It really was quite excessive. Possibly I was also irritated by the accompanying upswell of the orchestral score and the particularly (intentionally) wooden performance of the officers concerned, but there was only one (or possibly two) instances where the passion that inspired such a salute was appropriate.
Even aside from the fact of people leaving their workstations in the middle of a battle to render signal honours (although the last battle definitely stretched the idea of narrative time [cf the last Star Trek movie for an excellent example of narrative time (2 minutes to Vulcan; 1 hour back from it)], mostly through melodrama and jaw gritting), there is a reason that it is considered, even in the JSDF and it's predecessors*, a signal honour for the troops to spontaneously salute their leaders in such a manner.
The normal polite and entirely customary conventions of offering and receiving salutes (or in the case of the Japanese the additional bows and courtesies), were expected and didn't intrude on one's enjoyment of the film.
But, as I mentioned, the film compacted the entire melodrama of the entire anime series (Susumi hating Okita for killing his brother, then coming to love him and replace him, Yuki hating Susumi and then loving him) into two and a bit hours. It's probably a good thing that the Gamalis were alien this time around, as that removed the Yuki/Desla and Susumi/Starsha subplots.
The focus on the anime, as opposed to Star Blazers was on the characters, not the space battles.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2011-07-09 03:08 pm (UTC)It really was quite excessive. Possibly I was also irritated by the accompanying upswell of the orchestral score and the particularly (intentionally) wooden performance of the officers concerned, but there was only one (or possibly two) instances where the passion that inspired such a salute was appropriate.
Even aside from the fact of people leaving their workstations in the middle of a battle to render signal honours (although the last battle definitely stretched the idea of narrative time [cf the last Star Trek movie for an excellent example of narrative time (2 minutes to Vulcan; 1 hour back from it)], mostly through melodrama and jaw gritting), there is a reason that it is considered, even in the JSDF and it's predecessors*, a signal honour for the troops to spontaneously salute their leaders in such a manner.
The normal polite and entirely customary conventions of offering and receiving salutes (or in the case of the Japanese the additional bows and courtesies), were expected and didn't intrude on one's enjoyment of the film.
But, as I mentioned, the film compacted the entire melodrama of the entire anime series (Susumi hating Okita for killing his brother, then coming to love him and replace him, Yuki hating Susumi and then loving him) into two and a bit hours. It's probably a good thing that the Gamalis were alien this time around, as that removed the Yuki/Desla and Susumi/Starsha subplots.
The focus on the anime, as opposed to Star Blazers was on the characters, not the space battles.