Customer Reviews

Star Blazers Series 1: Quest for Iscandar 1 [VHS]

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Star Blazers set standards in Japanese Anime. You might remember this series from the late 70's early 80's. It was the first animated series of its kind. Kind of an on going space Soap Opera. Both the First and Second Volumes were televised in the United States, the third was little seen. If you saw any of the orignal episodes, and enjoyed them, here is your 2nd chance to relive these classic episodes. My recommendation is to hit a video store and rent 1 or 2 volumes to see if you really enjoy them before you purchase. If you do enjoy the Star Blazers episodes, I would recommend buying the entire volume which is priced much cheaper than the single episodes if you bought them by the tape. Personally, I love Star Blazers. The opening theme song draws you in and each episode has the staying power of a Star Wars movie. I highly recommend picking these up today! Volume 1 is the beginning of the series and gives you the background to learn about the Argo, and and its crews mission to save the planet Earth. These videos are dubbed in English, and its done much better than say....Speed Racer. Check it out!

Fafous TV animation series, original works by Leiji Matsumoto, the artist of Galaxy Express. When I first searched for " Leiji Matsumoto" in amazon.com, I was much dissapointed to find only a few. Then I found the English title, "Star Blazer" in "Eastern Standard Time : A Guide to Asian Influence on American Culture : From Astro Boy to Zen Buddhism" (by Jeff Yang (Editor), Dina Gan, Terry Hong, A. Magazine) and tried to search again without any expectation, I was much astonished by the long lists of Star Blazers series... Yamato TV series was broadcasted in 1974, when I was a senior-high student. It became quite popular among our friends, but actually I don't like Yamato and I didn't watch a lot. Still whenever I saw it I was much impressed. One of the reasons I don't like Yamato is because of its patriotic theme. I mean it's the same patriotism in Japan during the World War II. The Battleship Yamato (Senkan Yamato) was the tragic hero during the World War II. It was well described in Yoshida Mitsuru's "Requiem for Battleship Yamato," a diary of Yoshida who was a young Navy official when Yamato sailed for last suicide cruise and sank. Yamato was the symbol of wartime Japan in any way. Many Japanese comic artists picked up Yamato as their themes. And Uchu Senkan Yamato, or Star Blazer was the most explicit case. The title itself shaws it. Uchu means space. When Japanese crews got to sail off to the far off planet Iscandar, they digged up the old body of the Battleship Yamato, the tragic hero of the World War II and equipped it with advansed technology. I also disliked the sentimentalism and machoism through the series... However it was epidemic that the enemy has deep and complex characters and it gave the battle deeper insight. I think from then on, the enemy characters of Japanese animation changed a lot. Not the simple structure as the bad v.s. the good, but more complicated relations. When I learned from the description of "Eastern Standard Time" that in United States, the name of the ship is changed to Argo, and the name of the Japanese crews are westernized, I felt really unconfrotable. END