Yamato Year 2022, Part 3
Online action
January 12: Fan film teaser
Yamato fans around the world have been fighting back against the isolation of the Corona pandemic with an impressive array of DIY projects from comics to music to animation. This entry fits that third category, a CG build of a mind-blowingly-detailed Yamato.
The project it’s attached to was not described, but for now it’s enough just to click here and stare at this amazing WIP model for however long you want.
January 18: Classic script auctions
Pictured above is a rare sight indeed: an almost complete set of scripts from the original TV series. Two scripts were produced for each episode, one for animators and one for voice actors (a total of 52). This set of 49 scripts was listed on Yahoo Japan Auctions and closed after 215 bids for an incredible price of 501,001 yen. At the time, that converted to $4,358.
But that’s not all. On the same day, the same seller moved an equally impressive set of Yamato III scripts. Again, two versions were produced for each episode (a total of 50). Competition was almost as fierce; after 201 bids, this set of 49 closed for 319,000 yen ($2,775). Don’t ever doubt that there are some very high rollers in Yamato fandom.
February 2: Haruka Takachiho’s Yamato story
SF writer Haruka Takachiho was a founding member of the famous Studio Nue design & concept shop, best known for creating Dirty Pair and Crusher Joe. On February 2, he took to Twitter to relate a previously-unknown account of his brief tenure as the studio’s negotiator for the mecha design of Farewell to Yamato, which brought him head to head against Producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki. And it’s definitely a tale for the ages.
Read it here.
February 15: Keisuke Masunaga online auction #1
Artist Keisuke Masunaga surfaced again via Mandarake’s online auctions, offering this original Sasha illustration with a starting bid a little under $500. The piece closed for a bit over $700. But the jpegs are always free.
Masunaga planted his Yamato flag as the character designer and animation director for the Playstation games, and contributed to many more Leiji Matsumoto anime projects afterward. Read an interview with him here.
February 18: Kazutaka Miyatake Gofundme campaign
Here’s a heartwarming story of fandom giving back. Kazutaka Miyatake (now 72) is one of the towering masters of mecha design. As a member of the trailblazing Studio Nue, he participated in Yamato mecha design from the very start, then went on to revolutionize the craft with Farewell to Yamato and Macross and countless other titles we all know and love.
In 2021, he tragically lost both his beloved wife and his home studio to a fire and lacked sufficient insurance coverage to rebuild. Wanting to help him, a group of diehard fans launched a Gofundme campaign with the hope of raising $18,000. They hit that goal in less than 24 hours and it just kept on rising. The campaign ended on October 26 with a grand total of $59,849. Well done, fandom!
March 4: Noriyuki Tada’s Yamato memories
Como le va started out as a free magazine in 2009, aimed at the aging Showa generation (born in the mid-20th century) and distributed in train stations along specific rail lines. The covid pandemic moved the publisher, Conex-eco, to transform it into a free online magazine. Their mission statement is, “We want to be a magazine about a healthy aging society. Instead of lamenting the negatives, we will strive to be a light that brightens the future of Japan.”
Space Battleship Yamato is, of course, a milestone of the Showa era, and so on March 4 the magazine invited Toei Pictures Chairman Noriyuki Tada to share his memories of the 1977 Yamato movie. As a young staff member of Toei at the time, he got hooked on the TV series before the movie came along, and his account fills in some interesting details in the Yamato success story.
Read it here.
March 14: Shinya Ogura interview
Febri is an journalistic website dedicated to Japanese Anime Culture, and this is the first time they’ve appeared on the Cosmo DNA radar (hopefully not the last). On March 14, they began a 3-day interview series with 2202/2205 SF consultant Shinya Ogura, who we’ve already met a few times in these pages. In the interviews, he talked about the three anime that influenced him the most: Farewell to Yamato, Zeta Gundam, and Planetes.
Below is everything he had to say about Farewell. See the original post here.
Farewell to Yamato was the first time I became aware of “concept”
Shinya Ogura has worked on concepts and science fiction research for numerous SF productions. As an anime designer, he has selected three anime that influenced his work. In the first installment of this interview series, he talks about Farewell to Yamato, which awakened his interest in mechanics and world settings.
Interview and text by Daisuke Okamoto
I thought I could make an anime if I drew “pictures” called “concepts”
Interviewer: Farewell to Yamato was released in 1978, so you were in junior high school at the time.
