Space Battleship Yamato 2 02
Uchuu Senkan Yamato 2 Episode 02
宇宙戦艦ヤマト2 Ep. 02 (TV, Anime)

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

The Yamato lands and Yuki greets Susumu at the spaceport. Seeing his bandaged hand, she forces him to see Sado-sensei, who finds Susumu’s wound to be minor. He reminds the couple of the memorial gathering for Captain Okita that evening and leaves them alone. That evening, Sado-sensei is alone in the cemetery sitting and drinking under Captain Okita’s statue. He begins to think that Okita has been forgotten, but the surviving crew from the Yamato mission arrive. As they all sit, drink, and speak, Susumu laments how materialistic humans have become in the year since he was last on Earth (before going on patrol).

The gathering is interrupted by the return of the Andromeda, which flies low overhead. Susumu is angry and takes off. He’s then summoned by the captain of the Andromeda, Hijikata, who was an instructor. Captain Hijikata demands to know why Susumu didn’t move Yamato aside when Andromeda was leaving Earth. Susumu quotes the regs which state inbound ships have right-of-way, especially if they are damaged, which Yamato was. Hijikata reminds Susumu that Andromeda‘s testing is so critical that he gets the right of way. Susumu says nothing, clearly disagreeing and is dismissed.

Sanada, who’s working on Andromeda, gives Susumu a tour of the giant battleship. All of its weapons and systems are vastly superior to Yamato‘s, however, HQ has ordered that the systems be fully automated. As such, the crew has little to do but monitor things. Susumu finds this appalling since the crew are the heart of the ship. Sanada tends to agree, stating that Andromeda would not win as it is. Sanada and Susumu discuss the transmission they received as well as the rapidly approaching comet, which Sanada believes to be tied in with the attack on Yamato‘s fleet.

Returning to Yamato, Sanada tells Susumu that the ship is being upgraded. While some of the weapons won’t be quite as powerful as Andromeda‘s (due to differences in ship design), they will be quite good as will the upgraded systems. There will even be a new wing of torpedo bombers on Yamato. However, Sanada tells Susumu that HQ wants the Yamato to be fully automated as well. Susumu takes off to HQ but his request to not have full automation is denied. At that moment, power to Earth is cut off and the source is a mysterious ship who’s design is that of the ships that attacked Yamato.

The loss of power on Earth causes a lot of problems and destructive accidents. After seeing his work completed, Commander Nazca reports to the Emperor. The Emperor’s female companion, Sabera, finds Earth to be very weak. Supreme Leader Desler advises caution, stating that Yamato has not been dealt with yet. Sabera finds Desler’s fear of Yamato to be unwarranted. Since Desler is going to take care of the Teresart problem, the Emperor places Admiral Gorland’s missile fleet under Desler’s command. Desler leaves and Sabera advises the Emperor not to trust Desler so much.

Thoughts/Review:

I found this episode to be pretty interesting even if there were some things that made me roll my eyes. Before I get to that, I have to say that I liked the tribute to Captain Okita via the memorial gathering. When he died in the first series, only Sado-sensei was there to pay the man some respect. Everyone else was busy first mourning Yuki’s apparent passage and then her miracle recovery to be bothered to give the captain his due. Well, better late than never, eh?

Susumu’s blathering about people being materialistic kind of annoyed me. Considering what the humans had gone through when the planet was all but destroyed, I can understand that once they rebuilt, they’d want to take it easy and enjoy life some. There’s nothing wrong with that providing that the population doesn’t decide to do something stupid like kill the military. Considering that Earth had just built the Andromeda and were building other military ships as well tells me that things aren’t at that level. Maybe Susumu thinks everyone should live poorly and unhappily because there are evil aliens out there. Hey Susumu — your job is to keep the evil aliens away. Sorry if it interrupts your time with Yuki.

On a personal level, I found the discussion of automated functions on Andromeda and Yamato most interesting. In the IT/IS world, “automations” has been around for a long while and with the passage of time, more tasks are automated, thus cutting down costs by having people do more. On a warship, automated weapons are much better in terms of accuracy and speed. Human operators of such weapons in our modern day fleet have just as important role as the operators on yesterday’s warships did, only their job has changed somewhat over time. That can be applied to Yamato as well. Susumu brings up the argument against automations (and I certainly understand it) but in the end, automations ends up being a plus, not a minus.

Amazing that the person who lost nearly every ship in his combined fleets as well as his planet and several bases (Desler) gets put in charge of a new fleet. Sabera is right to warn the Emperor about trusting Desler too much but at the same time, Desler is right about the threat Yamato will present, even if not obvious at first.