Space Battleship Yamato 2 11
Uchuu Senkan Yamato 2 Episode 11
宇宙戦艦ヤマト2 Ep. 11 (TV, Anime)

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

The crew of Yamato are amazed to discover Desler is still alive but press ahead just the same. Desler sees Yamato is moving toward them slower than expected, so he decides to give some homesick humans a taste of home. As such, Yamato is surrounded with what look like fireflies and many crew members done spacesuits and head outside to capture these, placing them in special, sealed containers. Analyzer gets in on the act, even giving a container to Yuki, which Sanada takes in order to investigate the mysterious lights.

After Yamato receives another message from Teresa (which sounds automated), Sanada discovers that the lights are actually a bacteria of some kind, which becomes apparent when they stop lighting. Susumu is annoyed that these things are all over inside the ship after he expressly ordered they not be brought in. When he orders them removed, Saito refuses the order, uninterested in giving up his pretty firefly-like lights (as do others). When the lights go out, Saito gets mad and he and Susumu start fighting. The fight is stopped when gravity control is lost.

Susumu manages to make it to the bridge where he’s informed that the bacteria brought on board eats through metal. An open container of bacteria caused the gravity controls to be lost. Sanada works to restore gravity control as Desler orders a single assault carrier to attack Yamato. It launches its “dive bombers” which attack with gusto, leading Susumu to order the main guns return fire rather than the anti-aircraft weapons. Desler makes visual contact with Yamato to let them know it is he that ordered the attack as Yamato takes a pounding. Sanada gets the gravity restored, but it is too much.

Thoughts/Review:

Today, we have an exercise in complete and total stupidity, to say nothing about a breakdown in the chain of command and Susumu’s complete failure as a captain.

Clearly, no one respects Acting Captain Susumu Kodai because they ignore his orders when they feel like it (save for the bridge crew). It was bad enough when that oaf Saito ignored the orders, but to have the regular crew do so as well is just stunning. I doubt the series does this, but in real life, if Susumu isn’t advised to pass out punishments AND doesn’t punish idiot crew members (including Saito), then he deserves to suffer the consequences of his inaction.

Next on the agenda is Susumu’s orders after coming under attack. (Of course, we are ignoring the fact that he should have placed Yamato under alert the moment Yuki spotted the Gamilus fleet on the time radar so that when they came under attack, they immediately were ready.) If you are under attack from “dive bombers,” why would you order your main guns to fire rather than your anti-aircraft pulse lasers, which you’ve been using quite well until this episode?

Finally, we have an analyzing robot named “Analyzer.” Pardon me while I laugh. He grabs a bunch of these “fireflies” and can’t even analyze that they are potentially harmful? He used to be good at that kind of thing in the first series. This series, he’s been pretty worthless.

We won’t go into Desler stupidity because he’s a villain and they are supposed to do stupid things like toy with their prey for revenge and enjoyment, but then die anyway. Not that Desler can die since clearly he can be brought back to life thanks to Comet Empire technology and the desire for revenge.

Speaking of Desler, at least now we know how he survived, having been found and saved by the Comet Empire. The question is why a Comet Empire small craft happened to be near Earth in order to not only find Desler’s body in space, but also to bring him back to their HQ and then bring him back to life.

No new jobs for Yuki this time, though she should be given a stupidity detector and whack people on the head with a harisen who flag as stupid.

So basically, this is an episode filled with complete and total stupidity just so Yamato can take a beating in an attack.