Space Battleship Yamato 2199 Blu-ray

[JMDiaz718]

Originally Posted by Kinsella5

Funimation is releasing (finally) here in the USA the complete Space Battleship Yamato 2199 animated series at the end of July. Unlike the previous Blu-ray USA release which was never released in it's complete state, this upcoming release will be two volumes, with each volume comprising of 13 episodes, so the entire 26 episode series will be presented. This release will be first time it will feature an English dub audio track but also will present the original Japanese audio with English subtitles too. Pre-orders are up now (link below) and it comes in a collector's case which has room for volume #2 when it's released later on. A digital copy is included too.

https://www.funimation.com/shop/home...-le-bld-00735/

Yamato 2199 is a re-telling of Star Blazers: The Quest for Iscandar from the early 80's. All-new animation, new characters, expanded storyline, I picked up a bootleg Blu-ray set a few years ago and it only had English subtitles with Japanese audio but it was a blast to watch. In Japan they released the second series Space Battleship Yamato 2202 which is a retelling of Star Blazers: The Comet Empire also from the early 80's.

Sucks that they offer a Digital Copy, but you can only watch it, on THEIR app! Seriously? They can't link it to Movies Anywhere, VUDU or iTunes?

Movies Anywhere, VUDU, iTunes, Netflix, Hulu.......I can't take ANOTHER freakin streaming site! I'm 50!!!!! 50 years old!!

[Joshitaka]

I got really excited for a minute, and then I realized that this is just another one of those CGI-laden sorry excuses for animation.

[Nostalgic Twilight]

What do you mean? Yes, if my memory serves me correctly, the ships are rendered in CGI, but all the character animation is hand drawn and then scanned and painted in the usual fashion. Unless you are referring to the Harlock movie instead of Yamato?

[professorwho]

The Yamato series is as Nostalgic Twilight says- 3D ships, 2D character animation.

The Harlock film is fully CGI.

[Zeether]

Pretty excited about this, especially since it seems like Voyager gave the series a second chance here after that failed import. Hopefully I can snag the LE and I'd love to see a release of Ark of the Stars too.

[professorwho]

Just noticed that on Anime News Network’s database that Justin Sevakis is doing the video encode for Yamato 2199. Wow. FUNimation got a good encoder. This is one FUNi release I’m looking forward to getting due to that fact.

(Either that, or he did the Voyager releases and ANN isn’t specifying which release he did)

EDIT:

The Voyager ones. We did finish making them, even if they never finished releasing them...

Source

Aww man... it was too good to be true...

[dlb99]

Funimation has done a great job with with 2199. The dub is very good.

I have the Japanese Blu-rays, but I will double dip.

Originally Posted by Joshitaka

I got really excited for a minute, and then I realized that this is just another one of those CGI-laden sorry excuses for animation.

The CGI is somewhat like modern Gundams. Primarily ships. It is cell-shaded, it looks fine. Characters are hand-drawn. This is a very nice looking show.

Originally Posted by Dragon Ranger

I'm interested in this but often find modern remakes of classic anime to be a little soulless with their overly slick production values. They can sometimes lose the character which came through more traditional animation techniques.

I'm interested to know what peoples thoughts are on this; is this remake worth my time?

This is an outstanding remake of a classic show. Plenty of soul. Very much worth your time.

I am a huge fan of the original Star Blazers & Yamato. 2199 augments and compliments it. Good old-school and good new-school.

Originally Posted by themp3000

Sentai Filmworks released Gatchaman, this is Funimation. Different distributors. As for the original, I doubt the materials are in good enough condition for a BD release, maybe another DVD but highly unlikely imho.

Season 1 (1974) is available in Blu-ray in Japan and looks excellent.

However Star Blazers (1979/1980) dub is a different cut and edit. To recreate Star Blazers would require the same edits & fiddles. I believe it would be doable but quite a bit of work. The Star Blazers dub actually holds up quite well. Very high nostalgia value,

Personally, in a dream world I would like:

- 2199 on Blu-ray dub & sub (confirmed and coming soon)

- 2202 on Blu-ray dub & sub (very likely)

- Yamato season 1 (1974) unedited with new dub cast (along with sub)

- Yamato season 2 (1978) unedited with new dub cast (along with sub)

- All 5 Yamato films with new dub cast (along with original Japanese audio + sub)

- Star Blazers season 1 (1980) re-edit with original dub

- Star Blazers season 2 (1980) re-edit with original dub

The last items are moon-shots (not happening in-my-opinion). I think we'll get 2199 and 2202 only.

[Kinsella5]

Originally Posted by Zeether

Pretty excited about this, especially since it seems like Voyager gave the series a second chance here after that failed import. Hopefully I can snag the LE and I'd love to see a release of Ark of the Stars too.

