The History of
"Star Blazers is a exciting, animated space adventure," said
John Claster the president of Claster Television in his 1980
interview with Starlog. Claster Television was the company
that produced Star Blazers in 1979. "I mean, it really
is a space program. A lot of the other series are just
junky superhero programs where the bulk of action takes place
on or surrounding Earth. In our show, the majority of
action takes place in space." [Burns 1980]
Star Blazers (SB) hit the American commercial airwaves in
the 1979/1980 season, and primarily aired during the 3:30 to 4:30 pm
after-school hours. It was marketed as a programme for school-aged
kids, but has since remained a favourite in the hearts of its fans
both young and old alike.
Of the two (and eventually three) television seasons of SB, the first season begins in the year 2199, when Earth is threatened with extinction by the forces of Gamilon, a stellar empire led by Desslok, its "diabolically clever" leader intent on claiming planet Earth for his people's survival. The Gamilon peripheral space fleets have already defeated almost all of Earth's relatively primative forces, and the Gamilons have chosen to remove all life from Earth by dropping radiation bombs on the undefended planet. Earth's population, living in underground cities, has only one year left before the radiation reaches them. But there is hope for Earth when it receives a message from Queen Starsha, of the planet Iscandar, 148,000 light years away, offering a device called Cosmo DNA that can remove the deadly radiation. The Star Force, an talented group of scientists, soldiers, and adventurers, is formed to take on the trip to Iscandar in the spaceship Argo, rebuilt from the wreckage of the World War II Japanese battleship, the Yamato.
The Star Force is composed of Captain Avatar, a seasoned old commander for whom, due to radiation sickness, the journey to Iscandar will surely be his last mission; Derek Wildstar, the Argo's brash deputy captain, who wants not only to save Earth, but to avenge the death of his older brother, presumed killed by the Gamilons; Nova, the beautiful radar operator, whose secret love to Derek Wildstar finally blossoms and is requited; Mark Venture, the chief of navigation, who shares a friendly rivalry with Wildstar; IQ-9, the genius robot whose programmed emotion and humor are a constant surprise and annoyance (respectively) to everyone; Sandor, the Argo's chief technician, who is really a cyborg with bionic limbs; and Dr. Sane, the ship's medical officer who is "the only one capable of keeping Captain Avatar going when he is ill and exhausted". [Burns 1980]
It has been long recognised that Star Blazers' well-written subplots, scripts, voice acting, and casting gave it its distinction. Burns writes, "As the series progresses, we witness Derek Wildstar's evolution from a brash young man into the Argo's strong and wise commander. The ensuing romances between Wildstar and Nova, and Venture and Trelaina, are handled with surprising subtlety and sensitivity. Even the deaths of Star Force members and their friends' reactions are shown more realistically than in most treatments of similar events found in prime-time television. These elements, combined with the show's soap opera-type serial format, make Star Blazers one of the most entertaining space dramas ever created -- animated or otherwise."
Star Blazers was originally produced in Japan as Space Cruiser Yamato, by Yoshinobu Nishizaki in 1974. Three years after the success of its first TV season, Nishizaki produced a movie called Arrivederci Yamato. The immense popularity of this movie spawned a second TV season based on its storyline, in which a new enemy, the Comet Empire, threatens Earth. Following that, Space Cruiser Yamato went on to become one of the most popular television series in Japan's history. Burns writes that, "The show's cult following is even larger than America's Star Trek phenomenon."
Then, in 1978, Bob Marcella of Westchester Corporation
purchased syndication rights to produce an English version of the
first two TV seasons of Space Cruiser Yamato. This
production became what we now know as Star Blazers.
Marcella states, "I was interested in the merchandising
of Star Blazers here in the United States, so I licensed
Claster Television to syndicate the series domestically." [Burns 1980]
"Westchester had identified Space Cruiser Yamato to us as a good kids' property," Claster says. "After we looked at it, we agreed with them. We reached agreement with Bob Marcella and the other people in September of 1978 to bring the show to air for the '79/80 season."
But, Space Cruiser Yamato originally had a bit more personal violence that was considered suitable for young American audiences in 1978. So, not only did Star Blazers have to be dubbed in English, but edited to fit American television standards. This process, so often considered the doom of most imported Japanese animation, turned out to be what made Star Blazers so outstanding.
To transform Yamato into Star Blazers, Claster hired Griffin-Bacal Advertising, a company that had extensive experience dubbing sound for commercials. "But", writes Burns, "instead of just doing a standard adaptation, Griffin-Bacal went to great lengths to actually improve the original series." Griffin-Bacal provided a new direction for Star Blazers. Says Tom Griffin, "We had translations of the original episodes, but instead of using those, we decided that we would approach the task of rewriting them. Much of what was in the original scripts wasn't idiomatic to the American market. So, we restructured Space Cruiser Yamato, not only in terms of specific language on a scene-by-scene basis, but some of the basic series elements as well."
