Space Battleship Yamato is a sci-fi classic, contemporaneous with other genre giants like Star Wars and Mobile Suit Gundam. This remake is a resounding success at capturing both the original's spirit and awe while improving it in many areas. While it is largely faithful to the original's story and characters, 2199 updates its more dated elements while fleshing out and adding to others. In many ways, this is what every remake, or perhaps more accurately reimagining, should strive for instead of just attempting to replicate the original exactly.

The core plot of Space Battleship Yamato remains timeless and as grand as ever. Faced with an alien threat, a lone ship and crew embark on a mission with the fate of earth resting in their hands. While perhaps a little trite in this modern era where the idea has been repeated ad nauseam in many works since then, 2199 demonstrates it still has the chops to retell its story without losing its lustre. The journey of Yamato is put on grand display with its modern animation and models. The visuals are nothing short of superb, with the ship to ship action being both intricate and spectacular. The reimagined designs of many of the ships strike a balance between their very retro original appearance and a modern update to bring them more in line with what we conceive as the appearance of future technology today. At its heart, the new model of the Yamato is even more impressive than its previous incarnations, with many detailed additions like RCS thrusters and missile ports. Similarly, the crew uniforms have been updated to something more modern while keeping much of their original colourful design. The sound design and scoring is another incredibly done adaptation that balances the nostalgic and iconic sounds of the original opening with newer pieces. The weapon effects are crisp while the musical cues and stings remain fresh and evoke their intended emotion until the last episode. A particular highlight is the Galactic Pilot March which nicely fills in the role the Warship March had in the original version without the historical baggage attached to the latter song. And It is astounding how the elegy variation of the march is so effective at evoking a sense of sorrow. All the music is employed effectively, and it serves to highlight the emotions in the scene or battle, bringing out the flair for the dramatic this classic space opera has.

Although sci-fiction has moved to prefer "harder" elements like more realistic space combat, 2199 recreates the original's charm of having its action be more akin to naval warfare on the high seas. While it makes use of and shows combat taking place in three dimensions, many scenarios are callbacks that are more analogous to a naval battle of the past. Namely, the Battle of the Rainbow Star Cluster and Yamato's encounter with a submarine that hides in a parallel dimension when submerged. While it does gnaw at the suspension of disbelief slightly for a viewer that is more absorbed by the technical aspects or plausibility of Yamato, it more than makes up for it with the impressive spectacle and the understanding that these elements are intentional. In many ways, this entire series is a homage to naval warfare and the grand narratives that surround it. Knowing this, the remake expertly toes the line between its space combat being an analogy for the grand scale action of fleets in WWII and the associated disbelief that comes with translating it into space. The spectacle is always sufficient to earn enough goodwill with the audience to accept and understand the intent of the show instead of being hung up on the, at best, semi-Newtonian physics being presented.

Space Battleship Yamato impressively has the substance to back up its flashy appearance. Its grand plot about saving the earth in an interstellar conflict is grounded in themes about the price of war and the moral ramification of their actions. The most interesting element is Yamato's Wave Motion Gun, a spinally mounted superweapon with massive destructive capabilities. While the crew make use of this out of necessity, it is plain to see that they come to struggle with its implications. In essence, they know they have perverted a gift from their saviours, the Iscandarians, and utilised it as a weapon. At the same time, the Wave Motion Core is the means by which the Yamato is powered and is able to travel faster than light through warp. It is easy to see that Wave Motion technology is a metaphor for nuclear power or other destructive technologies. Yamato tackles this theme in a robust manner, combining it with examining the character's struggles at using the power they wield. The metaphor of the Wave Motion Gun is an excellent allegory in that it is distant and fanciful enough to not feel heavy-handed or oppressive in the way it explores its themes while also being an obvious parallel. It allows the show to still indulge in some of the spectacle relating to its technology without feeling like it is ever getting "too real" with the food for thought it is offering. Minor thematic aspects have also been tweaked to bring it more in line with the times. A particular highlight is the destruction of the Yukikaze in the opening scenes of the show. In the original, her captain refuses to follow Admiral Okita's retreat out of the shame of defeat. While no doubt a somewhat authentic motivation at the time it was written in the 1970s, harking back to the idealised honour code of Japanese officers during the Pacific War, it feels too harsh or dogmatic for modern sensibilities. This has been reworked to the Yukikaze fighting on to cover the retreat of Okita as a sacrificial action. A much nobler and endearing quality to a modern viewer. All this demonstrates the expert adaptation of the original series, knowing what to bring over, what made these themes resonate, and how to adjust them if necessary.

