The name for this room, “The Birth,” was a nod to a track title on the Symphonic Suite Yamato album. A few other rooms in the exhibition did the same.
Portrait of Yoshinobu Nishizaki (it was always rare to see him smile in photos).
Sign:
A number of image boards from the early planning stages. Based on Yoshinobu Nishizaki’s idea of a “ship flying through space,” Eiichi Yamamoto (director), Keisuke Fujikawa (screenwriter), and Aritsune Toyota (screenwriter and science-fiction author) each added their own ideas, and the basic story of Yamato was formed, in which a giant spaceship undertakes a long journey to save the Earth.
Many of the images seen here, including the visuals of the Asteroid Ship, which is covered in bedrock and travels through space, are still heavily influenced by 1960s science-fiction imagery, and the characters are also strongly influenced by the gekiga boom of the 1970s. The battleship was based on the image of the battleship Mikasa from the Meiji and Taisho periods, but as the design was refined, it began to resemble the battleship Yamato.
Display case: the original proposal book and early ship concepts.
Sign:
Around the beginning of 1974, when the broadcast was being decided, character and visual images were requested from Leiji Matsumoto, who was active as a manga artist at the time, and these designs were drawn.
Matsumoto had a deep knowledge of mecha and military-related fields, having published works with a strong science-fiction flavor such as Super 99 and Light Speed Esper, and he also had a great interest in animation, even building his own filming stand. Although the order in which Matsumoto’s drawings were made is unknown, he made significant changes to the visual image of the work, and also made a great contribution to the story despite the fact that the broadcast was due to start in October. In addition, the visual image that was presented would go on to have a significant impact on Japanese SF anime in the years that followed.
The bottom two images have never been published. This was their first time in public view.
After this, we turn the corner to continue “The Birth.”