The cartoon is called Star Blazers in the US. In Japan its "Space Battleship Yamato". They made a live action movie of it about 6 years ago...and yes, the ship IS the WWII Yamato rebuilt as a space cruiser.
Wow, I never heard about the movie. I will have to check that out.
The only thing that I would rather see is a USS Enterprise (CVN-7) version. After watching the Battle 360 series the Enterprise was the one ship that lucked-out many times, but always came back and kicked some a$%, very similar to Star Blazers. Even the first Battle 360 episode mentioned how the Enterprise was due in port on the morning of the Pearl Harbor attack and would have surely been hit the hardest, but she was held back by a tropical storm, aka. the divine wind.