The characters of Space Battleship Yamato are also accordingly fleshed out, with highlights being the XO Sanada and, surprisingly, the Gamilan people in general. Benefitting from an entire twenty six-episode season, 2199 has the time to dig into its characters and explore many of their histories and motivations in some more one-off episodes. At the same time, it keeps the plot relatively tight, with its central focus being on Yamato's attempts to get to Iscandar and their challenges. The more character-focused episodes always feel well integrated into the main plot as sort of interludes as they travel through space. This gives the sense of the passage of time, with the journey being appropriately lengthy and preventing a choppy pacing of the core narrative by jumping forward in time too far too much with each episode. 2199 delves much further into its characters than the original, exploring their backgrounds before the Gamilan War and how its experience shapes them. They never detract from the story's momentum or feel as if the Yamato is lacking urgency, which can be a danger in plots with a time-sensitive element. The show also integrates and experiments with some interesting storytelling methods with these episodes instead of just simply relying on flashbacks or character monologues and internal thoughts. In particular, the episode focusing on Analyzer's interaction with Gamilan android and the Jirel Sisters' attack on the Yamato are particularly interesting cinematically. They reveal things about the characters using the metaphor of a story told over the ship's internal radio show or the dream-like psychic projections. It gives the characters some much-needed depth while also finding a way to interpret and integrate some of the original's more campy ideas and scenarios in a more modern form with some artistic flair.

A highlight of 2199's greater complexity and it being an evolution on the original Space Battleship Yamato is how it deals with the Gamilans. Compared to the original, where the Gamilans were very thinly portrayed as an entire civilisation built on warmongering, 2199 shows us the complexity of their society. They are now multi-species, a clever way to explain the original's early animation error that gave Gamilans beige skin for its first ten episodes. There are also competing factions of pacifists, reformers, and generally honourable members of the Gamilan military that the Yamato encounters instead of a monolithic fascistic block. Additional ambiguity is also offered when humanity's sins are brought to light, in addition to questions of their possible hypocrisy of employing wave motion weaponry. Sadly, this increased complexity does not benefit all characters, with Mori Yuki still seeming relatively flat compared to the development others received. It is still a step forward from how she was characterised in the original series, but she still finds herself being relegated to being a supporting love interest or a passive character the plot happens to for much of the time. Perhaps this is more due to her character's background being an amnesiac, but it was nonetheless a bit disappointing. Similarly, Dessler is still quite one-dimensional as a villain, being an almost diabolically evil dictator. While this is nothing new and even somewhat fitting for a classic grand narrative, this lack of complexity in his motivations for his imperialism comes back to bite Space Battleship Yamato in its later stories, something the remake could have possibly pre-empted better. Despite this, the principal characters are still handled well, and the extensive cast never feels like too much of a burden on the story, with each member getting time according to their importance.

Of course, even with its face-lift and greater exploration of its characters, Space Battleship Yamato does retain some of its more dramatic and even operatic elements. After all, the original was more parts space opera than any kind of hard speculative fiction. While the remake dials down on the more melodramatic elements and a lot of what would be today considered as camp, it is still very much a core part of its identity. This means there are dramatic turns in the plot and a focus on character emotion as opposed to cold hard logic. While they can sometimes feel a bit like a deus ex machina, or being irrational from a detached viewer's perspective, that is part of the point and charm of the series. It is a space opera through and through, meant to have dramatic turns and climactic battles with what are, by modern standards, archetypical characters. Yamato is also never meant to be cerebral like other giants in sci-fiction such as Legend of the Galactic Heroes or Star Trek. The crew of the Yamato are first and foremost human, and it is in the show's spirit to show this emotional conflict instead of what might be more "realistic" of a military where everything is handled with dull professionalism. In fact, neither 2199 nor the original Yamato pretends to be some kind of hard sci-fi. It has always made its tone clear that it is more parts space fantasy and adventure than anything else. The premise itself of the original with the Yamato's hull being rebuilt into a space vessel is inherently stretching disbelief which should be a clear signal that this plot is a vehicle to tell a character story instead of a detailed hard sci-fi exploration. 2199 keeps the spirit of this by integrating that detail while aligning it more with more hard sci-fi expectations instead of attempting to over analyse and do away with it. While the space opera approach is fraught with its own separate issues, the original nor 2199 never fall prey to them since they know what kind of narrative it wants to be. Attempting to pick apart the technical details (which, like most science fiction, is mostly technobabble anyway) or specific chronology misses the point. What is more important is that character motivations align with their actions and that there is an emotional core to the plot's conflict.

Overall, Space Battleship Yamato is an excellent reimagining of the series that carries on the original's spirit and then some. It is one of those timeless classic tales that is the epitome of what a space opera should be. It goes above and beyond the original to bring Space Battleship Yamato into the new century, balancing its more classic "old-fashioned" storytelling elements with a more modern take. 2199 is simply a must-watch for anyone interested in the genre to see one of the pillars of the more science fantasy side of the spectrum. Even if only to see why it is so influential.