The Great War of Archimedes

Filled in some of my gaps in naval history.

Not a war film per-se but a very interesting and well done story about the behind the scenes fierce political infighting that took place in the early 1930s in the Japanese Navy between the Battleship proponents and the much fewer Aircraft carrier proponents that believe Battleships have become obsolete. As a footnote this same infighting was also mirrrored in the U.S Navy at the same time as well. The film story is based on a manga story of all things! Both my wife and I enjoyed this film and found the story and characters engaging. Recommended!

Having spent much time reading and watching various documentaries and movies about the IJN Yamato, this DVD is a must to have as it explains how the Yamato got built. The opening scenes of the movie is well seeped in history and is very similar to the ending of the Yamato movie of 2005. It appears the producers were committed to honoring the 3,000+ lives lost in its sinking but showing what occurred.

Not just a case of "lost in translation", but the writing and acting level is on par with a Sixties Mothra movie by Toho.

I saw a very good anti-war movie last night, "The Great War of Archimedes". It is about the building of the Japanese Battleship, Yamato, and how the Japanese knew that they would loose the war even before it was started and how industry pushed them into the war with false bids and national pride to drive the public and how the building a huge battleship was an effort to model the destruction of Japan to help them to accept the end of the era. Admiral Yamamoto was convinced that the age of the battleship had run its course and the future wars were in aircraft carriers and in many respects he was correct. But it is a nice mirror of the insanity that is driving the US country into oblivion. China is already on the other side of the moon and doing research there. They will out strip us very quickly because we put our fears in charge and lost sight of what we could have been. Our military Industrial Complex is driving us into oblivion in the same way that industry lost WW2 for Japan before it even began.

The excellent action sequence was over 10 minutes into the movie, but then the plot and characters intricately play out. At times the acting can be hammy, but the plot and characters deliver a satisfying imagining of what might have happened behind the scenes in the 1930s Imperial Japanese Navy.

If the munitions used to sink the Japanese battleship Yamato were as bad and ineffective as this movie, it would still be afloat, no doubt a tourist attraction as are some former American warships.The Yamato (and its sistership, the Musashi) were the largest and most powerfully armed battleships ever built, displacing 72,000 tons. It had nine 18-inch main guns. By contrast, the largest American battleships, the New Jersey class, had nine 16-inch guns, and the largest British battleships, the King George V class, had nine 14-inch guns. All are now in that proverbial dust bin of history, save for the USS Alabama, its 16-inch guns a tourist attraction in Mobile.Despite being a symbol of Japanese naval might, one of the main reasons for its construction, as was brought out in the movie, it saw very little action during World War II. A fairly impressive computer simulation of its demise, on 7 April 1945, commences the movie. Like the kamikaze fighter aircraft, the Yamato was sent on a one-way trip to defend Okinawa from attack, beaching itself if it reached the island. I was brought up in the ‘50’s watching various TV series on World War II, including those adrenaline-rushing clips of American battleships desperately firing all their anti-aircraft guns at Japanese kamikaze planes, trying to bring them down before they hit the ship. This movie depicts the opposite, with Japanese anti-aircraft crews, played by real actors, trying to bring down American fighter planes. A telling difference was depicted: an American plane is shot down, the pilot parachutes out, and is rescued by an American seaplane.The American bombs and torpedoes were not duds. The Yamato soon goes to the bottom of the ocean, taking the lives of most of its crew. The only thing that sank faster was the movie itself. It was a quick and long way down. I had to pinch myself on more than one occasion. This movie was directed by a Japanese, Takashi Yamazaki, and featured Japanese actors speaking Japanese (it is dubbed in English), yet the entire movie seemed like a crude parody of Japan itself, with dollops of Western political correctness. The dialogue can achieve chalk-screeching-across-the-board inanity. There is the 20-20 political hindsight of the good and wise Japanese military leadership knowing they will lose the war. Early on, make sure you stir in some highly improbable scenes with those ever-so-attentive geishas. This is about Japan, right?For almost two hours the viewer is treated to the aircraft carrier and battleship factions of the Japanese senior military duking it out for the budget. Kai plays a very youthful and once-in-a-century math genius (pleeeze) who has been hitting on (platonically, of course) a prominent shipbuilder’s daughter, got expelled from Tokyo U. for same, but has enough money for all those geishas, and somehow gets “drafted” onto the side of the aircraft carrier faction to prove, via second degree differential equations (natch) that the battleship guys low-balled the estimate on the Yamato (in order to fool the USA and Britain?).It is worse still… but don’t get me going, or there will be samurai swords, white horses into the sunset, with the chaste honey along for the ride. 1-star.

Oh but what to say about this film. First of all, although the first 20 minutes of this film starts out withthe destruction of the I J S Ship Yamato, (& probably in my opinion one of the best ever depictions of naval warfare ever in film, using CGI), it is NOT a war movie. It is a fictionalized account of the struggle within the Imperial Japanese Navy between the "Carrier faction" led by Admiral Yamamoto, who stressed that the Imperial Navy should focus more on building & using Aircraft Carriers, & the "Battleship Faction" who wanted to focus on building more Battleships. The main character is a young civilian naval architect, who is basically somewhat of an anti militarist, who wants nothing to do with the Navy, but essentially gets drafted, & rapidly promoted up a couple of ranks in the I J S to try to "disprove" the designs of the new Japanese battleships, Yamato & Musashi. It's" different ", but kind of a unique technique way of telling a story. The version I watched was dubbed in English which most American/British viewers would probably prefer. Personally I like to watch "foreign" movies in they're original language, but that's just me. I use closed captioning anyway as I have a minor hearing issue, so I have to "read anyway. There is a sappy love story thrown into this film, which I could have done without, but then the movie, like most films today is aimed at younger viewers. Nice little "different" film. Worth the 3.99$ I payed to watch.

Fast efficient service and delivery. S great dvd to watch.

Davvero un bel film, narra una storia vera davvero incredibile ed emozionante che fa vedere sopratutto tutte le vere caratteristiche del controverso comportamento del popolo giapponese, un popolo tanto intelligentemente creativo e saggio, quanto ingenuo e estremamente violento allo stesso tempo.Peccato solo che non c’è nel film il doppiaggio in italiano, anche perché questo è un film che dovremmo vedere tutti qui in Europa.

Thought I was buying a movie about the building of Yamato, but more of a drama about a clever mathematician who came across Yamato really.

Good product good service

普通に国内プレイヤーで再生可能！英語字幕も消せる！本編映像のみで特典映像と言えば予告編のみ。後はリリースメーカーの製品予告（韓国映画ばかり）だが、マイウェイや長沙里○○といった日本でも上映やリリースされたものを含むので違和感は余り無い。という訳で特典映像不要の方には国内正規品の半額以下で入手可能の最高コスパ商品！国内正規品は未見だが、レンタルDVD比では格段に高画質！DVDのアップコンバートでは無い！そもそも邦画ソフトか高過ぎるからいけないのだよ。作品内容は既に多くのレビューが投稿されているので、ここでは触れないが、Blu-rayを買いたくなる点で推して知るべし。再度、敢えて言おう、コスパ最高であると！