Anime / Space Battleship Yamato 2202

All spoilers for Space Battleship Yamato 2199 are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

War Never Ends That Easily.

Space Battleship Yamato 2202: Warriors of Love (also marketed as Star Blazers 2202), is the follow-up to the critically-successful re-imagining of the original Space Battleship Yamato series, produced by Xebec. Like its predecessor it adapts a classic Yamato arc for a new era and new generation of viewers — in this case, the events of Yamato 2 and Arrivedeci Yamato.

It is three years after the Terran-Gamilas war, and thanks to the Cosmo Reverser brought back by the Yamato Earth's enviromment has mostly recovered. And while Earth has entered into an alliance with Gamilas, things have been mostly peaceful in the Solar System. The Yamato has been monthballed pending modernization, while its crew has been dispersed to share their experience among the burgeoning Space Force.

But some threats still remain. Gamilas' ancient foe, the Gatlanteans, still haunt the edges of civilized space, and with Earth now finds itself dragged into this conflict, whose stakes are higher than anyone in Yamato's veteran crew could have ever imagined.

Much like its predecessor, Yamato 2202 was first released as a set of movies, with the first one premiered in theaters in February 25, 2017. This was then followed by limited-release DVD and Blu-ray, before the series was finally aired in entirety as a 26-episode TV anime from October 2018 to March 2019. On a somber note, it ended up being Xebec's final series before Sunrise shut it down in May 2019.

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The show provides examples of:

• Ace Custom: Keyman's fabulous white and silver-trimmed Tsvarke fighter. Much like Meralda's in the previous series, it's faster and much more nimble than the mass-produced Tsvarke, and specially-armed with EMP torpedoes.
  • Fomto Berger's personal Andromeda-class carrier Neu Balgrey features not only a custom crimson paint job, but is filled with Gamillan-made electronics and fighter compliment. The three other Andromedas of his carrier task force were made of the same mold.
  • After repaired after the battle of Saturn, the original Andromeda becomes the Andromeda-Kai, where customized and automated to the point that it can be commanded by Captain Yamanami alone, while at the same time being able to remotely control the mass-produced Andromeda Blacks.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Between Teresa and Shima. In Yamato II, one of the simmering subplots was the romance between the two. Here? Teresa doesn't even meet Shima once, and Shima himself has no interest in Teresa aside from the fact that she was the source of the visions that put them on this adventure to begin with.
• Adaptation Species Change:
  • Teresa/Trelaina in Yamato II was a powerful psychic — though still ultimately mortal — humanoid alien woman. Here she's a higher-dimensional being that all the other races of the universe revere as a goddess.
  • The people of the Comet Empire are implied to be just another warlike and expansionist humanoid race in Yamato II. In this remake, they're a full-on One-Gender Race of male clones who were initially created to by another race to be their soldiers, before they Turned On Their Masters and went on a galactic rampage.
• Amazon Brigade: The crew of the Ginga are mostly attractive women, barring the Yamato crew they take in. It turns out that there's a good reason for this. As part of Plan G, the failsafe in case Earth falls to the Gatlanteans, the crew will become the initial means for Humanity to repopulate.
• Anti-Mutiny: Since the Earth Federation initially didn't want to give permission to the Yamato to investigate Teresa's mysterious psychic message, the veterans of the Yamato decided to do this en-masse, and return to crew their beloved (and now refurbished!) warship. It's telling that the only people who didn't come for the new adventure either had family issues (Makoto needed to take care of her sickly son), was never told of the mutiny (Saburo for the same reason as Makoto), or got left behind since they had to make sure the Yamato got away (Mikage, Yuria, etc.).
• Artifact of Doom: The Ark of Destruction, the Shambleau's darker counterpart, it is an alien structure larger than Saturn, and left behind by the Arkhelians as a means to punish any of their descendant humanoid races if they misbehave. Zordar and the Gatlanteans have been taking it on a nine hundred-year joyride from the Andromeda galaxy, past the Magellanic cloud, and into the Milky Way galaxy.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: What Teresa's people managed to do, millennia before the series began, with them moving en-masse into a higher dimension, combining together into the gestalt being everyone sees as "Teresa".
