Space Battleship Yamato planets
This is a list of fictional planets and other significant celestial bodies (as well as massive space stations built into asteroids and other natural objects) featured in the anime series Space Battleship Yamato and its American dub, Star Blazers.[1]
The Solar System
- Earth: In the first season, home world of humans has been reduced to a radioactive desert as a result of planet bombardment which began in the 2190s. Humans survive in underground cities, but are threatened as radiation is leaking through the crust. After the Yamato retrieves a radiation-cleanser from the planet Iscandar, Earth is restored to its former glory in the space of two years, but is then threatened with invasion by the Comet Empire, the Black Nebula and other alien races.
- The Moon: in the second season, the Moon is devastated by shots fired from the Comet Empire's base, Gatlantis, as a warning to the human race. It is unclear whether the entire Moon is destroyed or merely its surface.
- Venus: In the second season, Venus is the site of a solar energy collection base used to power Earth. The base is destroyed by the Comet Empire's vanguard force as a prelude to invasion.
- Mars: A planet untouched by the Gamilon threat, Mars is used by the Earth Defence Force as a training ground for cadets, most notably Susumu Kodai and Daisuke Shima. The Yamato also uses it as a destination in the first test of its warp drive, and lands there to conduct repairs on its hull.
- Jupiter: The largest planet of the Solar System, Jupiter traps the Yamato in its gravity, forcing the ship to land on a floating island (the size of Australia) in its atmosphere. This island, covered with plant life and housing a Gamilon base, is destroyed in the first test of the wave motion gun, to the regret of the crew.
- Saturn: Many of the battles with the Comet Empire's forces in the second season occur in the vicinity of the ringed planet. Captain Hijikata lures Valsey's fleet into the rings as a trap.
- Titan: Saturn's largest moon is featured in the first season as the only source of a rare but essential metal, cosmonite (titanite in Star Blazers). It also, apparently, contains plant and fungal life frozen in the ice which can be used as food.
- Pluto: The location of the Gamilon frontline base in the Solar System, from which their planet bombs and other attacks are launched. It also possesses seas (most likely of methane as liquid water could not exist at such temperatures) and a form of gelatinous life.
- Planet 10: It is believed by scientists in the series that a tenth planet once existed in the Solar System, but was reduced to an asteroid belt in which the Yamato hides from Gamilon pursuit. This asteroid belt resembles to some extent the real-life Kuiper belt. In Star Blazers, the 10th planet was called Miranda (Minerva in the 1979 USA broadcasts).
- Planet 11: An icy body far from the Sun, featured in the second season. It once possessed advanced lifeforms who built structures resembling those of ancient Greece, and statues reminiscent of Easter Island. There is an archaeological station there protected by a contingent of space marines, and the Comet Empire attempt to build a frontline base there. It is called Brumas in Star Blazers.
Our Galaxy
- Alpha Orionis (オリオン座アルファ星): a red star in the constellation of Orion, which the Yamato passes close to on its journey to Iscandar. The Gamilons have booby-trapped the area with electromagnetic nets (called the Space Net in Star Blazers), missile bases, and caches of an energy-consuming ecto gas.
- The Octopus Protostar Cluster (オクトパス原始星団): (Octopus Channel in Star Blazers) a group of eight proto-planets surrounded by stormy gas clouds, in which a black hole is reputed to be present, making navigation extremely hazardous. However, it is believed there is a safe strait through the centre of the cluster.
- Draco (恐竜惑星): a planet near the edge of our Galaxy, resembling prehistoric Earth. In the second season, Comet Empire General Goland hunts Draco's dinosaur-like creatures for recreation, before leaving and ordering his missile fleet to destroy the planet from orbit.
- Telezart (テレザート星): a planet just outside our Galaxy featured in the second season, Telezart was once an interstellar hub, home to many and diverse forms of life from other star systems. However, a devastating world war broke out between the various racial groups, provoking a telepathic woman named Teresa (Trelaina in Star Blazers) to use her immense powers to destroy all life, an act she regrets. In the second season it is the objective of the Yamato to reach Telezart and learn from Teresa of the menace of the Comet Empire. Teresa ultimately uses her psionic powers to self-destruct the planet in an attempt to destroy the White Comet. While the planet's detonation did not destroy the White Comet as Teresa had hoped, it did inflict tremendous damage on the Comet Empire, as well as blowing it far off its intended course toward Earth. This gave the Yamato more than enough time to reach Earth first and warn the Earth Defense Council, allowing them to mount a counter-offense against the White Comet's arrival.
Beyond our Galaxy
- Beemela: a tropical Earth-like planet between our Galaxy and the Large Magellanic Cloud, its inhabitants are semi-primitive humanoid bees who kill their criminals and turn them into royal jelly to trade with the Gamilons (though this aspect is not shown in Star Blazers). Like real bees, they have a matriarchical society.
- Balan: half-way between our Galaxy and the Large Magellanic Cloud, Balan is a sunless planet whose plant life lives on geothermal heat. It is also home to the Balanodons, a race of reptiles capable of flying through space in the form of a massive communal organism. The Gamilons have built a refuelling base on Balan as part of their plan to colonise Earth; they have also constructed an artificial sun, which General Domel attempts to use in a plan to destroy the Yamato.
