Space Battleship Yamoto - An Ethical Struggle

Today I saw the first 13 seconds of the movie 'Space Battleship Yamato', and, as unusual as it is for this to happen, the spectacle did manage to claw an emotional response from my black and bituminous soul.  And that emotion was, 'Hell, yes!'

English speakers may be familiar with the heavily edited anime version known as Star Blazers. It seems quite a large number of people have fond memories of it and one of the greatest intellects in the world has seen the movie in full and commented, and I quote, "The movie punched its way into my childhood memories and pulled out a fistful of awesome."

I expect that some people will have moral qualms about watching a movie in which Japanese people in the future salvage the wreck of the Imperial Japanese Battleship Yamato, turn it into a spaceship and then fly off on a mission to save humanity while never once mentioning the whole rape, murder, and slavery thing that was part of Imperial Japan's war effort. Now I would guess that the people who made this movie don't actually approve of rape, murder, and slavery. Or at least not more than the average person... Hmm...average person? On average people are rather sickenly in favour of murder, aren't they? A disturbingly large proportion of people seem quick to recommend unrestricted free murder for certain classes of human being they happen to disapprove of. But I guess on the bright side they generally don't advocate rape or slavery. I suppose only being in favour of one out of three isn't all bad, but I still find the fact that a significant portion of the population is wholeheartedly in favour of murder for certain groups disquieting. I was going to suggest that people with qualms could practice feeling the emotion, 'Hell, tsk tsk', instead of 'Hell, yes!' when they see the movie, but right now I'm going to express that emotion towards humanity in general. Humanity – Hell, tsk tsk.

Now that this movie has been made, I am looking forward to similar projects getting green lighted, such as 'Space Battleship Bismark', and 'Armistad II: Space Trader Armistad'.