jeriendhal (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jeriendhal) wrote2009-02-24 08:55 pm
jeriendhal) wrote2009-02-24 08:55 pm
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Further thoughts on the that Yamato CGI thingie
Just thinking about some of the comments I've seen on other folks' postings of the video, about either going "SQUEE!" or their hearts catching in their throats when that big old ship climbs out of the water. I felt it to, and I'm sufficiently self-critical to wonder why
Because, let's face it, Star Blazers was an odd duck. A bowdlerized version of a Japanese cartoon, which did its damnedest to cut out onscreen deaths while warning us at the end of each episode that there were X number of days left before every person on planet Earth died horribly of radiation poisoning.
It gets even weirder when you look at the source material, a cartoon melodrama that cheerfully takes one of the greatest symbols of WWII (an event that most Japanese histories mark off as "It wasn't our fault!") and resurrects it to turn their nation's greatest defeat into a chance for a new victory. Which, regularly, celebrated the same Japanese fighting spirit that got most of its male population slaughtered from the mid-1930's to 1945. Why the hell would I feel my heart skip a beat seeing that ship rise out of the water and take off into space in glorious CGI?
Why? Because twelve-year old me knew better to worry about that crap and just enjoyed watching the cartoon. Because battleships flying in space are inherently cool.
Because, let's face it, Star Blazers was an odd duck. A bowdlerized version of a Japanese cartoon, which did its damnedest to cut out onscreen deaths while warning us at the end of each episode that there were X number of days left before every person on planet Earth died horribly of radiation poisoning.
It gets even weirder when you look at the source material, a cartoon melodrama that cheerfully takes one of the greatest symbols of WWII (an event that most Japanese histories mark off as "It wasn't our fault!") and resurrects it to turn their nation's greatest defeat into a chance for a new victory. Which, regularly, celebrated the same Japanese fighting spirit that got most of its male population slaughtered from the mid-1930's to 1945. Why the hell would I feel my heart skip a beat seeing that ship rise out of the water and take off into space in glorious CGI?
Why? Because twelve-year old me knew better to worry about that crap and just enjoyed watching the cartoon. Because battleships flying in space are inherently cool.