Uchuu Senkan Yamato 2199 – Episode Three – Escape from the Jupiter Sphere

Now this was an interesting episode, introducing a number of new themes, while also building upon existing elements of the story. But first, let us talk about techno-babble, glorious, glorious techno-babble. So many sci-fi anime have a horrible tendency to try and explain absolutely everything, often using overly complex language and silly semi-philosophical phrases and ideas to explain their world’s technology and society. They can spend so much time explaining with heaps upon heaps of exposition that there is little time for any major character or story progression. Yamato 2199 does something a little different, there is still the ridiculous amount of explanation, but its all wrapped up in techno-babble, explaining how the ships engine creates black holes to warp, or to fire its main gun, without ever fully explaining how. And that doesn’t matter, we’ve had the explanation, we know that this ship has lots of technology and strange systems on board, and that’s fine. We are also treated to lots of nonsensical dialogue regarding angles, degrees, speed, and all sorts of other systems that clearly make the ship work but we are neither told, or expected know exactly how.