Mississippi has so much to learn from that particular lesson. Also I downloaded this but never watched it. Worth it for the uninitiated?

It could be nostalgia talking, but I much prefer the original cartoon, so I'd recommend starting there. It's on Hulu:

http://www.hulu.com/star-blazers

There's some bad and some good with it. The bad: a lot of crappy voice acting, and a tendency for women (well, THE woman) to be crying all the time. Plus there are some weak episodes. The good: the fact that it's a series means they can take their time to tell their story. Almost completely absent from the movie is the issue of crew morale, but it is a recurring theme on the show (even to the point where some of the crew mutinies at one point, spoilers). And we get to see enough of the Gamilas -- excuse me, Gamilons -- to know they're men who have made monstrous choices, rather than lizardy monsters who trigger an instinctive "kill it with fire" reaction. Speaking of which, the leader of the Gamilons, Desslok, is one of the better-written villains on TV.

So, that whole failure to look at the instruments put there to save their lives until it's too late, the refusal for the chick to save the earth if she couldn't have her man who was dying so she could save the earth, and the crew's complete lack of training and protocol on the equipment they were famous for using, is from the anime? Every time a fighter pilot died in this movie, it was because they were looking over their shoulder and bullshitting.

I liked how this movie sort of implied that 1/2 an alien species used the other half's kind of dumb human targets to wipe out their enemies, and then used them to go live on the earth like the other half wanted. They were a way smarter alien hive politician.

Actually the original cartoon was smarter than the movie in some of those regards.

In the cartoon, one of the only two surviving people of Iscandar (also essentially human beings, but not Gamilons) flew to our solar system with plans for a wave motion engine, so that we could send a ship that would be capable of retrieving the massive anti-radiation machine. It was basically a Craigslist ad saying "Cosmo DNA on Iscandar, free if you provide transportation", plus plans for building an Urba Car.

Also in the cartoon, most of the experienced soldiers were already dead. Our hero with the long hair and his navigator buddy were a couple of lowly cadets, and in fact, almost the entire crew consisted of promising but untested young folks. I don't like that the movie made everyone veterans with tragic military histories, but I understand why they did that, because there wasn't time for anyone to ramp up. In the cartoon, though, their lack of experience is a thing -- for example, the first time they're trying to start the wave motion engine, it fails, because the navigator missed a step on his checklist.

And in a 1974 cartoon, you can expect that space fighter planes worked like WWII fighters -- you have to look around to see enemy fighters. Consider it a weakness of the cartoon that it wasn't "realistic" that way.