just from skimming through the movie I'm assuming that Star Wars and Star Trek heavily influenced it.
Other way around.
The books the anime is based on were written in the 1930s, 40s and 50s by EE Doc Smith.
Doc Smith INVENTED space opera.
It is considered to be the second greatest science fiction series after Asimov's Foundation series.
The series is so significant that even the "grandmaster" himself, Robert Heinlein added lensmen into several of his books.
And a whole slew of Lensmen books by other authors appeared in the 60s.
You know the Expanded Universe of Star Wars?
The first Expanded Universe was Lensmen.
You could not have either Star Wars or Star Trek without Lensman.
And the anime adaptation is ****.
Read those Lensman books so many years ago.Then discovered Asimov's Foundation series.Then the guy who wrote the uplift wars forgot his name.Also A.E.Vogt books.
[Edited by obscuredeadfred, 7/10/2015 12:31:35 AM]