Customer Reviews

Star Blazers: The Quest for Iscandar - Series One, Part 1 (Episodes 1-5)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The legendary Star Blazers TV series (the Americanized version of Japan's "Space Battleship Yamato") has finally arrived on DVD! ...But don't get too excited yet, fans, because this DVD edition (which includes the first 5 episodes of Star Blazers) comes to us NOT from a major anime studio, but from a little company called Voyager Entertainment. It seems that Voyager holds exclusive rights to all things Yamato, and that is very bad news for the millions of rabid Star Blazers enthusiasts in this country (and the world). Why? Because it appears that the folks at Voyager know about as much about how to make a DVD as my cousin Bubba does! If you can manage to wrest this disc away from its fancy case (complete with typos on the back cover!) without breaking it in half (and that's a big IF, `cause this bad boy is constructed like a plastic bear trap!) and pop it into your player, you will immediately be struck by the obvious shoddiness of this production. Even the obligatory FBI warning looks cheesy! Then there's the menu design: nothing but a solid gray screen with two little pictures at the bottom left (one for PLAY and one for CHAPTERS)! Select PLAY to start the feature, and step back in time to the year 1979 - long before DVDs were even thought of. In 1979, the audio and video quality of this disc would have seemed good. Keep that in mind, and you won't be quite so disappointed. Now you can sing along to the inspiring theme song, marvel at the stylish animation, and savor the sophisticated storyline. Remember that an inferior Star Blazers disc is a whole lot better than nothing...and nothing is what we've had for far too long. And unfortunately, since Voyager OWNS the Star Force, a properly restored version of this excellent animated program may not be available for many years...if ever. For that reason alone, I will (reluctantly) recommend this disc. The picture is a bit grainy and the sound warbles in places, but it's still _Our_ _Star_ _Blazers_! Keep your digital expectations low and let your imagination soar with this blast from the past! ...1 star for the DVD, 5 stars for the show.

NOTE: I read on the Web that Voyager is waiting for the little consumer response cards (included with the DVD) to come back before starting on a Volume 2 disc, so if you want more Star Blazers, make sure you fill the card out and send it in (YOU provide the stamp, of course).

Star Blazers: The Quest for Iscandar Part I, contains the first five episodes (of 26) of the first season of the cult-favorite Americanized Japanese Anime series from the early 1980's.

For the uninitiated, here's a rundown of the plot. In 2199 Earth was under attack by an "evil" alien race called the Gamilons. The Gamilons bombed earth with "planet bombs" which destroyed the planet and emitted high levels of radiation, thus driving mankind into underground cities. In one Earth year the planet would become uninhabitable. Queen Starsha of Iscandar offers mankind hope in the form of the Cosmic DNA which would cure all mankind from the radiation sickness. She sends Earth a message along with powerful technology that will allow mankind to travel to Iscandar to get the Cosmic DNA. The Star Force is formed to travel to Iscandar to fetch the Cosmic DNA. Their faithful battleship is the Argo, a renovated WWII era navy battleship remade into a Starship. There is just one minor problem though, Iscandar is 148,000 Light Years away. No one has ever traveled that far before. More importantly, the Star Force only has one year to travel there and back for a total of 296,000 Light Years.

Here is a summary of the first five episodes included on this DVD:

Episode 1: Introduction to the Earth-Gamilon war, The Battle of Pluto and the bravery of Alex Wildstar. Also, the mysterious spaceship from deep space and its offer of hope to mankind and a dogfight over the Yamato.

Episode 2: Raise the Yamato!!! Converting the Yamato to Space Battleship Argo. Argo's first attack.

Episode 3: Assemble the Star Force!!! The Gamilon's try to take out the Argo before it takes off. The Argo launches. Plus, take a tour of the Argo.

Episode 4: In order to travel to Iscandar (296,000 light years) within one year the Argo must travel beyond the speed of light. The crew prepares for a Space Warp while avoiding a Gamilon attack. Plus, snow on Mars.

Episode 5: The Argo gets pulled into Jupiter and comes across a Floating Continent which holds a Gamilon base. Plus, the Argo tests out its greatest weapon - The Wave Motion Gun.

Overall, I can't be any happier that Voyager has released the series on DVD. Star Blazers was one of my all-time favorite childhood cartoon series (along with Transformers, Robotech, GI Joe, He-man and Thundercats). However, you must admit that the production work of this DVD was VERY bush league. The navigation is laughable and the chapter breaks are almost non-sensical (about 5 minutes before the end of each episode).

