When the calendar ticked over to the new year, the stakes went up for Final Yamato. The number of production weeks left could now be counted on two hands. When it was learned that three anime movies would premiere on the same day (March 12), the press had an instant story to tell and they ran with it. Here’s how it all went down…

December 15, 1982: Alien No. 1

(This one belonged in Vintage Report 41, but escaped timely notice.) Released by Shonen Gahosha, this one-shot manga collection was published as a special issue of the monthly Shonen King, in which Leiji Matsumoto was a regular contributor. It jumped right into the pool with a lead story on the 3-way movie battle coming in March. The first interior page of the magazine is shown above right with this headline:

One page flip brought you to this 2-page spread. Read the text here.

As for the rest of the magazine, it offered self-contained stories by Leiji Matsumoto, Monkey Punch, and several others. The lion’s share of its pages (and also the cover) was devoted to an SF adventure manga titled Star Shimak by Akira Seki, which seems to have since faded into obscurity.

January 3: Yamato 2 Complete Edition rerun

Part of the Final Yamato promotional effort was to get previous works back into the public eye. This was the first one of the year, a 96-minute compilation that was originally broadcast in October 1979. It had been marketed in the form of a drama album in 1981.

Read more about it here

January 9: Middle 1st Age, February issue

Obunsha’s student digest for 7th graders contained a jumbo-size Final Yamato promotion to match the scale of the film. Bundled with the magazine was a huge (21″x30″) foldout poster with the name Anime TV Idol Poster Exciting Book.

The front gave everyone a big image to drool over while the back was loaded with story information and mini-features. If that looks to you like a LOT of story info to give out before a premiere, you are correct. Thanks to this and other sources, any attentive fan could give a fair summation of the whole movie by the end of the month.

January 10: Animage Vol. 56

Final Yamato got a three page article that turned out to be the most interesting of the entire month. Strong ripples were still spreading from the “concerned fan letter” published in the previous issue, and another staff response formed the basis of this piece.

Read it here

January 10: The Anime Vol. 39

The Anime gave readers a Final Yamato foldout poster (shown below) and an ambitious 7-page dissection of what was known about the story, along with some sharp-eyed speculation on what would follow.

Read the article here

In addition, radio personality and anime fan Don Ueno rounded up the top voice actors from all three of the movies that would go head-to-head in March, and a few other news items followed.

Read this material here

January 10: My Anime, February issue

Final Yamato got a huge 10-page article that compiled everything known about the film so far with running comments by Yoshinobu Nishizaki. He also wrote a brief message and a word about the upcoming radio drama. The article finished with a collection of notes and rumors, which included one very big spoiler.

Read it here

January 10: Animedia, February issue

Final Yamato got a three-page article that included a word from Isao Sasaki and an interview with beleaguered animation director Kazuhiko Udagawa.

Read the article here

January 10: Space Battleship Yamato Total Collection

This is Animation, The Select Vol. 2

Shogakukan’s answer to Tokuma Shoten’s highly successful Roman Album series was the This is Animation books. They either examined anime as a general phenomenon or, in the case of the “Select” imprint, focused on a single work. This volume provided a retrospective of the saga along with some fresh new art by prominent members of the production staff.

It concluded with an overview of the early Final Yamato brainstorming sessions in which the initial story ideas were hashed out. Transcripts of those sessions had already been published in the Yamato Fan Club magazine (read them here), but this version did a good job of summarizing them for comparison with what was currently known about the film.

Read the article here

January 10: Fan club magazine Vol. 32

As impressive as the other publications were, there was no substitute for Final Yamato news direct from the home office. It filled half of this issue along with a New Year’s message from Yoshinobu Nishizaki, reports on song recording sessions, and five pages of storyboards and animation layouts with plot excerpts from the first half of the movie. This material was never reprinted elsewhere.

Look inside this issue here

New music releases from Nippon Columbia were promoted on the back cover. The headline (in red) reads: The greatest masterpiece in the history of anime music is finally complete! Hear Yamato‘s final symphony

January 15: Final Yamato special on All Night Nippon

The fifth time’s the charm? Each of the Yamato movies was accompanied by a 4-hour radio special, a combo of drama and talk show. For the voice actors, this one sort of doubled as a rehearsal, since they hadn’t recorded their parts for the film yet.

The report above was found in the next issue of Animedia and read as follows:

All Night Nippon, which became famous for the 4-hour radio dramas, has broadcast The Final Chapter. The broadcast started at 1:00am on the night of January 15 with the first words of Tsuka-tan Kurou [Takashi Tsukagoshi] and Rinko Okamato! Appearing with these two facilitators was Producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki. After this, Producer Nishizaki narrated the drama for the first time.

The performers were Kei Tomiyama [Kodai], Yoko Asagami [Yuki], Takeshi Aono [Sanada], Masato Ibu [EDF commander], and the familiar Yamato member Isao Sasaki as Shima, who appeared in place of Hideo Nakamura since he was out with an illness. The program progressed over four hours with drama, requests, and commentary.

The Anime magazine filed this report:

Let’s talk about All Night Nippon, yes! A four-hour radio drama. Space Battleship Yamato The Final Chapter was broadcast after midnight on January 15 (officially the 16th) from 1am to 5am, centered on the trio of Producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki as a personality, Tsuka-tan Kurou [Takashi Tsukagoshi] as host, and Rinko Okamato.

The acting team was the complete Yamato voice cast: Kei Tomiyama, Yoko Asagami, Ichiro Nagai, and Masato Ibu. One slight disappointment was that Hideo Nakamura could not participate due to illness, but his pinch hitter was Isao Sasaki, who was an extravagant choice.