- The Rainbow Star Cluster: a group of seven stars of different colours, surrounded by a black nebula which is possessed of an electromagnetic field which interferes with radar. General Domel (Lysis) chooses the Rainbow Star Cluster as the location for his final battle against the Yamato.
- The Large Magellanic Cloud: 148,000 light years from Earth, this satellite galaxy of our own (and a part of the Local Group) is the objective of the Yamato in the first season. It contains two notable planets:
- Gamilas (ガミラス): aka "Gamilon". One of the two eighth planets of its solar system, Gamilas was once an Earth-like planet but is now, like its twin planet Iscandar, dying. Its outer shell is largely covered by forests; massive holes permit entry into the enormous underground caverns that have formed beneath the crust due to the planet's extreme volcanism. The floors and ceilings are host to the cities in which the Gamilon people now live; the seas are now underground and have been converted by volcanism into sulfuric acid. Leader Deslar (Desslok) uses tractor beams to drag the Yamato into the caverns, hoping to destroy it with missiles and the acid sea, but the battle serves only to trigger volcanic eruptions and roof collapse which destroy the cities and most of the Gamilon people. Deslar and the remnants of his people return to Gamilas in Yamato: The New Voyage only to discover the Black Nebula Empire attempting to mine it for a rare element used in their weaponry. The resulting battle causes the planet to explode, sending Iscandar into a space warp.
- Iscandar (イスカンダル): an Earth-like planet almost entirely covered by seas, Iscandar was once a world of life and technology, but is now a dying world. It is ruled by Queen Starsha, the last survivor of her race, who attempts to maintain peace with her belligerent neighbour, while holding it at bay with the threat of a doomsday bomb capable of destroying the planet. It is the objective of the Yamato in the first season to reach Iscandar and obtain a device called Cosmo-Cleaner-D (Cosmo-DNA in Star Blazers) from Starsha. Iscandar is the only source of a rare element called iscandarium, sought by the Black Nebula Empire, but Starsha destroys her planet rather than allow them to obtain it.
- The White Comet: an enormous plasma field resembling a gigantic comet, with at its centre Gatlantis, a fortress city situated on a hemispherical moon. The home of the Comet Empire, it travels through space destroying lifeless planets in its path, and sending out fleets of warships to conquer useful life-bearing worlds. Having dominated the Andromeda Galaxy, it is now en route to our Galaxy, its ultimate target being Earth. Even though the plasma shield can be destroyed, Gatlantis itself is extremely dangerous, a force field protecting the city, a rotating belt of missile launchers at the equator, and energy weapons and fighter hangars in craters in its underside. It is, however, fragile at the very top of its central tower and at the very bottom of the rock hemisphere, and energy is supplied from a single power centre. The White Comet features in the second TV season and the alternate version of the story told in Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato.
- The Black Nebula: featured in the movie Be Forever, Yamato, this is a massive double-galaxy near our own (at a distance of 200,000 light years), composed of clouds of dark matter on one side which obscure the spiral galaxy on the other; for this reason it has never been detected before, despite being a part of the Local Group. Passage between the cloud and the galaxy is achieved through a vortex at the centre. Both galaxies are held separate by the system's one significant planet:
- Dezarium (デザリアム星): home of the Black Nebula Empire, a race of bionic humanoids. Though disguised to resemble Earth (complete with famous landmarks including the Egyptian Pyramids), it is, beneath its shell, a massive spherical skeleton of metal, a crystalline city at its centre whose tower-tops can be used as missiles. The planet can only be destroyed by a strategically fired burst from a wave motion gun, and doing so causes the two galaxies of the Black Nebula to collide, forming a new galaxy.
- Aquarius: featured in the movie Final Yamato, Aquarius is a planet covered by heavy water which travels throughout our Galaxy on a long orbit at roughly half the speed of light, flooding the worlds it passes and thus bringing either life to lifeless planets (such as the ancient Earth) or death to inhabited worlds (such as Dingir). The only land on its surface is in the form of floating continents which once supported intelligent humanoid life, but its population is now extinct. It also possesses three non-aligned planetary rings of ice crystals.
- Dingir: the home of a grey-skinned race of technologically advanced humanoids. They are descended from Earth humans who were transported there by aliens (whom they regard as gods) 10,000 years ago when Aquarius last flooded Earth. In the movie Final Yamato, Dingir is flooded by Aquarius and its population all but wiped out; the surviving Dingirians set their sights on Earth as a new home and plan to transport Aquarius there in order to destroy humanity. The planet was named for the Sumerian word for "god", dingir.
- Uruk: an enormous space fortress built into a Dingirian continent which rises from the drowned world, Uruk represents the last survivors of the Dingirians. It possesses a warp drive capable of transporting the planet Aquarius through space, and its main defenses are based on neutrinos, in the form of both shields and deadly beams. It also carries fleets of warships and fighters, and is controlled from a central temple. It is named after the ancient Sumerian city of Uruk.
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