In re-writing the scripts, one problem Griffin-Bacal faced was
that the Japanese had made the ship, Yamato, the hero of
the series, or so it seemed from the scripts they provided.
This, perhaps, is not entirely true, for in the Japanese production,
the name "Yamato" embodies both the ship and its crew. Nevertheless,
there was a bit more emphasis on the ship than was thought
appropriate for American TV. So, Griffin-Bacal worked to refocus
the heroic elements more toward the crew of the ship --
the Star Force.
The most obvious changes were the characters' names. The Yamato became the Argo, Captain Jyuzo Okita became Captain Avatar, Susumu Kodai became Derek Wildstar, Yuki Mori became Nova, Daisuke Shima became Mark Venture, Shiroh Sanada became Sandor, Ohta became Eager, Aihara became Homer, robot Analyzer became robot IQ-9, and the Sensei, Sado, became Dr. Sane. That the script writers had a decent command of language etymology is evidenced by the fact that there are several cleverly chosen character names whose names have an implicit meaning. For example, the name for Princess Invidia -- the envious, scheming "daughter" of Prince Zordar -- literally means jealousy or envy in Latin. Lysis means to break down. Others include Avatar, General Vulgar, General Krypt, and the Magna Flame gun. And, then there are the blatantly meaningful names: Dash, Knox, Scorch, Bane, Nova, Astra, Homer, Eager, Dire, Gorce (Gorse), Argo, Andromeda, Paladin, and lest we forget Wildstar and Venture. It was rare in those days to find cleverly researched character names in animated TV serials. Finally, though it was not the doing of the American script writers, the name Desslok was adapted from that character's Japanese name, Deslar. The Japanese character plans have sometimes spelled this in western letters as "Deathlagh".
Griffin-Bacall did more than just make up new names, though. "Breaking the series down into a suitable format was a long process," Griffin continues. "It involved first understanding what the pictures said, and then trying to rewrite the script to fit the characters' rather limited mouth movements to get a new story. We also augmented the sound effects substantially. We added a whole new layer of sound." For example, Griffin-Bacal had to take segments which included songs sung in Japanese and replace them with instrumental versions -- with or without English lyrics dubbed in. They did not, fortunately, introduce any new musical scores.
Another difficulty with adapting Yamato was that, in 1978 (and even today) Japan's TV censors allowed more violence than was found on American television. Claster says that this was less true of Yamato, and that not much violence needed to be cut out.
"We modified the violence that was in the show," explains Griffin. "For example, we'd make battle casualties robots instead of humans," (an editing practise that was rather common for such adapted shows). "We took out much of the personal violence, like characters getting shot. It wasn't a simple task. We often had to go fishing somewhere else in the series for a particular scene to cover up a plot element." Case in point, Gamilon Leader Desslok was particularly prone to threatening to personally execute any of his officers who failed in major campaigns. And, Gamilon General Lysis, not wishing to return to Desslok in defeat, attempted to stop the Yamato in the original Japanese programme by detonating his own ship (along with himself) while grappled to the Yamato's hull. For the Star Blazers adaptation, footage had to be cut or re-used to give the impression that such characters were still alive at the episode's end.
But, Griffin states that because of the fact that there is so much else going on in the story without the personal violence, Star Blazers was not diminished by the editing.
Some viewers have reported that, in later airings of SB,
some US TV stations did their own further editing of some material.
This primarily involved muting out direct spoken references to
Trelaina's telekinetic powers. This was done at a time when
even the Care-Bears were being labeled as objectionably "magical"
by some religious special interest lobbyists. But, this editing
was not the work of SB's original producers.
The animation quality and artistry of Space Cruiser Yamato was far ahead of other American TV animation at the time. Burns quotes Westchester's Marcella as saying, "The Japanese take great time on the animation. Some of the animation cels that they've sent over from Star Blazers are just unbelievable. The amount of time and effort the Japanese put into each cel in order to get that contrast on television is just incredible."
"The Japanese even used a 3-D-type effect," adds Griffin. For scenes of asteroid belts and the rings of Saturn, the Japanese artists used a rotoscope method. The asteroids were shown, moving, in the foreground rather than the background. "That made for a very striking dimensional effect."
There have always been those viewers who noted the similarities between characters in Star Blazers and those in Star Wars. Derek Wildstar/Luke Skywalker; Queen Starsha/Princess Leia, and robots IQ-9 and R2-D2. Burns notes, however, that Space Cruiser Yamato debuted in Japan almost three years before Star Wars.
An even greater similarity can be seen in the plotlines of the second season (dealing with the Comet Empire) and the Star Trek movie, "The Search for Spock". In these, both the Argo and the Enterprise are threatened with forced retrofits. The captains of both take their ships and break out of their docks on a renegade mission. Further similarities exist between the movies, "Yamato: New Journey" and "The Wrath of Khan", as both ships are caught off-guard with a compliment of unprepared cadets. In each case, the Star Blazers stories preceded the production of the Star Trek movies by several years.
