{"id":1319,"date":"2013-06-22T06:07:23","date_gmt":"2013-06-22T06:07:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ourstarblazers.com\/vault\/?p=1319"},"modified":"2022-07-27T14:46:08","modified_gmt":"2022-07-27T21:46:08","slug":"269","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ourstarblazers.com\/vault\/269\/","title":{"rendered":"<em>I Love Anime<\/em> Excerpt #1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<h2>Introduction by Noriaki Ikeda<\/h2>\n<p class=\"image-middle\">\n\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ourstarblazers.com\/vault-images\/oct08\/G101.JPG\" border=\"0\" \/>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tAlthough <em>Yamato<\/em> surprised us with new mecha concepts such as a space battleship and space fightercraft, TV anime had given us amazing new mecha before.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<em>Mazinger Z<\/em> (1972) gave us an iconic giant robot driven by a human pilot that made full use of powerful weapons to defeat enemy robots. Its exhilarating battle scenes instantly captivated young viewers. We had seen giant robots before in <em>Tetsujin 28 [Gigantor],<\/em> but it lacked the dynamism of this new approach. Now robots were vehicles, just like a motorcycle you could jump onto and save the world.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tFor all this, however, it was still somewhat absurd. We got a taste of reality that same year with the debut of Tatsunoko&#8217;s <em>Science Ninja Team Gatchaman [Battle of the Planets].<\/em> In that show, the five main characters could combine their flying mecha into the immense God Phoenix, which had a great sense of weight and mass. This, plus the incredible power it took to destroy its iron-beast enemies, surprised us all over again and placed <em>Gatchaman<\/em> at the apex of realistic SF mecha-action.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tCombining space-mecha took center stage again the following year in another SF series called <em>Zerotester.<\/em> The series was similar in concept to <em>The Thunderbirds,<\/em> with five super mecha standing in the way of alien invasion.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe impact of <em>Yamato<\/em>&#8216;s mecha can be better understood when compared to these forerunners. The science fiction took on a new sense of reality when we saw a 200-meter-plus battleship take off into space with its powerful wave-motion gun, warp navigation, Cosmo Zero and Black Tigers on a journey of 148,000 light years. The enormous scale of the story was supported by the concept of a scorched-Earth H-bomb campaign, an act of aggression that could only be conducted on an interstellar stage.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<em>Space Battleship Yamato<\/em> took full command of that stage with a drama of young people and the mecha they relied on. It was also the beginning of ensemble stories in animated SF that inspired <em>Mobile Suit Gundam<\/em> (1979) and <em>Legendary Giant God Ideon<\/em> (1980).\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe new world of space, the challenge to human ingenuity, the need for revolutionary mecha, all these elements together showed us the charm of a story set in outer space. <em>Yamato<\/em> was also the series that gave birth to a new generation of fans by paying more attention to the drama of a human life.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tFor these reasons and many others, a new era of anime began with <em>Space Battleship Yamato.<\/em>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<a href='https:\/\/www.ourstarblazers.com\/vault\/268'>Return to <em>I Love Anime<\/em> main article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourstarblazers.com\/vault\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourstarblazers.com\/vault\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourstarblazers.com\/vault\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourstarblazers.com\/vault\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourstarblazers.com\/vault\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1319"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourstarblazers.com\/vault\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32653,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourstarblazers.com\/vault\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319\/revisions\/32653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourstarblazers.com\/vault\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourstarblazers.com\/vault\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourstarblazers.com\/vault\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}