The broadcast went smoothly with drama and telephone requests, and the content was enriched by Producer Nishizaki’s Yamato anecdotes and talk about The Final Chapter. It was a sensation for the voice actors to hear Producer Nishizaki’s narration in the drama. There were thousands of telephone requests not only for BGM [music] but also memorable scenes and it was a lot of fun.

At 5am, the actors were a little sleepy, but 335 people dispersed into the still-dark city. Next up, the voice recording!!

A third report was to be found in Volume 33 of the fan club magazine; read it here

And what about the show itself? For the first time since 1983, you can listen to it right here right now! Click and enjoy!

January 18: Final Yamato press conference

Talk about spoilers…! Up to this point, the entire first hour of Final Yamato had been fully revealed through the two novelizations published in December and the radio drama. But that apparently wasn’t enough for Yoshinobu Nishizaki, who decided to go for broke when he called the press to the Tokyu Hotel in Akasaka (a district of Tokyo) and UNLOADED.

As Animage would report in its next issue, he hit these three points with no hesitation:

1. There is only one way to save the Earth. Yamato is blown up!

“The first thing I can clarify is that Yamato explodes. But “The End” doesn’t appear there. How and why it explodes is something I’ll leave out for now.”

2. Susumu and Yuki become one in mind and body!

“Out of the platonic love between Kodai and Yuki, we will clearly show a love scene. This will be a really beautiful, glowing scene that we can show you with confidence.”

3. Daisuke Shima dies in battle!

“I narrowed the deaths in The Final Chapter as much as possible. But the death of an important character is by all means a necessity in a drama. It ended up being Shima.”

His decision could have been motivated by the coming box office battle on March 12 between his film, Harmagedon and Crusher Joe. The pedigree of these two features landed them squarely in the Yamato wheelhouse, so keeping the buzz for his film at top volume might have inspired Nishizaki to go for full disclosure.

If you like, jump ahead in time and read the subsequent magazine coverage here: Animage | The Anime | My Anime | Animedia

In addition to these revelations, media reps walked away with a two-sided press sheet (loaded with text) and a collection of stills that would soon appear in newspapers and magazines.

See it all here

January 20: Toei Animation Fan Club News No. 14

For the previous three years, Toei published a quarterly mini-magazine (12 pages) that picked one film to promote in every issue. This time, all the attention was on Final Yamato with commentary, highlights, interviews, and exclusive news flashes.

Read it from cover to cover here

January 21: OUT, March issue

The next take on the 3-way movie battle came from the original anime magazine, the same one that helped put Yamato on the map back in 1977. They devoted four pages to Final Yamato in an article titled “Mechanic Battle Royale” and also published some fan mail that took a rather dim view of where Yamato currently resided on the spectrum.

See it all here

January 21: Roadshow, March issue

Shueisha’s mainstream movie magazine took a moment off from covering the 1982 American films currently arriving in Japan to acknowledge the 3-way movie battle with a 5-page color article. Final Yamato earned one of those pages, which included the following text:

The end of Yamato finally arrives!

Space Battleship Yamato The Final Chapter

Far away in the galaxy, many planets are colliding due to the effects of a galactic intersection. The Bolar Federation and Dessler’s Gamilon-Gamilas [SIC] Empire are in ruins. Yamato embarks on an investigation and warps to the planet Dengil, which is on the verge of flooding due to the effects of the water planet Aquarius. The Dengilians are plotting to migrate to Earth. Yamato is damaged in an attack by the Dengil fleet, and Kodai is on the verge of death…

The final installment of the series shows everything about Yamato on a grand scale. (Distributed by Toei)

January 21: First Final Yamato music releases

This day marked a definite first in Yamato history. There had occasionally been simultaneous music releases in the past, but those were singles. Now, two rival LPs from two different music publishers arrived in stores together. Doubtless many fans bought them both on the spot, but inevitably others would have been forced to choose.

On the left, there was the first of three symphonic albums from Nippon Columbia. On the right, the first Theme Music Collection from Animage, a brand new music label that had been launched by Tokuma Shoten. This was their inaugural release.

How did they differ from each other? Each album (and those to follow) had something unique to offer, from alternate takes with slight variations to exclusive tracks with completely different arrangements. The first Nippon Columbia album, for example, focused primarily on character themes.

Read more about these albums in the Final Yamato discography here, and take a REALLY deep dive here

January 22 & 23: Newspaper articles

A few days after Nishizaki’s spoileriffic press conference, two major newspapers picked up the story, beating the drum even louder about the 3-way movie battle coming up in March.

Read both articles here

January 24: The Best One, March issue

Gakken’s idol magazine for TV and pop music stars kept the parade moving when it devoted two pages of its Anime Channel section to Final Yamato, distilling the same topics everyone else reported earlier in the month.

Read the article here

January 25: Final Yamato singles

This was another good day to be a Yamato music fan and a REALLY good day to be singer Tomoko Kuwae. She had performed both of these songs, and they were the first singles released on the Animage label.

Love of Two (left) was the first, sung from Yuki’s perspective while flying with Kodai in the Cosmo Zero. The B-side had nothing to do with Yamato, but came from the same session.

For Rainbow to Tomorrow (right), Kuwae teamed up pop group Tranzam to record the first of two songs that would be heard in the movie’s epilogue (which included the lyric, “Have a nice dream”). The B-side was the instrumental Fight! Cosmo Tiger, which would later turn up on Animage’s second LP.

Read more about both of these songs and find translated lyrics here

January 30: Fan gathering in Sapporo

The first in a series of fan events took place at the end of the month at Sapporo’s Toei Palace movie theater. Unfortunately, no record exists of what was seen and heard there, but it’s worth noting that the official fan club had its own promotional campaign underway. It would continue with more events February.

Anyone who took this opportunity to join the official fan club would have received a welcome in the form of the 16-page booklet shown above (the 4th edition since 1978). See it from cover to cover here.