The Great War of Archimedes

The Great War of Archimedes
Release poster
Original title	アルキメデスの大戦
Directed by	Takashi Yamazaki
Written by	Takashi Yamazaki
Produced by	Shūji Abe
Starring	Masaki Suda Tasuku Emoto Minami Hamabe Shōfukutei Tsurube II Jun Kunimura Isao Hashizume Min Tanaka Hiroshi Tachi
Narrated by	Hitoshi Kubota
Cinematography	Kōzō Shibasaki
Edited by	Ryûji Miyajima
Music by	Naoki Satō
Distributed by	Toho
Release date	26 July 2019 (2019-07-26)
Running time	130 minutes
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese
Box office	¥1.93 billion ($17.7 million)

The Great War of Archimedes (アルキメデスの大戦, Arukimedesu no taisen) is a 2019 Japanese historical film directed and written by Takashi Yamazaki. Concerning the building of the battleship Yamato, the film is based on a manga by Norifusa Mita. It is a fictionalized telling of the political maneuvers, specifically pertaining to budget and cost issues, that led to the decision to build the Yamato. The movie was dubbed into various languages and distributed worldwide.

Plot

To replace an aging battleship, a new super battleship is proposed to the Navy. Admirals Yamamoto and Nagano believe that battleships are becoming obsolete, and advocate building a new aircraft carrier instead, but they are opposed by the Navy's old guard led by battleship champions Rear Admiral Shigetarō Shimada and the architect of Shimada's battleship proposal, Vice Admiral Tadamichi Hirayama.

Yamamoto and Nagano enlist Tadashi Kai, an eccentric, headstrong, and pacifist mathematics prodigy on the autism spectrum with an obsession for geometric harmony and beauty. Disillusioned with Japan's institutions after he was mistaken for having an illicit relationship with Kyōko Ozaki, daughter of industrial magnate Tomekichi Ozaki, and then expelled from his previous study at Tokyo Imperial University due to pressure from Tomekichi, Kai is at first unwilling to help Yamamoto and Nagano, but becomes convinced that a super battleship will be seen by other nations as an aggressive threat, leading Japan and the world towards war, and agrees to work for them. Yamamoto assigns young Ensign Shōjirō Tanaka as Kai's aide, who is initially skeptical of his behaviours but later comes to respect his resourcefulness and fully cooperate with his mission.

Much of the film revolves around Kai's efforts to prove that the cost of the new battleship will be much higher than its designers claim. Despite being unable to directly access classified documents and subjected to underhanded obstruction tactics by Shimada, he is able to make an accurate approximation of Hirayama's design by copying the blueprints and measuring the dimensions of battleship Nagato as a reference, extrapolating said reference onto the geometries of Hirayama's design, as well as (with assistance from Kyōko) securing the cooperation of Kiyoshi Ōsato, a shipyard owner who had a falling out with the Imperial Japanese Navy for being unwilling to participate in its corruption. By analyzing material procurement data of warships built by Ōsato's shipyard in the past, Kai develops mathematical formulas that, in a dramatic scene, are shown to be very accurate when applied to the cost of steel for other earlier IJN ships. He then use the formulas to demonstrate that the battleship will cost about double the estimate in steel alone. Shimada's scheme was to collude with Ozaki Zaibatsu and underpay its shipyard for the cost of the battleship, making up the difference by overpaying for some cruisers later on. Despite this, Hirayama appeals to patriotism: he had deliberately underestimated the cost of the battleship so that it would be approved, as he believed it to be vitally necessary for the Navy for foreign militaries to underestimate the ship and thus develop inadequate measures against it. While the conference chairman is convinced by the appeal, Kai is able at the last minute to spot a fatal flaw on Hirayama's design, causing Hirayama to temporarily withdraw his proposal and leading to Yamamoto faction's aircraft carrier being selected for construction. Surprisingly, Hirayama later contacts Kai for help and discloses his true reason for wanting a new battleship built- he realizes that Japan is already too far gone on the warpath regardless the outcome of the Imperial Japanese Navy's proposals (it is revealed to the audience earlier that even Yamamoto, while not really a proponent of the upcoming war, nonetheless supports the new aircraft carrier for the purpose of prosecuting and winning it). He is also convinced that Japan will never prevail if the war is to be played out conventionally, but the Japanese people will stubbornly fight to the last in the vain hope for a victory. The only way to make Japan reconsider is to make the inevitable defeat as humiliating and demoralizing as possible, and this defeat must take place before Japan must fight its war on the ground of its home islands. For that, he needs to build the perfect battleship to carry the full burden of the Japanese people's collective spirit and of being destined to fight to its destruction in this hopeless struggle. Convinced by Hirayama's reasoning, Kai reluctantly agrees to assist in perfecting the battleship design. The proposal is approved and built as the Yamato. Two years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Kai attends the commissioning ceremony of the Yamato; while everyone else is elated to see such an impressive battleship representing the strength of the Japanese nation and thus optimistic about the outcome of the war, Kai, fully aware of the ultimate sacrifice this ship and its crew are doomed to perform so that Japan would be given a chance to live on through its grim future, is left in tears as he watches the ship departing after the ceremony.

Cast

• Masaki Suda as Lt. Commander / Commander Tadashi Kai
• Hiroshi Tachi as Rear Admiral / Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
• Tasuku Emoto as Ensign Shōjirō Tanaka
• Minami Hamabe as Kyōko Ozaki
• Min Tanaka as Vice Admiral Tadamichi Hirayama
• Jun Kunimura as Vice Admiral Osami Nagano
• Isao Hashizume as Rear Admiral Shigetarō Shimada
• Eita Okuno as Sub-lieutenant Kunihiko Takato
• Katsuya Kobayashi as Admiral Mineo Ōsumi
• Hajime Yamazaki as Rear Admiral Yoshio Fujioka
• Fumiyo Kohinata as Captain Sekizō Uno
• Shōfukutei Tsurube as Kiyoshi Ōsato
• Kenichi Yajima as Tomekichi Ozaki

Production

In July 2018, Yamazaki announced the production will start and entitled The Great War of Archimedes based on a manga by Norifusa Mita, this picture about the building of the battleship Yamato, and starred Masaki Suda in his first collaboration with Yamazaki. Voice actors for the dubbing into English include Luis Bermudez, Brent Mukai, Lizzy Laurenti, and Dylan Mobley.

Accolades

At the 2020 Japanese Academy Awards, Tasuku Emoto was nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category, and Masaki Suda was nominated in the Best Actor category, for their work in this film.

External links

• The Great War of Archimedes at IMDb