Here's my rundown:

Great: Star Blazers on DVD

Good: The episodes

Bad: No DVD exclusive features???

Ugly: Pitiful navigation.

Summed up, if you were ever a Star Blazers fan, give this a watch. It's great for a trip down memory lane. If you've NEVER seen Star Blazers, give it a try, it's a cult classic from the 80's (along with other Americanized anime greats like Robotech, Voltron, Transor Z, etc). The animation may look a little dated, but the storyline still holds its own very well against anything out there today. This series has stood the test of time. Due to limited distribution this show may have slipped by the radar of a lot of people but it caught on like a fire with those who did catch it. Try it, you WON'T be disappointed.

Overall assessment: 5 stars for Star Blazers, 1 star for Voyager's production.

Recommended

but buy it anyways. It's the only way you are going to get to relive your childhood cartoon afternoons.

The first 5 episodes stay true to what I remember and end with the first use of the wave motion gun and their escape from Jupiter. It was great to see it again and the fact that Voyager might not finish the series greatly disturbs me. Please do fill out the reply card if you purchase this DVD. =)

When i first heard of the possibility of a star blazers dvd i was quite excited.Unfortunately once i received it,i was throughly disappointed.Even though the original program was quite old,voyager could have done a much better job here.They cut corners to save money.Even some of the poorest vcd's have better video and sound quality than this dvd edition.You would do yourself much better to buy the current video tapes that are out there.As long as you have a halfway decent vcr,you'll do much better than this dvd edition.Keep your eye out for the japanese edition dvd's.I'm sure they are coming,if they aren't out already.They won't cut corners at the expense of quality.Save your money and spend it on some other anime dvd's like sol bianca.(Don't waste your money on the funimation dragonball z dvds,or the evangelion dvd's either.Their quality is almost bad as this)

The Star Blazers series was the first Japanese cartoon I really liked. It captured my young imagination. And it made me curse things like dentist appointments that forced me to miss episodes. I have never seen the entire series, so seeing this come out on DVD is very thrilling.

The quality of the DVD however is nothing special. There are no extras on disc one, and the only optimization made is to not force the viewer to see closing credits after every episode. I also was not entirely thrilled with the price especially when you start to realize that a good 15% of every episode is spent recapping.

But I digress, the series is so cool, especially for its time, that it is well worth adding to the collection. I can't wait to have all the episodes of the first series. No dentist appointment will prevent me from knowing what happens next.

The Starblazers series (originally Space Cruiser Yamato) was translated and aired on low end TV channels in the latest seventies and early eighties in America. UHF channels would continually rotate this unique Japanese space opera for kids to enjoy, and we did. Amid a flourish of horribly derivitaveand sadly animated Hanna-Barbera garbage was an odd perpendicular to American kids animation. Starblazers did everything that the rest of children's TV didn't and the ones who were able to enjoy this show always remember it fondly twenty years later.

In the year 2199 the earth is being decimated externally by a series of constant bombardments by odd radioactive 'planet bombs' sent by a faceless enemy from beyond Jupiter. The remaining population of earth has moved underground into cities away from the surface radiation which has left earth a red desert devoid of life, water or proper atmosphere. In one year the population will die of radiation due to the contamination slowly seeping lower into the cities. As the last of earth's battle fleet rages against the enemy ships near Pluto, a mysterious guided capsule slashes into the solarsystem and crashes on Mars where the two prominent heros, Derek Wildstar and Mark Venture, are posted in the military. On research they find a dead lady in the crash clutching a vial containing information from beyond the solar system. On earth, the information is deciphered to be an invitation to cross the galaxy using the plans of an alien warp drive in order to pick up and return with a radiation nulling device called the Cosmo DNA. Utilizing all remaining resouces, the government and military build a space ship using the remains of the WWII destroyer Yamato buried in the Marianas trench. Led by the ancient, battle weary captain Avatar, a group of young enthusiatic military personel go out into uncharted space to find the planet Iscandar, and return with the Cosmo DNA. However, the enemy (Gamalons) have fleets everywhere in the galaxy waiting to destroy the Starforce and posess a lifeless earth in order to restore it and colinate it with Gamalons as their new capitol to an ever expanding empire.

