all of her military might. The Gammalons then proceed to launch a years-long nuclear attack against Earth which renders the entire surface unfit for life. Cowering in caves, humanity awaits its final extinction...

Until a message is received from the Planet Iscandar, offering aid. Iscander can provide "Cosmo DNA," which can resuscitate the Earth's entire ecosphere. Iscander also provides the blueprints for a powerful interstellar propulsion system: the wave motion drive. Desperate beyond measure, Earth refits one single starship, the Argo, with the wave motion drive, and sends her and her brave crew to cross 100,000 light years of Gammalon territory to reach Iscandar.

The plot centers about the drama which ensues when a stray proton missile, from a battle between the Galman Empire and the Bolar Federation, crashes into the sun causing nuclear fusion to accelerate to unsafe levels. The Yamato and crew must then set out on a mission to look for a new world for the human race. They must do so in less than one year. The English adaptation was known as Star Blazers: The Bolar Wars There were plans for a fourth season, an American-produced sequel, but it never materialised. A planned web comic series based on Space Battleship Yamato III was scheduled to be released for October 2009.

Over the course of the story, the Yamato and crew must complete their mission of finding a new home for Earthlings amidst the strife caused by the Galman-Bolar conflict. The Galmans, we learn, are the ancestral race from which the Gamilas came. After the battle with the Dark Nebula Empire ended, a battle which destroyed the planet Gamilas, Desler and his remaining forces set out to search for this ancestral homeland. They found Galman, enslaved by the cruel grey-skinned aliens known as the Bolars. They promptly liberated Galman, and a galaxy-wide war ensued.

The Yamato and crew eventually catch up with Desler, who is deeply remorseful that Earth has been dragged into this conflict. Desler dispatches a team of Gamilas-Galman scientists to attempt to restore the Sun. This effort ultimately fails.

During the course of the mission, the Yamato rescues Ruda, the exiled queen of the mysterious and hidden planet, Shalbart. It turns out that she is worshipped by peace-seeking factions within both the Galman and Bolar empires, and is wanted (preferably dead) by both governments which fear her influence. This puts a strain on the fragile alliance between Earth and the Galmans, and causes the Bolars to declare outright war against Earth.

Earth is finally saved when the Yamato brings Ruda to Shalbart, and she decides to give the Earthlings a device (the Hydro-Cosmogen Gun) that can restore the Sun's natural fusion balance. But even this only succeeds after some ultimate sacrifices on the part of some of Yamato's crew.

Right away, one can see that this cartoon has a much more intelligent plot than any shows intended for kids and adolescents. It is also notable that this series is a serial: each episode is part of a larger, evolving story. It would be decades before any American shows that are not "soap operas" would develop this format (like Buffy the Vampire Slayer). The plot is also dead serious: the world is ending, and ending in a way that was plausibly frightening to Japanese kids in the wake of Hiroshima and American kids in the wake of Three Mile Island. This didn't so much scare me as a kid, but it made the show totally riveting.

On top of the smart and emotional plot, the series had some other virtues. The "cinematography" was great, with good drawing and well-composed scenes. The lessons of the episodes were more serious and adult than typical kids shows, focusing on duty, loyalty, teamwork, and honor. The episodes themselves got a bit formulaic in the middle of the first season, usually ending in a desperate battle with Gammalon ships which can be won only be use of the wave-motion gun.

Sorry to be so long winded. If you like anime and you like sci-fi, you should watch at least the first season. Its better than a lot of anime than came after, and much more original than most anime. The second season was very good, too, although it was even more serious.