Magazines with Yamato content
Monthly Comic Noizy
Dai Nippon Kaiga Co., November 1988
This manga/hobby periodical was the first to break an almost five-year absence of magazine coverage with a “Space Cruiser Yamato Graphic Memorial,” which retold the story with text and model photography. Click here to see the pages from two consecutive issues.
B-Club magazines, 1990-91
Bandai Brain Bank Media
Spread out over nine issues of B-Club, a series of articles titled Galactic War Record revisited each Yamato production one by one with model building and newly-commissioned illustrations by well-known anime artists. Only two of the illustrations appeared on other Bandai products; the rest were only ever seen in these pages. The entire 34-page serial can be seen here.
Do-pe Vol. 4
Amatoria Co., January 1991
Taking its cues from the fan-generated segments of anime magazines, Do-pe (simply pronounced “dope”) was full of convention, doujinshi, and hobby coverage and now serves as a fascinating time capsule of its day. This issue stood out for its Yamato cover, which fronted for a 6-page article about the then-unique garage kits from Wave.
B-Club #115
Bandai Brain Bank Media, April 1995
B-Club was Bandai’s highly successful attempt to produce a monthly anime & hobby magazine of their own. This particular issue promoted Yamato 2520 with 10 big pages of artwork that had not yet been published elsewhere, and it included a 4-page nod to Space Battleship Yamato in addition to other famous ships.
Game Journal #48
June 1997
The title makes the content of this magazine plain enough, and its unique Yamato content makes it a coveted collector’s item. It comes with a complete punch-out Yamato card game with 31 pages of instructions and related articles.
Comic Gon #35
Million Mook Publishing, May 1998
This contained the first article to comment on the beginning of Matsumoto’s tenure as a Yamato copyright holder. Read the entire interview here, which includes his first announcement of a new Yamato story.
Comic Box
Fusion Product, May 1998 issue
Published (ironically) the same month as Comic Gon’s coverage of Leiji Matsumoto’s rise, this issue of Comic Box contained a rare article on Yoshinobu Nishizaki’s decline. Read it here.
Gazo Vol. 2
Tokuma Shoten, April 1999
As a sister publication to Animage, this magazine cast a wide net over both anime and live action entertainment. Ryusuke Hikawa, the original Yamato superfan, had a monthly column titled Prescription of Anime that took a scholarly look at anime production. The topic for this particular issue was letterboxing, which used Final Yamato as its subject. Read that article here.
Figure King #22
World Photo Press, June 1999
Dedicated to toy collecting, this magazine published a 24-page career retrospective on Leiji Matsumoto with a special emphasis on toy merchandising from his various anime and manga titles.
Weekly Playboy #8
Shueisha, February 2008 issue
Otonofami
Enterbrain, April 2008 issue
At first glance you wouldn’t suspect that either of these magazines had anything to do with Yamato, but in fact they carried some of the most significant articles of the legacy years, dual interviews with Yoshinobu Nishizaki (along with anime auteur Hideaki Anno) that marked his return to the “real world” after years of incarceration. Naturally, he had plenty to say.
Read both interviews here.
Otaku USA Feb 2008 Issue
Sovereign Media
Contains an interview with Series 1 and 2 director Noboru Ishiguro, conducted at Anime Weekend Atlanta in the fall of 2007. Read it here.
Otaku USA March 2011 Issue
Sovereign Media
Contains an interview with Leiji Matsumoto, a continuation of the one on this very website. Read it here.
English-language magazines
August, 2012
Once in a while, Yamato content finds its way into the pages of English-language magazines, but you can’t blink or you might miss it. Above left is issue #59 of Back Issue, which features an 8-page article about Star Blazers in American comics. Above right is a foldout from Geek #2, which places the ship in a size comparison with others you might recognize. Get more info on both of these magazines here.
See a collection of Star Blazers and Yamato magazine coverage in English here.
Animage Original Vol. 5
Tokuma Shoten, October 2009
This spinoff of Animage magazine, included two Yamato-related features: a retrospective of animator Yoshinori Kanada and an interview with the music staff of Yamato Resurrection.
Read our tribute to Kanada here.
Read a translation of the music article here.
1965 Man #17
Crete Planning Box Publishing, January 2013
This magazine had a cover guaranteed to grab the attention of Yamato fans, especially those who were there at the beginning. Someone born in 1965 would have been 9 when the first series premiered on TV, dead center in the target audience. And for that particular audience, few men from the world of anime made a deeper impression than Captain Okita.
The cover story for the issue was titled The Message Hit Us Directly, and Yamato was one of the pop culture classics examined under that heading. An insightful article titled The Message of Space Battleship Yamato was broken into two parts: an analysis of Series 1 and an interview with writer Eiichi Yamamoto.
Read the entire article here.
Double R Mechanics Vol. 3
Model Art, September 2013
This quarterly magazine is a showcase for model kits of classic anime mecha, primarily from the 70s and 80s. (Double R stands for “Real Robot.”) The first and second issues were devoted to hero and villain robots respectively, and both gave passing nods to Yamato kits. This one took a big step forward, filling up almost a third of the magazine (37 pages) with Yamato spaceship and fighter models, both new and old.
Electone
Yamaha Music Media, April 2014 issue
Yamato sheet music occasionally appears in specialty magazines such as this one. The issue had a feature on pipe organs, so it was a natural to include sheet music for The White Comet.
Hobby Magazines
A bibliography containing every Yamato article published in every Japanese hobby magazine would fill up many more pages like this one, so to keep it manageable we’ll stick to those with cover features only. The best way to collect such articles is in one of the compendiums presented in the Hobby Books section of this series.
Hobby Japan #310
Hobby Japan Press, April 1995
Timed to coincide with a surge of new and reissued products in 1995, this issue of Hobby Japan devoted 40 pages to Yamato models and other goods. It also included scant material for Yamato 2520.
Hobby Japan #453
Hobby Japan Press, March 2007
Yamato‘s presence on hobby magazine covers increased sharply when Bandai announced its unprecedented 1/350 model kit in 2006. Hobby Japan took the opportunity to start a monthly feature titled “Road to Iscandar” which continues today. The 38-page article in this issue was filled with extraordinary photography which even included a few pages on Aoshima’s notorious Red Hawk Yamato.
Model Graphix #269
Dainippon Kaiga Co., April 2007
This was the second cover story in as many months, focusing on the 1/350 model and taking the opportunity to publish a series of “what Yamato means to me” essays from artists and professional modelers. The 41-page feature also took a look at other kits old and new, including the original Mecha Collection and B-Club’s equally innovative resin kits.
Hobby Japan #466
Hobby Japan Press, April 2008
A year after its previous appearance, Yamato popped up on a Hobby Japan cover again, this time as a tie-in with the remastered DVD box and new 1/700 model. The 34-page article provided some more great photography of the kit along with a lineup of EDF warships modeled by Hobby Japan‘s gang of expert modelers.
Hobby Japan #491
Hobby Japan Press, March 2010
This issue carried a generous 40-page article displaying exquisite custom-built spaceship models from Series 2 on both the Earth and Comet Empire sides.
Hobby Japan #501
Hobby Japan Press, January 2011
Timed to capitalize on the live-action movie blitz, this issue ran a very substantial 35 page article which covered the new 1/500 Yamato kit and several scratch-built Gamilas ships.
Watch this bibliography for future updates.