• Attack Drone: Gatlantis loves these.
  • On anti-personnel scale, the Needleslaves, created out of stolen tech. They're launched as missiles, penetrate into their target ships, then transform into Mini-Mecha to slaughter their foes.
  • On a capital ship scale, the Ship Eaters, designed to punch through Wave Motion shields, penetrate into a ship's hull, then detonate.
  • The Andromeda Blacks are capital ships that function as these, with all of them being remotely controlled from the Andromeda-Kai.
• Attack of the Town Festival: Gatlantis decides to attack the mostly-civilian population of the Solar's system's 11th planet as it was about to celebrate Christmas Eve. What dicks.
• The Atoner: Saburo volunteers in what many consider a suicide mission of guiding a flight of unmanned Type-52 into the heart of the Gatlantis fleet, to make up for the fact that he caused Yamato to crash while inside the Ark of Destruction.
• Beam Spam: The specialty of the Gatlantean Calaklum-class super battleship, which creates a cone-like spread of emerald-hued laser death to the front of it.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Between Akira and Keyman. Keyman's growing respect and even affection for Akira informs his decision to stay with the Yamato over his uncle Dessler, and his eventual Heroic Sacrifice at the end of the series.
• The Cameo: Due to the focus on Gatlantis, many of those who were involved with the Earth-Gamilas war in the prior show were reduced to this.
  • Berger appears in episode 16, commanding a Gamillas carrier group in a customized red-painted Andromeda-class carrier.
  • Starsha is seen conversing with Ambassador Loren at a graveyard on Iscandar.
  • Meralda, Yurisha, Domel's widow, and the other members of the new and more democratic government are shown together in the final episode.
  • Frakken and the rest of his crew are likewise shown saluting and welcoming back Dessler.
• Canon Immigrant: Originally only the Andromeda was the only ship constructed of its class in Yamato 2, though art books published later showed the possible designs of four more of its sister ships. Those ships now show up in 2202 — the Aldebaran, the Achilles, the Antares, and the Apollo Norm; the first two are battleships, while the latter pair are aircraft carriers.
• The Captain: Kodai is this for both the Yuunagi and the Yamato early on, but Captain Hijikata fits the trope more once he comes aboard, as a grizzled and much older fleet officer than Kodai.
• Central Theme: Love, as either a strength or a weakness. Indeed, one of the Gatlanteans' core conceits is that its leadership believes wholeheartedly that Love is a weakness, and would lead the humanoid races of the universe to their doom.
• Clones Are People, Too: Despite Zorder's insistence that Gatlantis soldiers are just emotionless humanoid weapons, the other Gatlantis soldiers we do meet are shown to have unique personalities and very emotive.
  • The officer in charge of the assault on the 11th planet is so enraged at being humiliated by the Yamato that he disobeys orders and blindly pursues the ship with his entire fleet, completely disregarding their need to resupply and repair and their ships.
  • Goland and Zavaival are shown to be very friendly with each other despite being the equivalent of a ground-pounder and a naval officer, respectively.
  • Goland in particular feels a fatherly pride at how well his successor Nol is shaping up to be. Even his last act is to instinctively shield Nol from a Wave Motion Gun blast.
  • Nol has been shown to be a very sensitive individual who isn't really comfortable with the "heartless galactic conqueror" shtick his race wants him to be.
  • Despite being clones in a culture that is supposed to not believe in love and being killing machines everyone, from the 'father' of the new clone 'son' to the cold science staff can't help but smile at the sight of a new baby. Zworder is annoyed that they always smile at such scenes.
• Combination Attack: Multiple Calaklum battleships can line up to create a "focusing array" that allows them to replicate the powerful beam of a Wave-Motion Gun. The more ships involved, the more potent the blast, to the point where thousands of warships attempted to make a cannon so huge, it could take out Earth from the far edge of the Solar system.
• Deflector Shields: The Ginga is able to generate enough shields to cover the entire Cosmo Navy fleet, at Saturn. In return it can't use any of its installed Wave Motion-based weaponry.
