Since someone mentioned it in the Cantata for Warships thread, I just thought I would mention that - going straight back to the original Star Blazers dub I loved as a kid - the original Space Battleship Yamato premise has never actually made the slightest bit of sense to me. I simply can't stretch credulity far enough to encompass the idea that the best option, or even a viable option, for constructing a starship was to use the 254-year-old wreck of a twentieth-century battleship. I mean... what? Sure, I mean, if you have a character who is the god of mecha and he's not really paying as much attention as he should be to what he's doing, yeah, but in a straight-up sci-fi story?

I can kind of accept that the situation was desperate enough at that point that nobody really hesitated at the whole desecration-of-a-war-grave thing, but just from a practical standpoint, the whole idea is wack. I mean, all the other incomprehensible things about making a starship out of a sunken WWII battleship aside, there's not likely to be much left of the wreck by 2199.

Loved the show as a kid, respect it for its significance to the history of Japanese animation now, but... yeah. Makes no dang sense at all.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Yep, makes no sense whatsoever. I've read a few novels involving contemporary humans getting access to advanced space propulsion and converting modern in-service submarines for space. In all cases it was an expediency move made immediately after acquiring the new technology and before purpose-built hulls could be designed and built. Like in Space Battleship Yamato/Star Blazers, it was a desperation situation, defending against alien invasion or scouting for where aliens who had attacked may be located. But it made sense as a temporary stopgap - pressure hull, life support, nuclear reactor aboard already, etc.

That is quite different from Yamato, which was a 150 year old sunken wreck of a surface vessel. Surely other preserved ships would be better candidates. Or leveraging existing submarine manufacturing facilities. It was awesome to watch as a little kid, and the relatively-recent live action movie was pretty cool.

LAST EDITED ON Sep-09-15 AT 10:10 AM (EDT)
 
In fairness, the 2199 remake drops the idea like a hot rock. The Yamato looks like an old warship as camouflage, since it's construction site is near the graves of several of them.