The first two seasons of Star Blazers did fairly well in the general American market. It was also aired in Canada, Australia, Britain, Italy, Brazil, and a host of other countries. Meanwhile, the popularity of Space Cruiser Yamato continued to grow in Japan. Two movies, Yamato: New Journey and Be Forever Yamato, each continuing the saga after the first two television seasons, were produced in 1979 and 1980. On top of that, Nishizaki produced a third TV season in which Gamilon Leader Desslok's forces battled with the Bolar Federation, catching Earth and the Yamato in the middle.
This third season was was eventually brought over to America
by Westchester. But, rushing to get the adaptation done on
limited funds, Westchester could not afford to have Griffin-Bacal
to the exellent job they did for the first two TV seasons.
Others were contracted for this, and the result was an adaptation
that unfortunately lacked the sophistication and quality of that
of the first two seasons. You will notice that some of the same
hurried voices used in Speed Racer were used in the third season.
Because there had been a time lapse between the syndication of the first two seasons and the third, fewer TV stations purchased the airing rights to the third season, and it was never seen on TV by many of its ardent fans.
In the mid 80s, Westchester decided to release all three of the Star Blazers TV seasons on video tape through a company called Kidmark. Fans could finally see the Third Season. Unfortunatelty, video and audio quality on these tapes was not wonderful. It has been speculated that some the original Star Blazers film and tape prints, produced by Claster and Griffin-Bacal, had either been lost or had degraded to such a degree that better remastering could not be done under budget.
At some point in the early 90s, the original producer of Yamato, Nishizaki, took over the tape production, and re-issued the Star Blazers episodes under his company, Voyager Entertainment, and its international divisions. Voyager took up the task of producing and selling Star Blazers videos, both in Japan and internationally. They also later released videos of all the Japanese Yamato movies.
Realising that the video and audio quality of the Kidmark tapes was not good, Voyager went to the effort of re-mastering Season 1 of Star Blazers, which they entitled The Quest for Iscandar. They vastly improved the image and sound quality. The quality of reproduction that Voyager did on Season 1 suggests that they must have had access to separate layers of voice, music, and sound effects tracks.
Prior to August, 1997, Nishizaki's company, Voyager Entertainment (and its subsidiary, Jupiter Films), owned all rights to both Yamato and Star Blazers. It was the sole legal distributor for the programme. When they released SB on video, they remade the credits roll. Claster Television and Sunwagon Productions are still listed in the Star Blazers new credits roll because they were the ones responsible for the production of the Star Blazers product. The Westchester Corporation no longer has distribution rights to the show, and is therefore not listed in the new credits.
But, news has begun to trickle in that Nishizaki's company has gone out of business, and that all rights to Yamato in Japan have been transferred to Yamato's original character creator, Reiji Matsumoto. What this means for Yamato in the world outside Japan remains to be seen, but Voyager Entertainment, the American division of Nishizaki's company, is self-said to still be alive and well and still retaining its rights abroad.
Almost immediately following SB's first airing run, the programme a considerable number of followers. Mirroring Yamato's cult following in Japan to a lesser degree, American fans ranged in ages from school-age to adults -- a testament to the programme's sophistication.
Unofficial organisations sprang up across the country, Yamato and Star Blazers became names often heard at Sci-Fi conventions. Everyone was eager for information on the show -- books, soundtracks, models, T-shirts -- merchandise that unfortunately did not exist domestically, and could only be ocassionally imported from Japan at relative expense.
Then, in 1982, Nishizaki produced a movie that ended the story, Final Yamato. With that, growth of fandom was not possible, though fans gained thus far would remain loyal forever thereafter.
Fortunately, Voyager has brought SB back to the domestic market in the form of its tapes and other merchandise it offers. However, much as it would be welcome, the prospect of a re-airing of SB on TV does not seem to be forthcoming any time soon.
To the surprise, praise, and some conern of fans, there has been news of Disney purchasing the rights to produce a live-action film of the Yamato story -- probably paralleling the first TV season. This does not necessarily mean it will happen. There are concerns as to whether Disney will do the story justice. But, fans agree that all-in-all, any exposure Star Blazers gets is a good thing.
As to fan organisations still in existence, some are still around, but have shifted their attention to newer Japanese animation productions, for lack of any new Yamato material. Yet, if you browse the World Wide Web or Newsgroups on the Ineternet, you're bound to find fans' discussions of Star Blazers still occuring almost 15 years after Final Yamato. There is now an official fan club, organised through the producers of the new Star Blazers comic book (produced in association with Voyager), as well as various e-mail discussion groups that appear sporadically.
Organisations come and go, but one thing is for certain, the saga of Star Blazers and Space Cruiser Yamato will continue live on in the hearts of its fans for a long time to come.
All quotations photos are taken from the interview originally printed in Starlog [Burns 1980].
Burns, J.H. (1980). "SF Animation at Its Best: Make Way for STAR BLAZERS", Starlog, June.
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