Recap: A portion of the Yamato’s crew is revealed to be a splinter faction who stage a coup to take control of the ship and return back to Earth, preferring to settle on a new planet rather than continue the fight against the Gamilans.

Gee’s Thoughts: This week’s episode was an interesting one that played out slightly different than how I expected. Just as I predicted, a splinter group led by Niimi and Itou (Squinty) stage a coup to take control of the Yamato. It’s revealed that said splinter group was sent to infiltrate the Yamato with the mission of finding an inhabitable planet and returning to Earth with the information. On one hand, Squinty is quite possibly one of the most infuriating characters I’ve seen in Yamato, on the other, their mission is somewhat understandable. With the Yamato falling behind schedule with no hope in sight, some sort of relocation plan doesn’t seem too crazy.

Humans come in two forms: those who run and those who fight. It’s somewhat understandable that there would be such humans who would rather run and hide from the Gamilans rather than take them on. No doubt such cowards exist in real life as well. One only needs to look at human history to see instances where ignorance and fear have led the day rather than initiative and daring. It’s a surprisingly realistic motivation for our would-be rebels and I think Yamato 2199 benefited from addressing the issue.

That said, I was very happy to see that Yamato handled such a plot device just as expertly as it has in previous episodes. Rather than stretch out the coup into some tedious and painful arc, our heroes manage to get the coup handled within the same 22 minutes it was introduced. If there’s anything Yamato 2199 is good at (and believe me, it’s good at a lot of things), it’s its pacing. A lesser anime would have forced us to watch Itou and his goons goosestep around the Yamato, executing crew members and ruining plans. Instead, thanks to Akira’s CQC skills, Hoshina’s (Smiley’s) surprise double-agent act, and a stern admonishment from Okita, we get back to our regularly scheduled struggle for humanity’s survival. Especially pleased that rather than shoehorn Kodai into somehow saving the day, we get to see that the Yamato is quite capable of saving itself thanks without its main character. Yamato 2199 really knows how to make an ensemble cast shine.

Also, Analyzer can step into a giant robot frame, basically becoming the power loader from Aliens. It even fights a giant alien bug. That’s fucking awesome.

All that said though, I’m a little curious as to where this subplot is going to go. While some like Shima and Niimi seem genuinely remorseful over their actions, there are others that clearly participated in the coup under their own will. While they could ostensibly lock them in the brig, the Yamato is already short on crew, so I can’t imagine they can afford to lock up every single person involved. Killing them is also out of the question. However, letting them go free seems to be an equally dangerous proposition. When nearly your entire security force is involved, you can’t afford to take chances. It’ll be interesting to see what are the repercussions of this episode.