October 25: Mecha Collection model #9
The Cosmo Zero mini-model is significantly more detailed than its 1980 predecessor (below right) and comes with multiple loadout options
See a photo gallery of finished models here.
See more product photos here.
October 25: Mecha Collection model #10
Kirishima became the second UNCF ship in the mini-model lineup following Yukikaze. Its original 1980 iteration (below right) was simply called the Okita Battleship and came with a miniature Cosmo Zero (an odd choice, since they never appeared together).
See a photo gallery of finished models here.
See more product photos here.
October 25: Secret File 03
Secret File 03 was given away during the third week of Voyage to Remember, and was titled The steep but bright future of the Garmillas provisional government.
Read the translated text here.
October 25: Yamato 2199 science lecture
The Sci-Pia science museum in Okayama Prefecture has had a Yamato 2199 exhibit in place since July 19 (as seen in the flyer above), and on October 25 it played host to the anime’s science advisor, the astrophysicist Toshihiro Handa. He has conducted several lectures on the real astronomy that underpins the story, and on this day he delivered a new one called Talking about Space with Yamato 2199.
The flyer above right promotes a forthcoming exhibition on Hayabusa, Japan’s asteroid sample-return mission (2203-2010).
Visit the museum’s website here.
October 27: Art canvas announcement
As a hint of what is to come with the next movie premiere, the Yamato Crew website announced that these two limited-edition art canvases by Kia Asamiya would be available at Amazon.jp on November 26 with advance tickets for Ark of the Stars.
See Amazon.jp’s Yamato product page here.
October 27: Warp Mechanic Model announcements
Another thing to watch for will be this intricate version of Megahouse’s 6″ Cosmo Fleet Special Yamato miniature. This version is recast in clear plastic with interior parts to mimic the warp effect seen in 2199. It will be sold in limited numbers at the Mega Hobby Expo November 29 with a full commercial release in 2015.
See more photos here.
October 28: Osaka Shion Winds Orchestra 109th concert
Yamato music was heard live again on the 28th when composer/conductor Akira Miyagawa made several selections part of this concert at Osaka’s Festival Hall. This is the orchestra that entered a partnership with the Yamato 2199 Production Committee earlier in the year, and collaboration products were available at the venue.
Some of the merchandising and attractions from the summer festival at Osaka’s Rihga Royal Hotel were revived, including a photo booth, and bonus items were available for every 1000yen spent by the first 200 people.
These photos of the sales and display area were posted on Twitter. The Iscandarian flowers above right have built-in lighting.
October 28: Manga news
This is usually the position where you’d find the latest installment of Michio Murakawa’s 2199 manga, but October was evidently a skip-month for him; not a surprise, based all the other work we’ve seen from him in this report. However, the Nico Nico Ace and Comic Walker websites published a six-page story digest as a placeholder. See the pages here.
In related news, Volume 6 of the collected 2199 manga has a publishing date of December 26, and a doujinshi publisher named Elysian Office announced that it was assembling pages of Murakawa’s original manga art for an upcoming exhibition. This was announced at their blog here, and promotion for the November 9 exhibition in Sapporo can be seen here.
Read our interview with Mr. Murakawa here.
October 30: Meiji tie-in
There have been plenty of Space Battleship Yamato food tie-ins since the early years, but the first-ever Yamato drinks appeared when the Meiji Dairy Company announced a new 2199 collaboration that put Yamato characters on their pudding and flavored milk packages.
Customers who sent in the bar codes would be entered into prize lotteries for either 250 Ark of the Stars tickets or 100 Yamato model kits. Visit Meiji’s campaign website here.
October 31: Petite Yamato Girls figures
With this long and exhausting month now at an end, your resistance is probably bottoming out, which makes it the perfect time for a CUTE ASSAULT! Megahouse released this lineup of Puchi-Chara [Petite Character] Yamato Girls as individual figures or a box of six. Resistance is futile.
At right is an exclusive trading card that came with the set if you ordered it from the Yamato Crew website.
