Yamamoto Yohko, Starship Girl

Original Title: それゆけ!宇宙戦艦ヤマモト ヨーコ
Romanized: Soreyuke! Uchuusenkan Yamamoto Youko
Literal: Let's go! Space Battleship Yamamoto Yohko

Plot Synopsis

A thousand years from now, mankind has spread across the galaxy, and although war remains, its face has changed. Sure, there are incredibly powerful starfighters, but why bother with all that silly killing? When the planets of the 31sth century feel like picking a fight, they get a team of people (attractive young girls, of course) together, give them top of the line military hardware, and let them go at it. If something gets blown up, just beam the occupant to safety.

Apparently, though, Terran reflexes have suffered over time: The only decent pilots that the Earth government can seem to come up with to combat Ness' aces, the Red Snappers, are a group of four high school students borrowed from the 20th century. Enter Yamamoto Yohko--a menace to her classmates, a genius at video games, and just the person to pilot the hottest new technology and lead the Terran team to victory. She's also almost as annoying to her teammates as to the enemy, she doesn't have the slightest shred of modesty about her considerable skill, and she can't pay attention to anything that doesn't involve blowing stuff up. Hey, nobody's perfect.

Quick Review

Rating: 2.5 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2006-07-20

Yamamoto Yohko, Starship Girl is a silly girls-in-space action series where we learn an important lesson: The future is very, very stupid. Apparently based entirely on the junk food that features prominently in it, the series is so outrageously pointless it's hard to get into the characters, and by the time you finally get used to them, it spends one episode trying ineffectively to be mildly dramatic, then ends. It's not as wacky as I expected (or wanted) it to be, but it does manage a few very funny moments, and the characters are a distinctive crew with plenty to yell at each other about. It does have one thing going for it--it's snazzy looking, with sharp art and oodles of highly slick space action. The acting is also colorful and varied, if totally devoid of drama.

I didn't dislike Yamamoto Yohko, but I can't say that I enjoyed it all that much either. It won't stick with you any more than the cotton candy that the story is apparently based on, but it's an amusing diversion, particularly for fans fans of light space action.

US DVD Review

The DVD, from everybody's favorite Internet-anime-store-turned-anime-company, RightStuf, is a bit of a disappointment, at least in comparison to their fine Captain Tylor set. You do get the entire 6 OAV series on one disc, all the episode previews (there isn't one after part three because that was the break between OAV series) and full credits (both untranslated and, after every other episode, in English with credits for the actors in both languages). Bonus stuff consists of a montage of stills set to music and a few outtakes from the dub.

Unfortunately the disc feels rough in the details--you can skip to each episode, but there are no chapter breaks at all, and a trailing shot after the credits of OAV 3 got tagged onto the beginning of part 4. My player (a usually very tolerant Pioneer) also seized up temporarily when trying to switch languages or subtitle preference via the menus. But most annoying by far is the video transfer: Most of the series looks vivid, clean, and beautiful, but for some reason there are several very severe encoding glitches in the last two parts (you can't miss the sudden blockiness in the pan around the table in episode 5, but there are a few others as well). At least the audio is crisp and clean in both languages, though I think I noticed some tiny pops in the last episode.

Content Guide

Deserving of RightStuf's 15-up rating on account of a couple of brief shower scenes, a bit of rough language, and a few off color jokes, but surprisingly clean for the most part. Sans those shower scenes would be acceptable for most viewers.

Violence: 1 - People get very angry, but nobody even really gets hurt.

Nudity: 2 - A shower scene in episode 1 and a bath in 5, but not much volume or detail (and the hot springs are clean).

Sex/Mature Themes: 1 - A very few off-color jokes.

Language: 2 - A bit of swearing, mostly toward the beginning.

Notes and Trivia

Based on a 1993 novel of the same name written by Takashi Shouji. In addition to the two 3-episode OAV series adaptations (the second of which included a short "Stage:0" episode as a promo) reviewed here, there were a whole heap of drama CDs and soundtracks released, including one CD of vocal songs available in the US from Animetrax. There is also a 2-season 1999 TV series (with much of the same voice cast and production team) that has yet to be released in English as of this writing.

For some extra information, check out Star Child's (slightly roughly-written) English pages for the first series and its sequel.

Random trivia: Lawson has a bit of garbled dialogue in the first episode; what he says in the English dub is an exactly linguistically inverted version of what he says in the Japanese version.

The title should catch the eye of fans of classic anime, but there are also a lot of references to snack companies that non-Japanese fans are somewhat less likely to pick up on. Ness is probably referring to Nestle, Lote is almost certainly a take-off on Lotte, a major Japanese snack company, and Lawson is a chain of 7-Eleven-style convenience stores. Also, Yohko is (among other snack foods) always eating Strawberry Pocky (Pocky, for those unfamiliar, is a brand of chocolate-dipped pretzel sticks extremely popular in Japan). In a bit of unusual product placement, she actually mentions it by name at one point.

As mentioned above, this is actually two OAV series: Yamamoto Yohko, and Yamamoto Yohko II. The exact original titles are "Soreyuke! Uchuusenkan Yamamoto Youko" ("Let's go! Space Battleship Yamamoto Yohko") and "Soreyuke! Uchuusenkan Yamamoto Youko II." The title, if you didn't catch the reference, is a play on the classic anime TV series about an interstellar war, "Uchuusenkan Yamato" ("Space Battleship Yamato," better known in the US as Starblazers). Since the second series has the alternate title "Starship Girl, Yamamoto Yohko II" (in English) on the eyecatch in the middle, RightStuf probably decided that title worked better for the English release.

Availability

Available in the US from RightStuf on one hybrid DVD. Was also available on three subtitled or dubbed VHS volumes.

Looking to buy? Try these stores: RightStuf (search) | AnimeNation | Akemi's a(nime)Store