Ok. Commercial Releases as well as a full website and a metric buttload of information and background of the universe of the show (Both Japanese and American versions) of Uchu Senkan Yamato/Star Blazers are available
at the official Star Blazers website
Mind you - the TV series episodes available here are ONLY the American dub. That being said - Star Blazers is still, to this day, considered one of the best dubs ever made. Season 1 & 2 are widely considered to be
Woolsey-isms. The dubs actually made the series BETTER than the original to many fans. And yes, they changed the name of the ship from Yamato to Argo. BUT they didn't pretend that the ship was never the Yamato. In fact it's called that until the 3rd Episode when they add dialogue to Captain Avatar's (Okita) launching day speech where he announces the new name. And the name Argo is considered VERY appropriate for an initial mission which could be viewed as a quest very like the one in Jason and the Argonauts. When Star Blazers first came out, it was also only a couple of years after Star Wars. So you get names like Derek Wildstar and Mark Venture and Captain Avatar. Trust me though, it works well.
Be prepared for a bit of a shock if you watch the 3rd season though. At the time, they couldn't FIND the original voice actors that did the first 2 seasons. So they had to go with a completely new crew. Headed up by the late great
Peter Fernandez. And it was dubbed about 6-7 years after the original. Weirdly, it was a STRAIGHT translation of the original Japanese show, where the first two seasons were edited and adapted more for American audiences. But the 3rd season was NOT done this way. It's considered, as a result to be somewhat less than the sum of it's parts. Still worth viewing, especially since you get the follow-up in continuity to Desslok's Heel-face turn when the Argo/Yamato visits his new empire homeworld of Galman/Gamilon after some misunderstandings ((COUGH)) by his outer territory generals as honored guests.
Also to keep in mind. For those of you who are used to anime from the 90s forward, the artstyle and techniques in the early episodes may seem crude at times, even to the point of occasionally having hilarious animation errors. Remember - the first season of Yamato was produced in 1974! And the original series of movies and TV stopped being made in 1983!
The movies fared better, generally, in animation quality. Starting with Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato (Arrividerci Yamato to outside of Japan markets) FTSBY had incredible animation for 1978. And it was the first version of the Comet Empire story where they fight off the Comet Empire, but at the expense of sacrificing the ship and most of the main characters!
Yamato/Star Blazers 2nd Season was a retelling of that story where most of the main characters (and the ship) survived intact.
(WARNING: DO NOT bother with the movie Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato available in the official site I linked above. I'd recommend almost anything else there, but NOT that! It was dubbed by yet ANOTHER separate dub team who - although well cast and apparently good actors, were saddled with one of THE. WORST. SCRIPTS. EVER. I mean seriously, it's brain gougingly BAD. ONLY buy this if you intend to do a Mystery Science Theater 3000 Party and you need a movie to force everyone to leave at the end of the night. It's the anime equivalent to Batman and Robin. I'm dead serious. It really is THAT BAD.)
Oh - that reminds me. Don't let your brain hurt too badly by rubber physics. There was some effort made to portray space in "realistic" terms (at least by Space Opera standards) in the first couple of seasons. (Though the Japanese made some errors. And the American script team took out some of those errors and added in new ones. Heh.) But the series and movies start playing pretty fast and loose with physics the further in you go. Keep telling yourself it's just a show, you should really just relax.
Anyway. If you have any questions at all. Feel free to ask. I'm probably one the best informed fans out there on this show.
(I and a few other fan-consultants collectively were known as the "Iscandar Project" and were consulted by Bruce Lewis and Tim Eldred when they were doing the Star Blazers comic in the mid 90s. We were also known - jokingly - as the "Talmudic Scholars of Yamato." How much info and detail did we know and research? Well we know where one of the heads(toilets) on the ship is for certain... No really! There's a drawing in one of the old Roman Albums and... nevermind... ^_^;;;
Bruce even officially gave one of the bridge crew a surname in my honor. Dashell Jordan, the gunnery officer, to be exact. See - some of the characters were ever known by one name. Dash, Eager, and Nova on the bridge crew of the Argo, never had other names actually mentioned in the dub of the show. When they were writing up the comic and the official information articles to go with it, Tim and Bruce wanted to give them last names. Considering the comic was put out by Voyager, the company that owns the rights to Star Blazers in the US, that's about as official as you can get! But then, I guess that's only fair, I'm the one who came up with the name Forrester for Nova, which also is now official.)
EDIT: I realize I'm doing a little bit of SMOF style bragging at the end there. Please forgive me for that. But how often do I even get to mention this stuff anymore?
