Uchuu Senkan Yamato Episode 08
宇宙戦艦ヤマト Ep. 08 (TV, Anime)

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis: Yamato sinks to the bottom of the Pluto ocean and Captain Okita orders that they play possum by blowing one of the ballast tanks and turning the ship upside-down. On the Gamilus base, Shultz is pleased to see the Yamato apparently dead, but he wants to make sure. As such, he orders a squadron of attack subs to destroy the Yamato completely. Realizing that they won’t be allowed to play dead, Okita orders Yamato be right-sized and one back in its proper position, it fires missiles at the incoming subs, destroying many but Yamato takes more damage as a result.

Susumu volunteers to take a strike team to destroy the Reflective Satellite Cannon. They are given eight hours to complete their mission as repair work continues on Yamato. Sandana, who’s on the team, requests that Yamato surface to allow the Gamilons to fire the canon at the ship, thus giving a position for the strike to to locate the weapon. Yamato does this and observing the reflective satellites in orbit, Yamato is able to dive just before the beam from the Reflective Satellite Cannon can hit them (the water diffuses the energy beam). Yamato then launches cruise missiles at the point of origin of the beam attack, which Sandana, Susumu, and the rest of the strike team head to.

The strike team arrives in the general area where the cannon is supposed to be. However, they need to find the weapon’s exhaust port. So, Okita orders Yamato to surface again just as the Gamilons drop depth charges to try to force Yamato to surface. Again, the Reflective Satellite Cannon fires and again, Yamato dives before the beam hits them. Shultz finds Yamato acting strangely and suspects they are up to something. Meanwhile, the strike team finds and enters the cannon’s exhaust port where they then head down below the frozen surface to the undersea location of the cannon. The team encounters a few lethal traps as well as some enemy troops. However, they manage to reach the cannon and plant bombs.

Meanwhile, Yamato has run out of air and needs to surface. Gantz orders the satellites to move into position for an attack but Shultz realizes how Yamato has avoided their previous attacks. As such, Shultz orders other satellites to be used so that the attack comes from Yamato‘s blind side. The cannon fires before being destroyed by the strike time. As such, Yamato takes another hit but the Pluto base is destroyed by the cannon’s explosion. The Gamilus troops are now forced to evacuate in their fleet while Yuki and Daisuke are dispatched to pick up the strike team members.

Thoughts/Review: Tactics were the name of the game for this episode. I liked how Okita attempted to play possum. I liked it more when Shultz sent in some subs to hit Yamato just the same. Basically, I liked how Okita and Shultz were like two players over chess, only with much higher stakes. So, an interesting back-and-forth but really no doubt as to the outcome.

To be honest, this element surprised me. The Gamilus leaders on Pluto have been shown to be somewhat stereotypical villains — powerful enough to destroy the world but bumbling in their efforts to take out a single opponent. Some comments I’d read about this series lead me to believe that Shultz was a complete idiot, but the writers presented someone who was not an idiot. Had he been overconfident? Sure. However, when Captain Okita had Yamato flipped to pretend to be sunk and dead, I thought that Shultz would declare victory, Yamato would get repaired, and then they’d take out the enemy base. Instead, Shultz ordered a military strike on the apparently dead Yamato to make sure of the kill. Immediately, this made the episode interesting to me because we weren’t dealing with a bumbling idiot. So kudos to the writers on this one.

Nice to see that Yamato is not only a space ship, it is also a surface battleship and a submarine as well. Also, good thing Yamato can take so many hits from that Reflective Satellite Cannon. As it used to be said, “How convenient.” ^_~

Still, this was a very enjoyable episode for me considering the unexpected stuff coming from Shultz.