January to May, 1980
On the first day of 1980, the film was only eight months from its theatrical premiere, and all the production staff had to go on was the first story draft, still called Yamato Part III. But believe it or not, things were right on schedule.
Story draft by Toshio Masuda & Yoshinobu Nishizaki, January 1980.
Toshio Masuda took over the writing process with Nishizaki ensuring that the “Yamato flavor” was maintained in the finished draft. The story was essentially decided at this stage and became the foundation of the film. [3 pages]
“In the years since 1974, I have put my entire life as a producer into Space Battleship Yamato. These days, I think my whole life was leading up to the creation of this drama.” In this 1980 essay, Yoshinobu Nishizaki explains his thought process behind the making of this turning point in the saga of a lifetime.
Staff Essays
Tokuma Shoten’s Roman Album Volume 36 covered Be Forever in October 1980. The editorial staff of a Roman Album made it a point to collect essays from production staff members, which were always enlightening for fans wanting a look behind the curtain.
Magazine coverage for The New Voyage was comparatively thin, but not hard to find; Animage, OUT, and the Yamato Fan Club Magazines all gave the film its due and fans did get a few words from the inside. Read it all here.
Producer’s Production Memoir
Executive producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki’s definitive essay on Be Forever Yamato‘s creation and production, from the Office Academy deluxe book, November 1980.
The New Voyage was first broadcast on Japan’s Fuji TV network Tuesday July 31, 1979, from 7:30-9pm. Referred to as a “telefeature,” the film occupies a special position in the Yamato saga in that it was intentionally designed to serve two audiences. Read the whole story of its development and release here.
OUT was a magazine by fans for fans. This article perfectly represents that approach; the transcript of a round-table discussion at a Yamato fan club meeting. At the time, Yamato 2 was just past the halfway point of its first broadcast and with each new episode enlarging the context of the saga, there was plenty to discuss.
The amount of magazine coverage for Be Forever was simply staggering. If you were a fan in 1980, the newsstand was overflowing with gold. This collection is a time machine back to that summer, providing English-language access to the entire print-media deluge from May to July.
Here we continue our roundup of the prodigious press coverage for the movie, picking up in mid-July 1980 and rolling all the way through the blockbusting August premiere. See what all the major publishers (and some minor ones) had to say as the epic unfolded.
The Keisukue Fujikawa Draft
This was the second draft of the story, which kept many of Toyota’s concepts. As the head scriptwriter for the first Yamato TV series, Fujikawa was the logical choice to take the reigns and push everything forward to the next phase.
In the history of fantasy films, animated or otherwise, few premieres can compare with the rollout of Be Forever. The anticipation for this film burned even hotter than it had two years earlier. Ever the showman, Yoshinobu Nishizaki supervised an avalanche of events and set records that have yet to be broken.
The Toshio Masuda Draft
The ideas developed in late 1977 were turned over to Producer Toshio Masuda for further refinement. This would become the foundation for the screenplay, but the second half was somewhat different. The material presented here is extracted from that section.
Battle Plans
A scene-by-scene breakdown of battles and strategy for the action scenes. While Series 1 was considered an extrapolation of World War II, battle scenes in Farewell would be designed on the basis of modern scientific strategies and combat methods.
The Leiji Matsumoto Plot
Matsumoto wrote one more draft of the story before scriptwriting began. The draft presented here infused with his own ideas for SF concepts, strategy, character names, and battle scenes that reflected Matsumoto’s personality in interesting ways.
A chronological record of print media coverage from pre-production all the way through the premiere and into the “look-back” phase. As a single body of work, this collection of books, magazines, and newspaper articles constitutes nothing less than the birth of anime journalism.
Chief director Ishiguro co-wrote an account of his life as an animator titled TV Anime Battlefront, published in July 1980. This is the Yamato chapter from his book, which includes gossip and stories found nowhere else.
Yamato began as anime, but didn’t end there as this review of the many different novelizations demonstrates. Some viewed the story through a different lens, and others took it on a very different path. Find out what they had to offer in terms of both art and story.
When a Yamato sequel was announced in November 1977, Nomura decided to get involved. By the time pre-production for Yamato 2 began in May 1978, Nomura had signed on as a key sponsor, gambling on the notion that they could deliver what the fans would expect. Fortunately for all concerned, they were right.
As the only company other than Bandai to mass-produce plastic Yamato model kits, Nomura Toy earns special recognition, especially given the high quality of the four models they released in November, 1978. Read all about them in this testimonial from B-Club Magazine issue #37, published by Bandai Media in 1988.
A truly special and unique artifact of Yamato merchandising was released while Series 2 was on the air: the DoReMi Space Battleship Yamato bicycle made by Bridgestone! The push of a button on the right handgrip was all it took to blow away neighborhood bullies with its Wave-Motion headlight.
Akira Hio was early out of the starting gate since his first manga volume would come out before the movie, so it was adapted from a script that was still somewhat volatile. Fittingly, it helped the Final Yamato manga to follow Hio’s well-established tradition of preserving scenes that would later be cut from the film. See them here.
Hio’s Be Forever was based on a script that had not yet been edited for film production. So once again, the manga captures a version of the story that didn’t make it all the way to movie theaters. This turned out to be the hidden jewel in an adaptation that otherwise offers little variance from the source.
Hio’s New Voyage maintains heavy allegiance with the screenplay, but because his work began before the final cut of the film was made, he was able to include sequences that were deleted prior to broadcast. These deleted scenes became sort of a holy grail to diehard fans. Read about them here.
A collection of the many novelizations of the film published by Asahi Sonorama, Shueisha, and Tokuma Shoten, 1982-83. Also featuring an examination of the story and unique artwork in the Tokuma Shoten edition.
Beginning in 1978, Matsumoto commenced his adaptation of Farewell to Yamato. As with his first Yamato manga, this one was serialized in Akita Shoten’s Adventure King magazine beginning in the summer of 1978 and progressing as shown here.
Hio’s manga adaptation of Farewell to Yamato was so close to the content of the film that the only thing dividing the two was their format. However, it’s worth pointing out what was unique or experimental in the artwork that helps the manga to stand on its own merits.
To gain an understanding of Leiji Matsumoto’s workload on Series 1, consider this: after spending all day designing and supervising the look of the anime, he would struggle every night to meet his monthly deadline to render the same story in manga form. Naturally, it was very different from what was seen on TV.