Ogura: I was surprised at the shocking storyline. I was very interested in the world view and the design of the sci-fi mecha. Of course, I had watched the Yamato TV series in 1974. I was in elementary school at the time. By the time Farewell came out, there were books with concept materials that introduced how anime and tokusatsu movies are made, and I learned that “concepts” were drawn in order to create those images.
Interviewer: That was the beginning of your interest in “concept.”
Ogura: When I was a child, my parents would get mad and say to me, “You just draw manga all the time!” (Laughs) But when I learned that there’s a visual image called a “concept” that is the start of creating images for anime, I could affirm myself as an artist. When I considered the future, I thought, “If I can draw, maybe I can get a job in anime or visual arts.”
Interviewer: What was it about the visuals in Farewell that made you think so?
Ogura: Looking at it, I realized once again that anime is made of “pictures.” A lot of pictures. In the movie program at the time, I think it listed things like, “number of visuals used, total number of shots, number of explosions,” etc. And from the “Roman Album” books, I learned that in order for a large number of people to draw those pictures by hand, you needed to draw and prepare the concepts for the story.
Interviewer: Do you have a particular favorite mechanical design?
Ogura: The battleships designed by Kazutaka Miyatake are the best! He also worked on the Arcadia for Captain Harlock at that time. I think his were the most “space battleship” designs of the period. The art books also included three-dimensional drawings, detailed concepts, perspective drawings, etc. I remember copying them and analyzing how they were designed.
Interviewer: Was there any scene that made a deep impression on you?
Ogura: In the beginning of the film, Yamato, which was in an underground dock, heads out to sea. It’s the scene where Yamato leaves the water and surfaces. Actually, in the original version, the hull drops for a moment, and then it picks up again. It seemed that this was not planned, but rather a mistake in the order in which the cells were shot. That’s good. (Laughs)
Interviewer: I understand that the original version has been corrected in the current remaster version.
Ogura: Yes, it has. I think the scene is still there in the home video and laserdisc version. That scene of the launch is the one where Daisuke Shima appears at the last minute and looks cool. He says to a nervous Susumu Kodai, “I’ll do it, we’ll talk later” and then he takes over the helm. It goes off-kilter as the inertial control switching “rolls” to Shima. That’s how Junichiro Tamamori and I enjoy interpreting the concept. (Laughs) So, when that scene was modified, I thought, “Why did you fix it? That was good.”
Interviewer: You said that you copied the images from art books. At that time, model kits were also on sale, right? How were they?
Ogura: At that time, my interest had shifted more to “how to design original concepts.” So, rather than ready-made mecha plamodels, I made my own drawings and built them myself by processing balsa wood, which is used for model making.
Interviewer: You made them by yourself? That’s amazing.
Ogura: Balsa wood can be cut and shaved with a cutter, so even children can make it easily. I made them by referring to models of radio-controlled airplanes owned by my wealthy friends. “I see, so this is how it’s constructed.” I did this through trial and error, observing various things.
Interviewer: Is that experience still used in your current work?
Ogura: I think it’s still alive. During my Ogawa Modeling days, I made models for tokusatsu. When Mr. Miyatake saw one of my designs for the first time, he looked past the childishness of it and said, “I can feel the volume as a three-dimensional object.” I was very happy to receive those words.
It’s difficult to get the same impression from a two-dimensional drawing as it is from a three-dimensional object. Even if it looks good as a flat drawing, it may look slimmer than you expected when you actually make it as a three-dimensional object. I think my experience in making three-dimensional objects has helped me in this respect.
Interviewer: It was Farewell to Yamato that first awakened you to “concepts.” You later became involved in Yamato 2202 and Yamato 2205 as a science-fiction researcher.
Ogura: Farewell is an important keyword in my works. I still feel a kind of “connection” with it. In Yamato, roman [romance] is more important than science-fiction rationality.
When I considered the characteristics of the work style I established on Planetes, I said, “When I think about it, I’ve come a long way from Yamato.” And then I received an offer to work on Yamato, which I would call my “origin!” Perhaps that’s what “roman” is all about. (Laughs)
PROFILE
Shinya Ogura as born 1965 in Chiba Prefecture. After working at Ogawa Modeling, he is now a freelancer. His other works include Gargantia on the Verduous Planet, Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These, Expelled from Paradise, and others.
May 13: Space movie popularity poll
This item flew under the radar when it happened, but was picked up by E-Camper.jp on May 13, so here it is…
September 12 is “Space Day” in Japan, commemorating JAXA Astronaut Mamoru Mohri‘s launch on STS-47 in 1992 (he launched again on STS-99 in 2000). Just before this day, the online Voice Note Magazine conducted a poll among 300 readers to rank their favorite “space movies.” The results were published on September 14.
