Space Battleship Yamato 11
Uchuu Senkan Yamato Episode 11
宇宙戦艦ヤマト Ep. 11 (TV, Anime)

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Supreme Leader Desler arrives at the great hall to receive his toadying military staff. General Hiss (formerly Vice President Hiss) gives a report on Yamato‘s recent successes. General Talan reports that the Gamilons have mined the solar system and are so confident it will keep Yamato trapped, they’ve named it the Desler Minefield. Desler gives a toast to Yamato making it through the minefield which causes one of the officers to laugh, thinking Desler is joking. Desler simply has the floor open beneath the man, sending him who knows were.

On the Yamato, they’ve detected the objects in front of them. Dispatching a dummy balloon (which looks like a scaled down version of Yamato), the crew is able to discern that the objects are in fact mines. Okita orders the ship to go around the mine field, but the mines shift position to insure they are always blocking Yamato’s path. Okita orders Yuki to determine how much space there is between mines. She makes the calculations, which are just enough for Yamato to slip through. Okita orders Daisuke to take the ship through the mine field. However, once inside the field, the mines begin moving again and Yamato is trapped.

Figuring there is a control unit directing the mines, Okita orders Sanada to find and take care of it. Sanada gets Analyzer, whom the very drunk Sado-sensei has made intoxicated, and they two head out in a shuttle to find the control unit. They find it and despite having reservations about Analyzer’s abilities (the robot having the drunk hiccups), he has the robot disable the control unit. Thus the mines are no longer moving but still in Yamato‘s way. Okita orders Susumu to take the members of the fighter squadron out to manually push the mines out of Yamato‘s path. This they do and Yamato is on its way again.

Back on Gamilus, General Hiss is greatly embarrassed by this turn of events, especially after Desler asks to be reminded of what the name of the minefield happened to be. General Hiss tells Desler to punish him for this, but Desler is not interested in punishing Hiss. Instead, he marvels at the low-tech solution Captain Okita came up with for removing the mines. As such, he orders a congratulation message be sent to Okita. The message is received by Yamato but unfortunately, a trace was not performed so that they could immediately find Gamilus.

Thoughts/Review:

You know, in episode 8, I had praise for the tactics used. For this episode, Captain Okita is a prat.

Crew: “Captain, there’s a mine field. It moves en masse to prevent us from going around it. What do we do?”

Okita: “Is there space enough between mines for us to fly through?”

Crew: “There’s enough space, but what does that matter? The mines move.”

Okita: “Damn the mines! Full speed ahead!”

Crew: “Shouldn’t we try to clear the mines?”

Okita: “DAMN THE MINES! FULL SPEED AHEAD!”

OK, this is a slight exaggeration but seriously, why go through a mine field when you could take it out with decoys or even clear a large enough path with your weapons?

Oh well. As long as the fools on Gamilus were impressed with the hand removal of mines, that’s all that matters, right?

The joke with the “drunk” Analyzer wasn’t funny to me. Maybe it is because I’ve seen better drunk robot jokes in Futurama.