• Delaying Action: As Captain Todou says, her fleet's responsibility is to tie down Gatlantis for as long as possible, as every day they delay their foe buys more time for the Time Fault factory to churn out more automated Wave Motion warships.
• Did I Mention It's Christmas?: Episode 3 opens up on Planet 11 in the Solar System where Human and Gamilas Colonists work and live together. In one of the parks, Human and Gamilas kids are spending time with an old wheelchair-bound man dressed up as Santa as Commander Saito carries in a christmas tree for the kids to help decorate. Aside from that, the holiday season isn't truly brought up at all afterwards because Gatlantis begins their attack on Planet 11 sometime later.
• Empire with a Dark Secret: As it turns out, Dessler's family knew that Gamilas was doomed, with young Abelt 9 forced to swear a Blood Oath or be killed by his own uncle when he accidentally found out. It was this knowledge that spurred Abelt to be such an expansionist conqueror prior to the first series — he was desperate to find a new world to move his people to before it became too late.
• Game of Chicken: Happens in episode 5 (mirroring the same event in the same episode in Yamato II) between the Andromeda and the Yamato, as Captain Yamanami tests the resolve of Yamato's crew.
• Godiva Hair: As Teresa is once again very naked here (unlike in Yamato 2), her long blonde hair is the only thing that's keeping her unmentionables out of open view. Then again, as a higher-dimensional being, she technically doesn't need clothes anymore...
• God's Hands Are Tied: Despite being seen as a god by the mortal races of Yamato's universe, Teresa can't actually do much to intervene in the war with Gatlantis; to be able to even speak to her, the heroes had to travel to her species' homeworld Telezart, as part of it now straddles the physical universe and the dimension that Teresa exists in. Even then she could only give vague advice, as saying anything more specific would wreck causality. Until that is, in the finale, where she uses the Yamato as a conduit to finally end the threat of the Comet Empire, perhaps because the Yamato crew had successfully found the best possible end to the conflict.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Keyman volunteers to be the one to disable the Ark of Destruction's energy core. Saito goes along with him as additional defense, deciding to die on his on terms instead of being a Gatlantis agent.
  • Both Kodai and Yuki decide to ram the fatally damaged Yamato into the Ark of Destruction in hopes that its now unstable Wave Motion reactor will destroy or at least damage it. It's only Teresa's intervention that prevents their deaths.
• Honor Before Reason:
  • There's honestly no reason for Captain Yamanami to risk sacrificing the Andromeda Kai and the entirety of the Andromeda Black automated fleet against the Ark of Destruction aside from blind idealism that the Yamato had survived Kato sabotaging it a few episodes earlier. Likewise, there was no reason for the Ginga to go along when Yamanami turned out to be right anyway, as saving the Yamato would entail wrecking beyond repair the Cosmo Reverse system.
  • At the end of the series, the UN puts up a public referendum on whether Earth should keep the Time Fault, which has near limitless strategic value in speeding up manufacturing and scientific research, or sacrifice it in order to rescue Kodai and Yuki from the higher dimension they are trapped in. Earth's population decides to vote for the latter.
• Hope Spot: With the Ark of Destruction's reactor core overloaded by Keyman's Heroic Sacrifice the threat has ended.... right? As a shot from the Ark tears a huge chunk off the moon happens barely minutes later, definitely not!
  • And before that it seems like the one-in-a-million chance was going to happen: making peace with Gatlantis or at least Miru realizing that love can be a good thing, deciding that he won't pull the trigger either. Then Dessler's security team shoots him and there is no choice left but a battle to the death.
• I've Come Too Far: Keyman reveals that Gamilas will become uninhabitable in less than a century, and that the Yamato crew piece together that the Planet Bomb attacks from the previous series were a desperate attempt by Dessler to transform the Earth into a new world for his people to survive. When asked about it, Dessler remarks that should it even matter anymore? He will try to do anything from desperately praying to Terezart to show him the way forward, or strike a deal with Emperor Zworder for a temporary peace. Noting to himself that he's damned by whatever choice he makes. But even still: after everything that he's done since first learning of the dark secret nearly 30 years ago: he is unwilling to stop.
