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.
In 1981, the new magazine My Anime included autobiographical essays. Nishizaki was the first to take up the invitation, and he wrote a very personal account of his early struggles in the anime business. It’s a great snapshot in time and an unusually candid self-expose that can’t help but inspire.
The history of Yamato cutaway art
A surprising number of interior diagrams have been published over the years, almost none of which entirely agrees with the others. Here is a comprehensive look at how Yamato has evolved from the inside out.
The Yamato saga was the result of skillful intentions and some very lucky accidents. These factors combine to make Yamato an ideal frame through which a pivotal period in anime history can be observed and measured. One way to do that is to examine the design evolution of the Yamato itself.
During the early years when Yamato seemed gone for good, fans took it upon themselves to review and expand the experience the only way they could: fanzine publishing. Carol Hutchings examines where this unique art form has flourished among today’s fans through the work of her personal favorites.
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.
From its very beginnings right up to today, the Yamato series has had as big a presence in manga as in anime, sometimes moreso with multiple adaptations existing side by side. Then there are the Star Blazers comic books that appeared outside Japan. They are all examined in this comprehensive history.
Leiji Matsumoto’s manga version of the story was substantially shorter, but had many fascinating additions and alterations that would have made for a different experience had they been included in the anime. Let’s take a look at them one by one.
A complete reproduction of an illustrated version of Yamato, written by Keisuke Fujikawa and drawn by Leiji Matsumoto during the production of the first TV series. Serialized over six issues of a monthly children’s magazine, it retold a highly-condensed version of the story in just 29 pages and was never seen again.
“Anime Comics” was the term publisher Akita Shoten devised to catch the attention of Japanese fans in 1980. They were composed of stills derived from film frames, arranged on a page to retell the story of the film. They did an excellent job of making anime comics look easy to assemble, but they most certainly were not.
Just about a year after most people thought they’d seen the last of Yamato, Leiji Matsumoto wrote and drew this completely new Gaiden (side-story) that fit somewhere into the first series. See it exactly as it appeared for the first time in Japan, straight out of the rough pink pages of Playcomic magazine.
Akira Hio’s adaptation of Series 1 is easily the most off-center version of the story with script writer Keisuke Fujikawa re-interpreting and re-ordering many of the ideas. Some were rescued from rejected TV scripts, but others changed the plotline to such a degree that they became entirely new. Examine the many differences here.
Any devoted anime fan with some cash to spend can easily bury themselves in all manner of publishing from to manga to magazines and more. But one form of print media is still off the radar of English-only fans: novelizations. Examining the history of Yamato novels reveals a lot about who published them.
What are the two sweetest moments for a collector? 1: finding something on your wish list after years of searching. 2: finding something completely unexpected that blows your mind. For Yamato collectors, both of those moments are embodied in the “lost” manga by Yuki Hijiri, presented here in full.
Part 9: Crossing the Ocean
Starting in 1985, Twentieth Century Imports brought many of Bandai’s Yamato kits to America under the Star Blazers name, which resulted in the very first mass-market Star Blazers merchandising. See the entire lineup here.
Part 7: Fresh Faces
After its huge wave of reissues in 1980, Bandai focused entirely on all-new kits to tie in with Yamato III in 1981. But when the network prematurely ended the program it meant Bandai’s next wave would hit after the series was over. Nevertheless, the high standard was well-maintained.
Part 6: Into Eternity
When Be Forever premiered, it had been almost six years since the debut of the saga; enough time for a second generation of fans to join the fold. Bandai welcomed them in with its now-classic model kits and added some brand new ones to keep veterans happy.
From the moment Resurrection was announced, one of the first questions from the fan community was, “who will write the music?” Volume 5 of Animage Original magazine, published in October 2009, was the first to seek out an answer, which is presented in full here.