I am just pleased that they are releasing the entire first season of 2199 and just over two releases instead of five or six like the previous release that never was completed. I took would not mind seeing the Ark of the Stars film, but at least the wheels are turning, or in this case the wave motion gun is priming for us to get the 2202 series eventually and then hopefully the classic Star Blazers series.

[professorwho]

I did a comparison between the subtitles on Crunchyroll and the JP BD subs, and they appear to be identical, same thing with the English dub. I'm glad they're the same, as it was already a professional translation, and I don't want FUNi to mess up a modern classic (since they've been licensing more titles lately, their subtitling quality has gotten lower).

[professorwho]

2202 added to Crunchyroll.

This is excellent as the Japanese Blu-rays didn't have subtitles (unlike 2199).

[Asuras]

[Kinsella5]

The packaging and extras look awesome! I just pre-ordered, $63.74 shipped free and no sales tax. I noticed Amazon has the limited edition up as well but Amazon charges tax and it would make it closer to $79.

[Bolo Seagull]

I'll probably go with the regular edition. But the special edition looks like a nice set.

[Girls With Guns]

I pre-ordered the Limited Edition box set from Rightstuf yesterday. That LE Box looks really nice, and it will be great to have the whole series stored in one box. Even though I only watch anime subbed, the main thing I wanted in this release is the English dub. I've been waiting anxiously to show this series in my theater to a bunch of my friends who all have trouble reading subtitled anime. I guess they're all products of a failed US education system, lol...

I've owned the subtitled Japanese singles of the complete 2199 series and the followup movies for years, and also bought the exclusive digipak storage box for all the discs. I also picked up the over-sized, Limited Edition box set of the two live SBY orchestral concerts of the soundtrack music. The 2199 series is my #3 favorite anime of all time, after Noir and Requiem for the Phantom. I'm currently collecting the JP SBY 2202 singles, even though they are not English friendly, because the slipcovers for both series all have such gorgeous illustrations on them.

I was a huge fan of the 2004-2009 Battlestar Galactica remake series on the syfy channel, and SBY 2199 is so very similar to that series in many ways - I guess the two have a history of borrowing from each other even back to the original 1974 SBY series and the original 1978 BSG series with Loren Greene. Some very similar themes and scenes are shared between 2199 and the BSG remake, and 2199 even uses the opening line of the original 1974 BSG OP in one of it's background music tracks. So if you are a fan of either of the Battlestar Galactica series, I'm sure you'll love 2199 as well.

My only big issue with this Funi release is the use of the Star Blazers title; I really hate that westernized name with a passion. It will always be Space Battleship Yamato to me, forever.

[IronWaffle]

Originally Posted by Girls With Guns

I pre-ordered the Limited Edition box set from Rightstuf yesterday. That LE Box looks really nice, and it will be great to have the whole series stored in one box. Even though I only watch anime subbed, the main thing I wanted in this release is the English dub. I've been waiting anxiously to show this series in my theater to a bunch of my friends who all have trouble reading subtitled anime. I guess they're all products of a failed US education system, lol...

I've owned the subtitled Japanese singles of the complete 2199 series and the followup movies for years, and also bought the exclusive digipak storage box for all the discs. I also picked up the over-sized, Limited Edition box set of the two live SBY orchestral concerts of the soundtrack music. The 2199 series is my #3 favorite anime of all time, after Noir and Requiem for the Phantom. I'm currently collecting the JP SBY 2202 singles, even though they are not English friendly, because the slipcovers for both series all have such gorgeous illustrations on them.

I was a huge fan of the 2004-2009 Battlestar Galactica remake series on the syfy channel, and SBY 2199 is so very similar to that series in many ways - I guess the two have a history of borrowing from each other even back to the original 1974 SBY series and the original 1978 BSG series with Loren Greene. Some very similar themes and scenes are shared between 2199 and the BSG remake, and 2199 even uses the opening line of the original 1974 BSG OP in one of it's background music tracks. So if you are a fan of either of the Battlestar Galactica series, I'm sure you'll love 2199 as well.

My only big issue with this Funi release is the use of the Star Blazers title; I really hate that westernized name with a passion. It will always be Space Battleship Yamato to me, forever.

Love this post. In a similar spirit (I hope)...

I was in the third grade when the original series hit the U.S. shore. I don’t remember watching so much as I remember loving it, but I do remember talking about it with friends at school a lot. My two starkest memories are spending the night at my friend ian’s House but that the most important thing on our agenda (above bike riding and electric trains), was making sure not to miss that day’s installment. We knew too well that missing one episode would leave you a little lost the day after, unlike most interchangeable kids’ fare. I must have watched the first season two or three times because it was memorized. Not sure if our local station, WDCA ran Comet Empire as much or if I just missed a lot of it because those memories are more vague.