• Last of His Kind: With his nephew's Heroic Sacrifice, Abelt is the only one left of the Dessler noble family.
• Living on Borrowed Time: Kato's son is suffering from radiation bombing illness and is only two. Later it's implied that by Saito bathing himself in energy to cut his 'puppet strings' that meant he too had time to only die free.
• Manchurian Agent: Yet another tool in the Gatlantean bag of dirty tricks. They will randomly revive random dead humans or Gamilans, modify them into human-shaped bombs, then return them to their people with no memory of their death, resurrection, or modification. At any time Zorder wills it, their resurrected personalities vanish, and pretty much become remotely-controlled zombies that he can detonate at will. Saito is one, as he later learns to his horror, though he managed to shake off his Gatlantean conditioning and go out on his on terms.
• Meaningful Name: The word Yamato is normally used as another name for Japan, but if spelled in kanji it can also be read as "great harmony" or a place with great harmony. This is very important, as according to Teresa this means that the Yamato is a literal crossroad of intertwined destinies. As Teresa is the embodiment of universal harmony, the Yamato also allows her a way to finally intervene against Gatlantis, especially in the final two episodes.
• Mini-Mecha: The Type-2 Mobile Space Armor used by Saito's Space Cavalry is this, with a small cockpit area enclosed in its torso.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Kodai and the Yamato crew have been repeatedly tried to convince Emperor Zorder that he isn't simply a heartless clone, but someone who can feel emotions too. By the penultimate episode, Zorder finally agrees, and that yes, he's human too... and as such is capable of feeling hate and spite. Having accepted that he absolutely hates Humanity (the Terran flavor), he triggers GOLEM, which puts the Ark of Destruction on a course to destroy Earth. Whoops.
• Outside-the-Box Tactic: The crew of the Yamato become known for these, no thanks to their experiences traveling to and from Iscandar, where pretty much everything had to be learned on the fly. Had to Be Sharp, taken on a crew-wide level for sure.
  • Immediately apparent in the battle in the first episode between the Terran-Gamillas alliance against the Gatlantean fleet. While every other ship in the alliance forms into orderly formation (and indeed, stays in formation when the battle is joined), and suffered heavy losses, the escort Yuunagi — which is commanded by Kodai and crewed by Yamato vets — bobs and weaves into the midst of the Gatlantean vanguard, taking an impressive toll in enemy ships while taking no hits in return. It's also telling that they were the only warship to be able to chase down the Calaklum-class battleship on a crash course for Earth as a result.
  • Even Dessler grudgingly admits that, if there's anything that the Yamato is famous for, its for tactical unpredictability.
• Planet Spaceship: The White Comet Empire has their main HQ housing FOUR planets nestled inside of the Ark of Destruction which acts as a gigantic cage holding them in place. The structure is easily larger than Saturn and when first seen properly, it plows through said planet!
• Put on a Bus: Several characters from the first series couldn't join in the adventure to Telezart this time around:
  • Dr. Niimi was still hospitalized as a result of a captured Gatlantean destroying her research lab.
  • Makoto had to stay behind to take care of her very sick son, and Saburo has to go in her stead.
  • Yuria, Tooru, Mikage, and Yamazaki get left behind once they flood the Yamato's docks. They return later in the series however, but part of the Ginga's crew complement.
• Ramming Always Works: There's an entire Gatlantean ship class made with this in mind, and it reaps a terrible toll in Terran and Gamillas ships whenever it takes the field.
• Reassigned to Antarctica:
  • Hijikata is transferred to a remote outpost on the 11th planet due to him speaking out against the weaponization of Wave Motion energy.
  • The Cosmo Navy intends to do this with the entire Yamato crew when they start becoming nervous that the crew will stage a revolt to head for Telezart on their own.
• The Reveal:
  • Ever wonder why Keyman looks so much like Dessler? It's because he's Abelt's nephew. His real name is Rahalt Dessler.
