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Ôdîn - Kôshi Hobune Stâraito

Ôdîn - Kôshi Hobune Stâraito (1985) Movie Poster
Japan  •    •  139m  •    •  Directed by: Takeshi Shirato, Eiichi Yamamoto, Toshio Masuda.  •  Starring: Toshio Furukawa, Edward Glen, Keiko Han, Stacey Gregg, Gorô Naya, Bob Sessions, Hideyuki Hori, Ian Tyler, Don Fellows, Norio Wakamoto, Stuart Milligan, Tesshô Genda, Peter Whitman.  •  Music by: Munetaka Higuchi, Loudness, Minoru Niihara, Akira Takasaki, Masayoshi Yamashita.
     It is the year 2099, and mankind has taken great advances in its development of space travel: people sail through space in ships powered by photon-laser engines, and parts of the solar system have been colonized. The newly-built space schooner the Starlight is launched on a maiden voyage to venture beyond the boundaries of the system and investigate a distress signal from a lost starship near Jupiter. Starlight comes across a wrecked spacecraft, holding a lone survivor: a mysterious young female amnesiac named Sara Cyanbaker. Starlight is then immediately attacked by some sort of weaponized probes and sucked into a vortex that takes them to a moon called Oberon near Uranus. There they find an artifact in the form of an ancient galactic map that points to an ancient Norwegian mariner's folk song which mentions the Norse god Odin. Sara starts to have strange dreams of a place called Odin; with these facts, the crew deduces that Odin may actually exist as a planet, the place of paradise that is so often spoken of in Norse mythology. And so a perilous journey begins towards the Canopus system in search of the planet Odin, which could be the possible cradle of life in the universe. What they find there puts everyone in grave danger.

Review:

Image from: Ôdîn - Kôshi Hobune Stâraito (1985)
Image from: Ôdîn - Kôshi Hobune Stâraito (1985)
Image from: Ôdîn - Kôshi Hobune Stâraito (1985)
Image from: Ôdîn - Kôshi Hobune Stâraito (1985)
Image from: Ôdîn - Kôshi Hobune Stâraito (1985)
Image from: Ôdîn - Kôshi Hobune Stâraito (1985)
Image from: Ôdîn - Kôshi Hobune Stâraito (1985)
Image from: Ôdîn - Kôshi Hobune Stâraito (1985)
Image from: Ôdîn - Kôshi Hobune Stâraito (1985)
Image from: Ôdîn - Kôshi Hobune Stâraito (1985)
Image from: Ôdîn - Kôshi Hobune Stâraito (1985)
Image from: Ôdîn - Kôshi Hobune Stâraito (1985)
Image from: Ôdîn - Kôshi Hobune Stâraito (1985)
Image from: Ôdîn - Kôshi Hobune Stâraito (1985)
Image from: Ôdîn - Kôshi Hobune Stâraito (1985)
Image from: Ôdîn - Kôshi Hobune Stâraito (1985)
Image from: Ôdîn - Kôshi Hobune Stâraito (1985)
Image from: Ôdîn - Kôshi Hobune Stâraito (1985)
I'm a huge fan of the bold and wild imaginative worlds presented by pulp sci-fi. And I'm also a big fan of anime, having watched shows like YamatoStar Blazers, Galaxy Express 1999, Macross, and a ton of other notable animated epics.

I'd seen the 90-minute U.S. cut of this film a long time ago and thought it was good, but not great. Recently though, I watched the 135-minute Japanese-language version twice in one week (yep, over four hours of viewing). My opinion on this movie has just jumped up a few notches. The more I watch this, the more I appreciate it. The design work is phenomenal and the soundtrack is excellent. In fact, I'm noticing a resurgence in interest in the band Loudness and the album that features songs from this film.

For me, I want a sci-fi film to take me places and this one certainly does. For a movie that has over a 2-hour running time, this one speeds along from location to location. In fact, it could use another hour. Regardless, the quick pace is fine with me, since that's a hallmark of the earlier days of science fiction (with 2001: A Space Odyssey being the exception).

This feature has many many influences, and pretty much every title I've mentioned in this review are among them. I noticed in the FAQ that people criticized this film for treading a similar path to Space Battleship Yamato. However, I don't see people saying the same about Legend of the Galactic Heroes or a few other features that also owe a great deal to Yamato. I'd go as far as to say that Odin actually improves on Yamato in a number of ways while adding in welcome elements like concepts from Fred Saberhagen's Berserker novels.

This movie stays on course and maintains a consistent tone. I can't say enough about the latter, since so very many sci-fi features go off the rails or insert silly characters or scenes for seemingly no reason. Odin, however, keeps things consistent and even manages to end the film on a very emotional and epic note.

I salute the people who made this film possible and all the thought and hard work that they put into it.


Review by J-bot6 from the Internet Movie Database.