The Old School Otaku Lounge

Another tidbit I forgot to mention: Mikage is seen in the TV series, albeit briefly. Here she is swimming with the gang on Iscandar. (She's the one on the left, obviously.)

I found an amusing image of the K-On girls wearing Yamato uniforms (Yama-On!):


Here's a similar Yama-On! picture, although it's a bit larger.

I'm likely to attend a con that has Y:2199 chara-designer Nobuteru Yuuki on its guest list; I might ask if the production added winsome girls to showcase his talent

labsenpai wrote:I'm likely to attend a con that has Y:2199 chara-designer Nobuteru Yuuki on its guest list; I might ask if the production added winsome girls to showcase his talent

Awesome!

The addition of all the females was not so much a sop to Yuuki as it was a (maybe cynical?) move to open the I.P. to those desiring MOE. But it was bait-and-switch. The perv aftermarket seems to not be doing much with it. Keep in mind main publisher (and I believe one of the partners in the production committee) Mag Garden is mainly known for publishing art books from MOE anime.

What *I* want to know is, where are his rough drafts? Where are his rejected designs? Where are the 'mark ups' of the turnarounds? All that have been published to date are just finished designs, as if we are meant to believe that everything sprung perfect from the pen to the screen.

This is the 21st Century. We fans are smart enough to see past this kind of odd B.S. I know that we'll never see in an official publication the mandate to 'remove as much Matsumoto as possible' (this is a true thing) but I would like to see the process, his roughs and the evolution to the final designs.

Probably impossible.

Nobuteru has done a lot of productions based on other artists (CLAMP, M. Nagano) work, so he is surely on the list of trusted designers for adaptations to screen.
I imagine most studios would want to approach space opera scenery with high tech design, and some eye candy. I think the 2199 character designs hit the sweet spot; there could have been weird Y:2520 uniforms or K-ON teens...

labsenpai wrote:Nobuteru has done a lot of productions based on other artists (CLAMP, M. Nagano) work, so he is surely on the list of trusted designers for adaptations to screen.
I imagine most studios would want to approach space opera scenery with high tech design, and some eye candy. I think the 2199 character designs hit the sweet spot; there could have been weird Y:2520 uniforms or K-ON teens...

I don't disagree. Something tickles the back of my head about Yuuki and Izubuchi working together over at Sunrise, pre Bandai buy-out. But I still would like to see the process. I note, for example, a complete and total lack of the stereotypical 'Yuuki Pointy Nose' aesthetic.

The Yamato 2520 designs sprung out of an earlier "scrub the Matsumoto out of Yamato" edict and I was really sad to see it carried over into 'Yamato Resurrection'. Which in my 'head canon' didn't happen, just like Final Yamato.

A second Yamato 2199 series covering the Gatlantis Comet Empire story arc is indeed going to happen!
http://ourstarblazers.com/vault/041a/

Any word on a series boxset yet? Buying the individual discs is prohibitive. Doubt I'll get a deal like when I bought The 1966 Batman limited edition set for $40 CAD last year. Will probably splurge for the Criterion Zato Ichi set as it was about $140 a little bit ago. 25 movies vs. 25 episodes but the movies were from cleaned up/restored prints and cost a fraction of what the Yamato discs cost...

Well, considering that the series was a flop in North America (probably partially due to the fact that it was called "Starblazers 2199" and people didn't want to see that), I doubt that a box set would be available for the NA market. I think I may slowly build up a collection of the BluRay disks from the used media stores around town here. They're English subbed, I'm told.

greg wrote:Well, considering that the series was a flop in North America (probably partially due to the fact that it was called "Starblazers 2199" and people didn't want to see that), I doubt that a box set would be available for the NA market. I think I may slowly build up a collection of the BluRay disks from the used media stores around town here. They're English subbed, I'm told.

Correction, because there's so little communication on this.

Starblazers 2199 as a concept failed completely and utterly because the Japanese gave up. There was also a new announcement about yet another fool signing on to 'make' a live action Star Blazers movie and the Japanese felt they shouldn't take away from that.

WHICH IS THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE FROM HOW YOU PROMOTE AN I.P. in today's world.

I do not believe a live action Star Blazers movie will result from this deal either.

(mark this down in your style books. Star Blazers is the proper spelling. Two Words. Voyager did indeed use 'Starblazers' because they are so damn ignorant of their own property.)

Voyager has been trying to run their American office via remote control for several years now and it just doesn't work. Even if they wanted to shut down their web store and sell via Amazon and Right Stuf they could have done that but no. Even with the goals they had set (under 5000 units combined DVD and Blu Ray) were unreachable with zero advertising and promotion.

There will be no American box set of Yamato 2199. It's doubtful there will be a Japanese box set, there's too much profit margin in the singles at this time. Your only real option for owning a legit legal release is to buy the Japanese Blu-ray discs. These will be English subtitled because Bandai Visual did one thing right. Don't forget you also have to get 'The Stellar Ark' (aka Ark of the Stars and other permutations) for the complete tale.

In America, your best bet is to start an account with Amazon Japan. Given the current Yen to Dollar exchange rate it's fairly reasonable, at least as far as Japanese domestic entertainment media is concerned. Right now prices are all over the place, let's say an average of 6000 Yen. That's around $50 USD at current rates. Painful price, but it could be worse. So you're looking at about $400 USD for the 7+1 discs. Guess what? That's about what a box set would cost.

Much better than Amazon USA. Yamato 2199 BDs are averaging $85 a disc.

So you buy it one disc at a time, depending on budget. Like the old days when VHS tapes ran $29.95 for 2 episodes.

Don't buy the Japanese DVDs. No subtitles and you have to have a multi-region DVD player. Well, I'll modify that, there's nothing WRONG with the Japanese DVDs if you have a player that can do Region 2 and like watching in 'raw' Japanese, as we all did in the old days. It just seems if one is spending money at Japanese Domestic prices, one may as well get the BDs.

I think that covers it all.