Nobuteru Yuuki grew up with TV anime, drawing everything he loved, publishing fanzines, and taking part in his school’s “anime/manga study group.” He got into anime at just the right time to land some of the biggest credits anyone could ask for, including the dream job of designing the characters of Yamato 2199.
Toyoo Ashida was there for the revolution that transformed anime from kid stuff to mainstream, and he not only rode the wave for great success, but also helped pushed it forward as a designer, animator, and director. What he left behind will embody the joy and energy of this amazing artform for generations to come.
Published June, 2012. Shortly before the premiere of Chapter 2, series director Yutaka Izubuchi discussed what fans would see in Episodes 3-6 on Yamato‘s accelerated journey through the solar system, all the way to Pluto. Also included: extensive design art and background detail on the new Cosmo Zero.
Elsewhere on this site is one of the rarest Yamato artifacts of all time, the “lost” manga adaptation of Series 1 by Yuki Hijiri. but even rarer was the chance to meet Mr. Hijiri himself. Mangaka is the Japanese term for a creator of Manga. As you will see, Mr. Hijiri is as Mangaka as they come.
For years, his work in Japanese doujinshi earned him the title of premiere Yamato fan artist, and when the time came to choose an artist to adapt Yamato 2199 into manga form, there was no better candidate. Here, Mr. Murakawa speaks at length about this amazing project for the first time anywhere.
Nobuyoshi Habara is one of us. By that, I mean that he is a dedicated fan of Space Battleship Yamato who would be following it avidly if he didn’t happen to be working on it. As a contributor to both Resurrection and 2199, he has the unique distinction of bridging Yamatos old and new.
This high-profile, mainstream consumer’s magazine reports on everything from luggage to watches to personal electronics. This issue included a Space Battleship Yamato cover feature with a colorful retrospective and a variety of new interviews for Yamato 2199.
An eyewitness report by Gwyn Campbell. On April 17, 2012, series director Yutaka Izubuchi and mechanical director Masanori Nishii sat down for the first of what would become a traditional evening of “Yamatalk” to explore the making of the new series. Read a transcript of their discussion here.
Published March, 2012. This was the first major article ever published on 2199, an extensive interview with series director Yutaka Izubuchi and mechanical director Masanori Nishii. Published a few weeks before the premiere of Chapter 1, it featured never-before-seen artwork and extensive story details.
An eyewitness report by Gwyn Campbell. The Yamato 2199 Launch Event was held February 18, 2012, and revived the spirit of the original classic in style with a screening of Episode 1, live music, on-stage talk shows, a voice actor performance, and much more. Read a minute-by-minute description here.
“Tama” achieved international recognition with his phenomenal concept art, which updated Yamato for modern tastes without losing any of the original magic. To no one’s surprise, his work as a fan earned him the post of mecha designer on Yamato 2199. This interview was conducted in December 2011 and January 2012.
In October 2011, composer Akira Miyagawa was interviewed by Sean Robbins, producer and host of The J-Pop Exchange website. Sean graciously offered us the entire text of that interview for reprint here. So without further ado, we bring you the words of a musician named Miyagawa who is thankfully still among the living.
Everyone who sees hand-drawn animation knows intuitively what they’re looking at. But before Kanada came along, few realized the hidden potential of that fact. His gift to the anime industry was to unlock that potential. Space Battleship Yamato was just one of many beneficiaries.
Examining all the books devoted to the first series and movie provides the broadest glimpse at the evolution of anime publishing from a children’s medium into one for all ages and interests. As a result, anime publishing is still healthy today, and Yamato is still a part of it as this record will attest.
The five rarest Yamato books, cover to cover. Yamato collectors have plenty of rarities to hunt down in nearly all the categories. Of these, the most substantial are the many, many vintage books. As you will see, each also represents a unique facet of the total phenomenon.
These documents from deep within the archives of West Cape Corporation lay out a TV series we never saw. The working title was Space Battleship Yamato IV: The Final Chapter, and it was envisioned as a 26 (potentially 39) episode TV series. The 1982 promotional package is presented here in full.
Yamato events are now long over with, but enough documentation remains to provide a substantial and entertaining record of this unprecedented phenomenon. If you were enough of a fan to follow Yamato from place to place Grateful Dead style, this is what your calendar would have looked like from 1975 to 1983.
Nearly every collectible generated for Be Forever in 1980 was meant for the older set and suited for some secondary purpose, like that pesky schoolwork. This brought the quantity down, but enhanced the quality since the standards of an older audience were a bit higher. Here is a look at some of what they had to choose from.
Final Yamato was the last chance for a publishing bandwagon, and everyone was determined not to be left behind. It was the culmination of everything that had come before with each major publisher pushing for the highest quality they could achieve. In other words, it was a good time to be a fan.
In 1983, West Cape was still head and shoulders above all others in terms of its publishing quality. Other publishers bent over backward to flood the market with their best work, but they simply couldn’t compete with the home office. Here, are the last of the high-end Yamato publications from the production years.
The New Voyage was caught up in the wake of Farewell to Yamato; books for it were still popping up throughout 1979, each one stealing some thunder from the new film. On the other hand, it was a new story with plenty of new material for fans to organize and dissect, so it was still attractive to publishers with pre-existing book formats to be filled.
Since Be Forever was the first new high-profile feature film since Farewell to Yamato two years earlier, every effort was made for it to surpass its predecessor. It didn’t quite accomplish this in terms of the quantity of books published, but the quality, creativity, and variety more than made up for it.
The merchandising of Be Forever wasn’t as extensive as the Farewell to Yamato avalanche, but the variety and variation were expanded to perpetuate any fan’s Yamato lifestyle. Here’s a rundown of the products the fan club had to offer during the 1980-81 stretch.
Despite the smash success of Be Forever, Office Academy hit a rough patch that forced a transition to Westcape Corporation. The fact that all this was roiling in the background makes it even more amazing that these works not only upheld but even surpassed the high quality of previous publishing projects.