  • Why is Sabera so different from the rest of the Gatlanteans? It's because she isn't a Gatlantean. She's instead the last living clone of the Zemulians, the race that created the Gatlanteans.
• Sadistic Choice: Another part of Gatlantis' bag of dirty tricks: during times of major duress, they will seek out a pivotal person on their opponent's side and offer them this. Zordar uses this to prove his point that species that experience Love will eventually cause more destruction. This mirrors his own experience, where a thousand years before he was given a similar choice, but surrendered to his emotions... and lost everything important to him. This happens several times over the course of the series.
  • He forces Kodai to choose among three ships full of human and Gamillan refugees — one will escape, while the others will have their engines disabled, ans thus plunge to their doom. The thing is, Zordar knows this is a false choice, as Yuki is on one of the ships, and fully expects Kodai to choose the ship she is on. Yuki then opts to Take a Third Option... by jumping off the ship. This pisses Zordar off so much that he decides to destroy all three refugee ships anyway.
  • Miru offers Dessler a ceasefire between Gamilas and Gatlantis, and promises to aid him in finding a new planet for his people, if he destroys the Yamato in return. Kodai points out that whatever gains Dessler will get out of the deal will likely be temporary anyway.
  • Touko plays upon Kato's fear over his terminally-ill son, in return for an actual cure for the disease ailing him. The catch? He needs to scuttle the Yamato using the Anti-Wave Motion particles Keyman inserted into the Yamato's engine, dooming all his friends and crewmates on the ship.
  • Miru does this again, this time with Klaus. In exchange for Gamillas and Earth getting a 10,000-year reprieve from annihilation, all Klaus needed to do was kill his uncle Abeldt.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: The Yamato and its crew once more represent Idealism, while the Cosmo Navy's propensity for big gun tactics and simply throwing more warships at a problem will represents Cynicism (and Pragmatism). In the end, Idealism wins out, as had the Yamato crew not taken the chance at meeting Teresa, Earth would not have stood a chance against the Ark of Destruction.
• Space Fighter: It wouldn't be Yamato without these.
  • Akira gets to test out the Super Prototype Cosmo Tiger I, and this remains her steed for the rest of the series.
  • The Cosmo Navy gets an upgrade to its fighter craft, with most of its pilots getting equipped with the Cosmo Tiger II to replace their Cosmo Falcons.
  • The Ginga is defended by a squadron of A.I.-controlled Type-52 "Blackbird" fighters.
• Space Marine: As this is a redo of Yamato II, of course we get introduced once again to Captain Hajime Saito's Space Cavalry squads. And this time around, they go to battle in actual Mini-Mecha Power Armor.
• Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum: What Gatlantis' one thousand year old cosmic rampage essentially boils down to. Zorder is convinced that the Archelian "experiment" with love and emotions among the humanoid races that are descended from them has failed, and will only lead to their eventual doom, presumably as the result of his experience with the Sadistic Choice the Zemulians gave years before. As such he wants to clear the universe of humanoid life, so that a much better and purer existence free from emotion to take its place.
• Superior Successor: The Ginga is to the Yamato, or at least it was built with this in mind. Spec-wise, it's essentially a much better Yamato in every aspect. Subverted though in that, when its finally deployed for battle, none of its Wave Motion weapons work, likely due to Okita's spirit in the Cosmo Reverse system intervening. Its still capable of feats that the Yamato would be hard-pressed to do even at full power, like covering the entire Cosmo Navy fleet at Saturn with a powerful force field. Essentially, the Ginga is a White Mage in starship form. Though it is somewhat subverted, in that the Ginga was never intended to be a warship in the first place, but a peaceful exploration vessel instead.
• Super Prototype: The Cosmo Tiger I that Akira is shown to be testing at the Moon, which is armed to the teeth with missiles, beam cannons, and ECM.
• Theme Naming: Gatlantis loves this.
  • Their ship classes (Nazca, Calaklum, Lascaux, Kukulkan) are named after Latin-American archaeological sites.
