Space Battleship Yamato in LEGO

After two years of building this Space Battleship Yamato model is complete and it bristles with beauty. (Thanks, Jay T.!)

[#1 posted by A former race mechanic , February 11, 2009 1:48 PM]

Freakin' gorgeous!

That said, where's the wave motion gun?

I fully credit the wave motion gun and wave motion drive with putting me onto my current career path: laser spectroscopist.

[#2 posted by akbar56 , February 11, 2009 2:06 PM]

I saw this a month ago on a random lego blog. I don't understand how they could go to all that effort to reproduce the SBYamato and NOT have the Wave Motion gun.

[#3 posted by Reed Savory , February 11, 2009 3:46 PM]

#1 - my reaction was exactly the same as yours: that's got to be one of the most amazing, beautiful things I've seen in a long time, but yes, exactly, where's the Wave Motion gun?

Granted, I've never seen the Japanese version - I'm working from my childhood memories of "Star Blazers"...

[#4 posted by kingzilch , February 11, 2009 4:51 PM]

Lack of tachyon-particles-compressed-faster-than-the-speed-of-light aside, this is damn shiny.

[#5 posted by Marshall , February 11, 2009 5:06 PM]

Why LEGO doesn't make kits like this with lots of great generic parts and an awesome, complicated model, I just don't know.

[#6 posted by forbid89 , February 11, 2009 5:15 PM]

Here is a thread on Euro Bricks about it:

http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=24963

I guess it took around 40 hours over 10 nights to build.

[#7 posted by Anonymous , February 11, 2009 6:48 PM]

C'mon guys, lay off about the Wave Motion Gun.... It's kind of hard (read: impossible) to to create a concave turret like shape from square bricks.

This lego Yamato is better than a unicorn steak! Awesomeness!

[#8 posted by dculberson , February 11, 2009 8:55 PM]

Maybe he'll add the wave motion gun later in order to be really accurate. (the Yamato didn't have the gun at first!)

[#9 posted by PaulR , February 12, 2009 4:48 AM]

Why is a SPACE battleship built like a WATER battleship?

All the guns are on one side which, if the ship weren't 'floating' around in space, would be called the 'up' side...but it IS floating around in space... Sigh.

Betcha it makes noise when you shoot the guns, eh?

[#10 posted by dculberson , February 12, 2009 5:06 AM]

PaulR, look up the story before mocking it. In the story, they raise the original battleship Yamato and then turn it into a space ship. Yes, it's implausible, but that's the point.

You can't very well make it look like a realistic spaceship and still have it look like the Yamato!

[#11 posted by SC_Wolf , February 12, 2009 5:13 AM]

This greatly pleases my inner six-year-old.

[#12 posted by strider_mt2k , February 12, 2009 5:20 AM]

Why would you build it and not include...

-but it's supposed to have the...

WTF? Wave Motion Gun???

I didn't notice that yesterday.

[#13 posted by RedShirt77 , February 12, 2009 6:11 AM]

In the English version of this show, the ship is called the Argo, Not the Yamato.

It is renamed it after they raise it from the ocean floor.

I guess the Americans were a little uncomfortable with how much the Japanese were re-fighting WWII in this show.

[#14 posted by Downpressor , February 12, 2009 7:19 AM]

When I was a lad rushing home from school to watch Star Blazers I had no idea at the time that the show was "submarine" Japanese right wing ultra nationalism. Even now in retrospect I dont care very much it was a great show anyway.

The possible Protocols of the Elders of Zion stuff in the Gundam shows? thats another issue.

Anyway it seems to me that all these shows have the underlying theme of Japanese island mentality paranoia towards the outside world.

Feh.

Nice Lego model though.

[#15 posted by RedShirt77 , February 12, 2009 9:36 AM]

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=58795

This one has a wave gun.

[#16 posted by SC_Wolf , February 12, 2009 12:46 PM]

@ #13 RedShirt77:
I guess the Americans were a little uncomfortable with how much the Japanese were re-fighting WWII in this show.


You think? At one point, Disney had optioned the rights to produce a Live Action version, and in the script drafts that leaked from the project, the ship that was raised and converted into a spaceship was the USS Arizona and not the Yamoto.

Personally, I'm glad that this film never did get out of pre-production.

[#17 posted by RedShirt77 , February 12, 2009 2:07 PM]

"Personally, I'm glad that this film never did get out of pre-production."

I agree to some extent, but I must say, some of me really wants to see what modern effects can do to recreate a ww2 battleship and fly it through space. Arizona was a pretty awesome ship although I think it would be a pretty huge kick to the balls for Japanese and fans alike.