October 2023 gave us a nice uptick over the activity of September with product announcements, live events, reruns on TV, a big screen revival, and more. Here’s what held everyone’s attention as Yamato reached its 49th anniversary on Planet Earth.
As Yamato 2 moved into its post-Telezart phase with four very compelling episodes, development continued on The New Voyage, media coverage intensified, and new books kept the world expanding. Pile on more model kits, an unusual LP, and more, and it added up to a very rich month.
After that nice bump in August, Yamato world settled back down in September to match the slow pace we saw in July. However, fans must have sensed something in the air, because they came out in droves with live events and online activity to fill in the gaps. Here’s what it all added up to…
At the dawn of 1979, Yoshinobu Nishizaki’s Office Academy studio was on the highest trajectory ever seen in the TV anime industry. He took Office Academy into expansion mode, organized around merchandising and new anime productions. The first of these began in January, a little thing we now call The New Voyage.
The announcement of Farewell to Yamato for the summer of 1978 galvanized a whole new media culture into existence. When Academy opened its new production studio in September to make Yamato 2, reporters were there, ready to give everyone a chance to see where the magic happened.
In a welcome surprise, activity in August doubled over the slow month of July, bringing us more summer music events and news from multiple fronts, the most exciting of which is a return of the classics to the big screen. Let’s dive right in and see what happened.
