Start the Year Off Right With the Live-Action Star Blazers Trailer!

If you’re like me and grew up in the 80’s Space Battleship Yamato (or Star Blazers as it’s known here in the US) was your gateway drug into the wonderful world of anime and Japanese culture. I still fondly remember getting up early every morning to watch it before school. It was an oddity on morning television filled with licensed toy properties and sugary breakfast cereals commercials. Star Blazers was part soap opera and part Star Wars, and planted the seed that would eventually become the legitimacy of animation as a valid storytelling device for things that didn’t include talking animals and sing-a-longs. Not that I have anything against that.

Well the Japanese have finally debuted their first teaser trailer for the live action Yamato film which is due out in December in Japan and all I can say is, WOW! Takashi Yamazaki; whom you might know as the director of Returner is directing the film. For those of you who haven’t seen it, Returner it is a great little action film that pays quite a bit of homage to American sci-fi films and is really worth checking out. The film stars Takuya Kimura as Susumu Kodai (Derek Wildstar) and Meisa Kuroki as Yuki Mori (Nova). The story seems to be a basically retelling of the first season of the show, which is fine by me. I really can’t wait to see this and hopefully it will get a US release. Check out the official Japanese site here.