Uchuu Senkan Yamato Episode 15
宇宙戦艦ヤマト Ep. 15 (TV, Anime)

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis: Yuki is acting as coffee wench, leading Daisuke to make a remark about her coffee’s taste. A lot of the other crew seem to celebrate her coffee, but then Yuki realizes they are having fun with her and she gets annoyed. Meanwhile on planet Balan, Domel arrives and takes command of the base from Gale, who’s not happy about it. Domel heads to the commander’s office and proceeds to destroy all of Gale’s paintings, liquor, etc., telling Gale to replace all the furniture in the office. Then he orders the fleet to undertake a military exercise in the 4th dimension at sector 6.

Back on Yamato, Susumu and his pilots are working on their planes when they notice something not right with Yamato. Susumu rushes to the bridge to confront Daisuke, who’s not responsible for the ship slowing down. It turns out the ship appears to be in a hydrogen cloud known as the Magellanic Stream. Their Wave-Motion engines are not functioning, so Yamato is left with their sub-engines. They soon detect a Gamilus destroyer and naturally Susumu wants to go on the attack. Daisuke advises that they run since the area of space they are currently in is too much of an unknown factor. This irritates Susumu.

Captain Okita goes with Daisuke’s suggestion and orders a retreat as Domel orders the destroyer to distract Yamato. Seeing that the Yamato is fleeing, Domel assumes that its captain has realized that there is a fleet coming and thus is leaving the 4th dimension. However, Domel notices that the Yamato is acting strangely and thus realizes that Yamato doesn’t know how to properly navigate this 4th dimension space. His fleet closes the distance and opens fire with Yamto returning fire while attempting to escape. However, Yamato‘s power levels fail and its instruments go out. At that moment, the female leader of Iscandar (Starsha) contacts them and tells them to escape with the dimensional compass. With that, power is restored and Yamato escapes the hydrogen cloud before warping away.

Thoughts/Review: Poor Yuki, the all-purpose babe. She’s so smart sometimes but at others, she’s so dumb. I guess serving coffee to a ship full of men will do that to a girl, especially when you are the only girl (I understand that Yuki is the only female crew person shown on the ship after episode 11). I hate to say it, but I sometimes think, “You know, she could make a fortune on the ship since she’s the only female.” This is due to seeing how some girls I served with at Yokota AB acted when the male to female ration was 8:1.

There were way too many shots of Susumu showing a fist to Daisuke because of…well, whatever.

Report: The ship has slowed down.

Susumu: Daisuke! *shakes fist Daisuke*

Report: An enemy ship has shown up.

Daisuke: Lets run.

Susumu: What?! *shakes fist at Daisuke*

Captain: Yes, lets run.

Susumu: What?! *shakes fist at Daisuke*

I guess that Starsha must have activated something on board Yamato with her message. It was rather difficult for me to determine exactly what she did beyond a deus ex machina resolution to Yamato‘s current problem.

Domel showed why he will fail. Seriously, he comes in, takes command of the Balan base, then proceeds to destroy of of the previous commander’s things as part of his assumption of command. That’s quality leadership right there. I guess that also explains why the fleet from Balan couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn when they tried to destroy Yamato.

Overall, the episode was rather slow and seemed filler-filled.