Earth forces fight a final battle with the Gamilons at
Pluto. Captain Avatar is the commander of the Earth fleet, and
his ship is the only one to survive the battle, thanks to a
delaying action fought by Alex Wildstar and his ship, The Paladin.
In addition to Alex Wildstar, Captain Avatar's only son is killed
in the battle.
During the fighting, cadets Derek Wildstar (Alex's younger brother) and Mark Venture discover an unidentified ship that has crashed on Mars, damaged in the crossfire. Thrown from it is a beautiful dead woman grasping a message capsule. The message is analyzed and determined to be an offer from Queen Starsha, of Iscandar, to save Earth. The dead woman was her near-twin sister, Astra.
The cadets return to Earth by docking with Captain Avatar's returning flagship, a maneuver that unfortunately reveals to Derek Wildstar that his brother did not survive the battle. They meet Dr. Sane and his assistant, the beautiful Nova, who looks very much like the dead Iscandarian woman.
As Derek begins to sink into depression at the loss of his brother, he and Venture are rousted by an emergency alarm. A Gamilon plane, surely searching for the location of underground cities, has been sighted over the area of the sunken world war II battleship, the Yamato. Their pursuit plane overheats, forcing them to crash land in dried sea bed.
"Woah... Is that the Yamato?"
"It's nothing but a pile of scap metal."
"Why is Gamilon interested in it?
...I wonder, do you suppose there's some secret?"
 |
It fought nobly unto the end. While rust and decay have taken away her once-sleek beauty, the legend remains bright, a legend of bravery and sacrifice. Now, just as the ancient ship appears again, the legend will come alive again, a legend and a ship, that will save Earth." |
Derek Wildstar and his buddy Mark Venture take off on an
unauthorised mission/joy-ride to investigate a report of a Gamilon
recon plane flying over the Great Eastern Sea (Kyushu Sea). They
crash-land, and discover the rusting hull of the ancient battleship,
the Yamato, stuck half-way in the ground.
The next day, the two are summoned to what they believe is another one of Earth's underground defense bases. They arrive to see the keel of the ancient Yamato stuck in the roof of the base excavated beneath it. They take an elevator to find Captain Avatar standing on the bridge of a space cruiser. They are inside the Yamato.
Before Derek and Mark can take in the wonder of this newly-restored ship, they find that the Gamilons have mistaken the site for an underground city as a Gamilon carrier approaches and bombs the site.
Avatar orders the two to man the defense systems of the unprepared Yamato. Fortunately, they can get power to the gun turrets. With its rusting outer skin falling away, the new Yamato partially wrests itself from its 250 year-old bed, taking aim at the carrier in orbit. Two shots from the main cannons and the carrier is destroyed. Desslok chastises his generals.
"You are three of my brightest generals, I am told. What happened to the space battleship you sent to Earth?"
"We thought our target was an underground city!"
"Yes, a target that wouldn't fight back? ...They're still fighting on after losing at Pluto. Don't they know they are defeated? What EARTHLY fools?!"
Note: It is interesting that in this episode, the bridge crew manages to power the Argo and get it into the air while defending itself from the Gamilon carrier. This is so because in the next episode, the plot-line tension rests on the claim that they cannot move until they can get the Wave Motion Engine started for the "first time".
Return to the Yamato/Star Blazers main page!