Flash forward a few years later, we’d moved and in our new house we were slightly able to get very snowy reception from an out-of-state UHF channel. That’s my first memory of Comet Empire. I was only able to watch a few episodes but was blown away by the (slight spoilers) stealing of the Argo. It when my appetite for more even though my taste for cartoons had ebbed. At least until a year later when I discovered Robotech. One year later I attended a nascent anime (Japanimation) convention. There I got to see Final Yamato, unsubbed. I was blown away by its mood and visual sophisitication compared to the series.

During the next couple years I was able to get the five “graphic novels” of the series. Bound graphic novel sized editions with original cell art and comic book speech bubbles. Devoured them and was glad they held up pretty well to my more brooding teen sensibility.

That was about it until in the early 2000s when I stumbled in used copies of a few Islander and a Comet Empire DVD. I watched the first few episodes. Much as I loved their ambition I could no longer easily go along with the stilted voices and on-the-nose dialogue. Rather than watching more, I shelved them and opted to relish the memories instead. I’d occasionally want to re-watch but ultimately never have.

Two years ago I inadvertently discovered there was a “reboot”. I’d known about and sampled the live action movie. It wasn’t for me. So I was leery of 2199. I hunted Amazon and eBay to find a copy of a handful of episodes to get an idea. By that point everything was either unreasonably expensive for a casual introduction or clearly a bootleg. I caved and downloaded episodes from places,on the web I’m not good with or comfortable in, deciding if they’re any good I’d save up for the pricy official imports. What I got online was the full first series in 720 in a single file dipumo. I watched the first episode and was as caught up as I had been in the third grade. This update did so much to “fix” what adult me finds alienating. I found myself too tempted to not watch another. And another. Finally, I stopped after three or four episodes and redoubled my effort to buy these. I haven’t used the files since but, with only an abandoned US release and those previously mentioned options, I haven’t deleted them either because I was afraid they’d never come out.

In the intervening two years I’ve bought the three CD volumes of the 2199 soundtrack and the first Blur-ray (sort of a best-of with 5.1, if I understand correctly). It’s like when I was a kid again. With no VHS/DVD the way to re-experience Star Wars, etc. was through the soundtracks. I’ve listened to them plenty and adore them. It’s been enough.

Imagine my elation when I discovered this release! I’m over the moon. Much as I prefer subtitles, I confess I’m mostly excited to see these in English in a bit of nostalgia I rarely indulge. I kind of want to lie down on the floor, too close to the TV resting my chin in my hands, watch am episode them go for a bike ride every day until I finish the first thirteen episodes then wait impatiently for the back half and, hopefully, 2202.

[Girls With Guns]

Originally Posted by IronWaffle

Two years ago I inadvertently discovered there was a “reboot”. I’d known about and sampled the live action movie. It wasn’t for me. So I was leery of 2199.

Lol, yeah, as I've said before, the live-action Space Battleship Yamato movie is to the SBY 2199 anime as the Last Airtbender live-action movie is to the original Nickelodeon Avatar: The Last Airbender animated series...

Of course, in general, most live-action adaptations of an anime/animated series are pretty lame...

[professorwho]

(If someone has better vision than me, please correct me if I'm wrong)

It looks like it's using 2 BD-50s. Disc 1 seems to have Episodes 1 to 7 and 2 has 8 to 13. If this is true, then there is ample enough space for a good encode at a high bitrate. But, this is FUNimation we're talking about... look at the Re;Zero release in the Picture Quality thread... Still, I'll be picking it up as the art-book looks nice and I won't have to pay a lot to import it from Japan.

[IronWaffle]

With all the Amazon Prime Day competing sales I went to Rightstuf on a hunch and discovered both versions are on sale.

LE is $50.99 rather than the $60.55 preorder It was in May.

https://www.rightstufanime.com/Star-...on-Blu-ray-DVD

The standard version without the book is also down to $38.99 and can be found here:
https://www.rightstufanime.com/Star-...-1-Blu-ray-DVD

Not sure when the sale ends. For those who placed a higher priced pre-order, I placed a second order at the new perice and used their online form to cancel the first one. Got confirmation within 12 hours. Hope this helps others.

[PissedOffPeoN]

Originally Posted by professorwho

(If someone has better vision than me, please correct me if I'm wrong)

It looks like it's using 2 BD-50s. Disc 1 seems to have Episodes 1 to 7 and 2 has 8 to 13. If this is true, then there is ample enough space for a good encode at a high bitrate. But, this is FUNimation we're talking about... look at the Re;Zero release in the Picture Quality thread... Still, I'll be picking it up as the art-book looks nice and I won't have to pay a lot to import it from Japan.

Speaking of Rei Zero.. any new info on disc replacement program?

[Kinsella5]

Just got a shipping confirmation today from RightStufAnime that my limited edition shipped today. They still have it for the $50.99 price with free Media Mail shipping, that is the lowest price out there for the limited edition version. Kudos to IronWaffle for sharing that deal!