• Token Non-Human: Keyman stays on the Yamato for nearly the entirety of the series, becoming the de-facto tactical advisor and intelligence officer for the ship.
• The Unfavorite: Would you believe it, but Dessler was this? His family had high hopes instead for his talented brother Malthius to find a solution to their planet's problem; when he died in battle, everything fell on Abelt's young shoulders to continue what his brother was unable to finish. Even decades later, he's unable to completely shake off the feeling that he's inadequate by comparison.
• Uniqueness Decay: In the previous series, you can count the number of Wave Motion-capable ships in one hand. In this series, all Terran warships, from escorts up to Cruisers to the Andromeda-class battleships, are armed with some sort of prow-mounted Wave-Motion Gun.
• The Uriah Gambit: The UN leadership cannot officially punish Saburo for sabotaging the Yamato, as that would mean publicly acknowledging his treason which would destroy Earth's morale. Instead, they put him right back into the frontlines to take on the most suicidal missions in hopes he'll die in battle and save everyone a lot of trouble.
• Villain Has a Point: The Yamato crew is greatly opposed to the militarist faction of the UNCF, as they consider the mass production of Wave Motion Gun armed warships a blatant violation of their promise to Starsha. However, the events of the series show that if the UNCF didn't build entire fleets of Wave Motion Gun equipped warships, the Gatlanteans would have bulldozed Earth long before the Yamato could complete its mission. Even Yamato crew themselves are forced to renege on their promise and fire their own Wave Motion Gun several times in anger in order to protect Earth and the entire universe.
• We Have Reserves: Combined with Attack! Attack! Attack!, the Gatlantean go-to tactic is to simply drown their enemies in a near-endless flood of powerful warships.
  • The Cosmo Navy likewise resorts to this tactic at the battle of Mars, where it pretty much spams as many A.I.-controlled Cruisers as it can muster to bolster the Gamillan defenders already there.
• White Mage: The Ginga is a White Mage in Starship form. It is the second Yamato-Class vessel produced by the UNCF and instead of being loaded with a Wave Motion Engine, instead it possesses the Cosmo Reverse System. Due to the nature of the Cosmo Reverse, the Ginga cannot use any offensive or defensive weaponry, however the energy released by the Cosmo Reverse is able to empower the other ships of the Wave Motion Fleet that is assigned to protect and fight for it by enhancing the Wave Motion Shields or supercharging Wave Motion Guns.
• Whole Episode Flashback: A good chunk of episode 15 is dedicated to Dessler's childhood, and the events that turned him into the cold and pragmatic conqueror he had become by the time of 2199.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: One of the consequences of the use of the Cosmo Reverse is the creation of the Time Fault, a location on Earth where the timestream is way off-kilter. For every year that passes outside of the Time Fault, ten years passes in the Fault. This becomes a major plot device, as the Terrans quickly take advantage of the area to churn out a fleet of Wave-Motion capable warships in record time. Indeed, the Terran council actually rents some of the place out to their Gamilan allies, so that they could also make new ships in-exchange for Gamilas giving the Terrans a couple of Colony worlds.
• You Don't Look Like You: Take the original Comet Empire characters, add a bit of Klingon fashion sense, and you get Gatlantis. Sabera gets hit with this particularly hard, and is closer in look to her appearance in Arrivedeci Yamato than the tv series.
  • Clashes fittingly with the White Comet Empire's new Hidden Depths: whereas they originally were a space-faring conquerors under a hereditary monarch in the style of the Klingons, for 2202 they were reinterpreted radically as the sterile clone incarnations/descendants of a Slave Race that utterly destroyed their masters centuries before the series began. The Gatlanteans present in the feature-length film released between the two series are more conventional in their portrayal.
• You Are in Command Now: The command of the Yamato is returned to Kodai in the penultimate episode as Captain Hijikata is fatally wounded.
• Your Size May Vary: The Calaklum-class battleship that debuts in the first episode is massive, being at least four times the size of the Yuunagi (a Kongou-class battleship). Later episodes however show the warships of the class to be much smaller by comparison, down to "merely" two times or so bigger than the Yamato itself.