Odin: Photon Sailer Starlight - The Legend of Odin

The Legend of Odin

"Legends once told of a paradise destroyed by a kingdom of fire.

Odin was once a planet that faced destruction by the radiation of its expanding sun, Canopus. Its people built giant computerized starships to monitor their exodus to find another world yet many stayed on Odin in the hopes that the fires of Canopus would die out. The computers on the ships ultimately developed sentience and transformed its humanoid refugees into cyborgs leaving those remaining on Odin the only ones who remained as themselves. The machines built larger machines to ensure that the mission succeeds resulting in an eventual corruption of the original purpose. Now these machines sought only to destroy all organic life. The dying soldier, noted that Sara not only looked like the queen of Odin's people, but that Sara was the queen's name. Sara confirms that there might be a connection as she recounts her own memories of The Tree of Life and how she was sheltered by two giants in her childhood. The cyborg soldier's dying words suggest that if Sara has these memories then Odin and its people may still live.

The crew promises to dedicate themselves to finding Odin. However, they must still defeat the master computer of this machine world; a being that calls itself Belgel. The crew finds a way to insert a computer virus which causes Belgel to overload and destroy the world-fortress. The movie ends simply with the Starlight crew pressing on, unhindered, to begin its search for the legendary planet Odin.

This movie came out in the wake of the popularity of Space Battleship Yamato which had two years earlier ended its run with Final Yamato. It has many similar directorial elements but it failed to gain any lasting popularity. This movie was also released in the U.S. by U.S. Manga Corps in both a dubbed format and an uncut subtitled format. This title has the distinction of perhaps being the anime movie which suffered the harshest editing for length in its English release. The original uncut version runs 2 hours 15 minutes, the English dub runs only 90 minutes.