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Originally Posted by August138
Actually, they did. The original concept for the aliens was that they have no one corporeal form — like shadows —and that they can assume any number of forms, both human and non-human. And they are centrally-controlled by a hive-mind located on their homeworld. As they refined the story and concepts, during pre-production, and jettisoned the Greek Tragedy element among the crew of the ship, they decided to make the aliens humanoid and to be the tragic figures of the story — their human form driving home the duality of mankind to the viewer (young boys). So, the writers were able, much like STAR TREK, to touch on elements of prejudice, the human condition, and war, much more effectively, than if the opposition were BEMs. This was a BIG element of what made YAMATO tick — the tragedy of Dessler and the Gamilas and the growth of Susumu Kodai who wanted to kill the Gamilas for revenge, and then ends up questioning what they've done after Gamilas falls. That never would have worked with BEMs as the antagonists.
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Oh of course! For what they wanted to do making the Gamilons BEM's wouldn't have worked. I was mostly talking about *humanoid* alien features, like bumpy forehead people on star trek.
Which in a way is a rather depressing commentary about human beings in general, and our prospects about dealing with aliens in the future. Humans are good at killing eachother from a distance, when it's made abstract, and we don't have to worry about humanizing our opponents. But if the enemy ARE bug eyed monsters? Even if we had to see them up close, we probably wouldn't feel any sympathy towards them.
Entertainment about how we should think about aliens as people reminds me about how most people probably would never regard aliens as people.
Quote:
Originally Posted by August138
I already posted their explanation a couple of posts back: Schultz and Ganz are from Sarutzu (Sarutz?), one of the conquered planets of the Great Gamilas Star Empire. This is akin to the Great Roman Empire, who would grant full Roman Citizenship to any man of their Empire — born Roman or not — for service in the name of the Empire. This was done to allow for gravitas and a sense of scope to the image of an old and galaxy-spanning Empire. Yutaka Izubuchi said that there will be other races loyal to the Gamilas Empire as well.
A lot of the original production plans, intentions, decisions, and changes in the making of the Yamato saga, are throughly documented on the official Star Blazers website. So, I recommend checking it out!
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That's very interesting actually! It kinda puts the humans and these pluto guys in kind of the same shoes. Gamilon conquered and demanded their surrender, much like the humans did.
A story element like that does bring up the question of how good of an idea Earth's continued resistance to the Gamilons has been. The Gamilon are definitely the aggressors here, since they attacked us out of the blue. Though at a certain point you do have the balance the principle of resisting naked aggression, with the preservation of the human race being attacked by seemingly unbeatable force. The Gamilon are certainly willing to exterminate humanity...but they're also willing to accept surrender. I suppose to the Gamilons we're just a bunch of crazy suicidal fanatics. If we'd just surrendered the Gamilons would have been
forced to kill so many people, and we wouldn't have gone out and destroyed their empire with wave motion guns.
I think I understand why the crew seemed so conflicted after they'd blasted Gamilon. They probably were thinking "was the death of so many humans and Gamilons worth the independence of humanity?"