The top three choices in all age groups combined were Star Wars, Space Battleship Yamato, and E.T. Examining the age groups one at a time revealed some interesting trends. Here’s how they broke down:
20s and under: Star Wars, Space Brothers, E.T., and Interstellar
30s & 40s: Star Wars, Armaggedon, and Space Brothers
50s: Star Wars, 2001, and Yamato
60s: Star Wars, Yamato, Armageddon, 2001, Star Trek, and E.T.
70s Yamato, Star Wars, E.T., and 2001
See the original article here
July 4: Keisuke Masunaga online auction #2
Masunaga struck again when this original art of Sasha (sketch and finished version) sold for 72,000 yen (around $570 as of this writing). It probably won’t be his last.
July 15: Kazutaka Miyatake in the news
News media in Mr. Miyatake’s hometown of Yokosuka reported that he was selected to take residence in a former government building that has been repurposed in a special project to benefit members of the arts community.
“My elementary school was very close to a U.S. military base,” Miyatake said, “and I could not have done my work if I had not been born in a city with a military base.” He still has three to four jobs a month, and is always pressed for time to meet deadlines, but said, “I would be happy to present the charms of the city (in my works) from now on. I would like to pass on my self-taught know-how to those who want to study animation.”
See the original article here.
Miyatake himself issued this thank-you message on August 6:
Hello everyone! I’m sorry for causing you all so much concern last year. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your kind support! I lost my wife to that fire, my irreplaceable life partner. When it came to the arts, she was infinitely more talented than I am. But for reasons unknown even to me, I survived and continue to depict the world through my art!
As such, it seems that my role on this earth is far from complete. So, I’ve resolved to give my work my all. In this manner I can both honor my late wife and, if my work is something everyone enjoys it may also, in part, act as a token of my gratitude to you all as well.
As I write this, the final design I’m working on for a certain new theatrical anime sits before me on my desk, awaiting some finishing touches. And as some of you may have noticed, since last summer I’ve worked on designs for several other productions as well.
These projects have been my first step on the road to recovery, so I wanted to share this news with you all. Everyone, it appears that my work is just getting started! I hope you’ll continue to support it and look forward to what’s to come.
October 5: Dream-Science matchup: Yamato vs. Arcadia
Rikao Yanagita, chief researcher of the Dream-Science Laboratory, returned with another scientific view of the anime world. We’ve heard from him before on such matters as the science of warping, and in October he speculated on who might win a battle between anime’s two greatest battleships. Who walks away from this fight? Find out here.
October 30: Vintage mecha poll
The fan-generated popularity polls at Akiba Souken are always fun, and often produce unpredictable results as we’ve seen in the past. This one closed on October 30 with 287 votes cast for favorite mecha that appeared in the 1977 Yamato movie. How do they rank today, 45 years later?
Find out here.
November 8: Dream-Science Laboratory
Researcher Rikao Yanagita put some more thought into Yamato matters and came up with an answer to this little-asked question: Why do villains such as Dessler in Space Battleship Yamato speak in “old-fashioned language?”
Curious? Read Mr. Yanagita’s theory here.
November 16: Shinya Takahashi art auctions
The character designer of Be Forever and Final Yamato returned to the online auction world to unveil four new renderings of his beloved Sasha. All four were the subjects of fierce bidding with three of them closing well over $1,000 apiece.
This was definitely not Shinya Takahashi’s first auction offering. See his 2020 artwork here and his 2021 artwork here.
November: Yamato Kaigi announced
A new “satellite organization” joined the fold in November to help carry the torch into the future. The official name on their website is Yamato Kaigi [Conference], and they are primarily an archive for Office Legacy, a blog that was established in 2011 to provide an overview of Yoshinobu Nishizaki’s production history.
The mission statement reads as follows:
“Mr. Yoshinobu Nishizaki bequeathed us with the production materials of Space Battleship Yamato. In order to pass on this great legacy to the next generation, OFFICE LEGACY was established. Since then, we have received numerous offers, including the publication of production materials in book form. As he said, “If I don’t enjoy something, there is no way others can enjoy it,” so he devoted himself to production until he was satisfied. We hope to continue to do work that people will enjoy forever.”
Office Legacy also maintains a Twitter presence here. Since the mission of Cosmo DNA has similar goals, a bridge of goodwill is currently being built to Yamato Kaigi. We’ll just have to wait and see what walks across that bridge.