October 31: Tamashii Nations exhibition
Talk about going out with a bang! Tamashii Nations is a hobby event organized by Bandai to showcase upcoming products. Completely out of the blue, a Bandai subsidiary named S.H. Figuarts unveiled a previously-unannounced lineup of Yamato 2199 figures that, at first glance, rival those of Megahouse. It was doubly surprising given that the company normally specializes in poseable action figures.
Scale, price, and release dates were not provided, but will definitely be something to watch for in coming months. Meanwhile, find more photos here and learn more about Figuarts here.
Also spotted in October
Czvarke garage kit
Bandai has yet to give us a 1/72 version of Melda’s fighter, but garage kit maker J-Factory holds the line with this 1/48 resin model, which was available at the Winter Wonder Festival in February 2014. These photos of it turned up in an online auction.
See what else Wonder Festival had to offer here.
1/1000 Nazca model advertising
Now here’s a real head-scratcher. This image appeared on the Tag Hobby website October 7 (among several others with English text) to promote the Nazca Space Carrier coming in late December. No source was given, but it’s better than likely that the English text was generated by Bandai.
Taking it from the top down, The Star-Voyaging Ark is another possible translation for Hoshi Meguru Hakobune, or Ark of the Stars. If this text is Bandai-generated, that will almost certainly become the official English title of the film. (It’s not the most elegant, but we’ll deal with that when the time comes.)
Regrettably, this is the largest available version of the image, so the smallest text is unreadable. However, the wording next to the fighter near the bottom reads “Mecha Colle type Devastator included.” Mecha Colle is short for Mecha Collection (the line name of the mini-kits), but the use of Devastator finally corrects an error we’ve been living with since 1978. When the fighter was first created for Farewell to Yamato, the Japanese name for it was rendered as Desbatata, which has been a puzzler for decades. However, switching two of the characters in that name turns it into Debastata, which easily translates to Devastator. So maybe this has been finally laid to rest and we can all get on with our lives..
Lastly, there is the use of Star Blazers 2199 at the bottom. By now, we’re all aware that the US launch of the series has been frozen, so it’s much too early to hope for a Star Blazers version of the movie. It’s far more likely that the term is applied as a followup to the Star Blazers 2199 models already in circulation. The black text below that is open to interpretation. The “first retelling” of the “Battle to the Death with Gatlantis” may adequately describe the framework of Ark of the Stars, but it raises the question about a “second retelling,” which is too speculative to tangle with here. So keep watching.
Movie news followup
Since Star Blazers 2199 has been invoked, this is an opportune moment to revisit news from the summer. A Star Blazers 2199 screening at Anime Expo announced that A Voyage to Remember would get its US premiere October 24 at the Downtown Independent Theater in Los Angeles. In the end, the only accurate information in that announcement was the English title of the film.
In the time since then, starblazers.com went into hibernation and the listing vanished from the Independent’s online schedule. October 24 came and went with no movie and no explanation. Here’s hoping we eventually get one.
Custom-painted Garmillas carrier
A Twitter user named Tsuyoshi Tomidaka posted these photos on October 27, showing off the 1/1000 Gelvades carrier with a custom paint job.
Of course, this is patterned after the poster art we’ve seen of Mirangal, the vessel that will appear in Ark of the Stars. We’ll probably see similar paint treatments in upcoming hobby magazines, but let the record show that this one came first.
Comic City fan events
Comic City appears to be a doujinshi-based event (similar to Comiket) held periodically in Osaka, and probably quite often given that Comic City 100 is coming up in January 2015. Similar to the Yamaket group mentioned in this report, another has assembled under the banner name “Raise Anchor” to gather together and sell Yamato 2199 doujnshi. The art above left is their promotional image, which was posted to Twitter on October 27. Visit their website here.
This is not the first time Yamato fans have gathered for this event; at right is a promotional image for the October 2013 event.
Fan art
Let’s close with a fantastic bit of fan art, shall we? This piece appeared earlier this year on Twitter from an artist named Mitsuru Tokishiro, and it was posted again to commemorate Yamato‘s 40th anniversary. If that artist happens to be reading these words, please join our Facebook group to collect your compliments.
Continue to Report 38