Granted this series was made in Japan around 1974, yet it still was well made enough, and well written enough to carry modern audiences quite well. Leiji Matsumotos comics and animation works always tend to have a very fantastic side to its sci-fi, howeever this series always seemed slightly more grounded in the science of science fiction rather then farfetched style accomodation. The wide cast of characters are extremely well draughted and the absolute determination extant in both sides of the conflict makes the story absolutely plausible as everyone lays down their lives for their hopes and beliefs against insurmountable odds. Although the first five episodes presented in this DVD are some of the less memorable because they build the series, they are brilliant because all the energy of the remaining episodes reflect from the expositional storytelling of the earlier episodes. 'Starblazers' is one of the few anime classics which should always be in print, and I am surte it will always have a hardcore fanbase because of all the emotion and cunning crafted into it. I gave the DVD 4 stars instead of 5 because of the slack menu and packaging of the material. None of the shows have the original opening or closing credits, and the revised ones bookend the etire run of episodes on every DVD. WHY? The nostalgia of this series dictates that it be presented in original form! Shame on the releasing company for such schlock presentation, but I love the series so much I couldn't eliminate more then one star. If you have never heard of Starblazers and love anime, please get this DVD- you will never regret it, despite the age of the animation and story it is still a heavy hitter. And like it's allusions, it is the Illiad and Odessy of anime.

I'm still not sure what the Rating systems is for, the content or the product. I think it should be for the product since that's what's being sold. Or maybe amazon should start a dual rating system. This dvd release is really bad. It looks like they got ahold of some tapes from tv station back in the 70's. I've been comparing it to the chinese release of the original japanese series... there is absolutely no comparison. The only reason I would buy this series is for the american soundtrack. It's nostalgic. If you're watching Star Blazers for the first time, just get the chinese version, it's way less expensive, 26 episodes for about $40 (compared to 5 episodes for $30???), it has the original japanese dialogue with english subtitles, it's UNCUT (and there was a bit cut from the american version) and WHAT QUALITY!! It looks like they got the original film negatives and remastered it. This american dvd... well.. that's greed for you. Let's hope the voyager license expires soon!

I would have loved to give this DVD a 5 star rating, but I can't. I consider myself a life long member of the Star Force and have waited for years for the DVD release of this brilliant series. However, I can honestly say that I don't think I've seen a DVD yet where less effort was involved in its production.

There are *no* extras at all. The title and chapter selection screens are just plain ugly. But who cares? Those are just cosmetic anyway right? Still, it shows how little they cared about doing a good job. The DVD also clocks in at about 112 minutes (the first 5 episodes of the first season), which I feel is not a good value considering the capacity of DVD and the aforementioned lack of extras. But then again, the VHS tapes were even worse. Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of this DVD release is that the sound and image quality are poor. Of course, the sound and picture quality were poor back in the 80's when I used to watch this show, but you'd think that they'd try just a little bit harder to polish it up and remaster the sound before committing this show to digital posterity.

If it wasn't for my sheer unadulterated love of this show, I would say that this is the worst DVD in my collection...and that's a shame.

About 15 years ago, I found an article in a comic book advertising Star Blazers on video. I was excited at the prospect of watching my favorite animated series all over again. However, when I got the tapes I found the picture was very dark. I had to adjust the bright and contrast on the tv and even then it was not a perfect picture(my videos were made by Kidmark, INC.). While this occured on the entire "Quest for Iscandar" series, the next two series, "The Comet Empire" and "The Bolar Wars" were normal. I did acquire a tape of the original movie "Space Cruiser Yamato"-which the Quest for Iscandar series is based on for American audiences- so I at least had a good picture, but it had a drawback too since I don't understand Japanese. Now that I got the first dvd of "Quest for Iscandar", I am happy that I have a very clear picture. To all who read this-and to those who may have experienced my problems with the videos-I recommend this dvd.

One day I was discussing anime with some people at work and it made me think of the Star Blazers tune back from when I was 7 or 8 years old. So, I went lookin on the internet for the series on DVD. At the time they hadn't even released part I yet, so I waited and bought it the day it came out. The grainy film (it hasn't been touched up) and quirky music only seem to add value for me because it is exactly the way I remembered it. Enhanced sound may have been okay though, since I did spend a lot of money on my surround system. (Thus one star deducted)

Also what may be a point of interest... I filled in the registration card that came with the DVD. Then I waited for a long time for the second disc to come out. When it finally came out I popped in the disc and they had added all the features I requested. Lost footage, etc. Except for better sound.