The runup to summer 1980 was deceptively quiet on the surface, but momentum was building like a freight train underneath as Be Forever moved into the second half of production. It culminated in a press conference that sounded the starting gun on the biggest promo campaign in anime history.
Let’s start with some newly-discovered backlog…
May 9, 1979: Middle 2nd Age, June issue
Fans who followed the media closely would have remembered that the plan for Be Forever began about a year earlier, as indicated herein.
Obunsha’s student digest for 8th graders put a Yamato article right up front with two exciting announcements; in the wake of Yamato 2, Exec Producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki had finally made the decision to create another story he referred to as “Yamato Part 3,” and the bridge to get there would come in the form of a “telefeature” to be broadcast in July. A 7-page article brought his words directly to the fans and offered a partial synopsis of what was to come.
Read the article here
March 12, 1980: Daily Gendai article
In June 1979, an unusual novelization of the first Yamato series appeared with a very high profile author’s name on it: Hitomi Takagaki, whose career in adventure novels began over fifty years earlier. It was called the Space Battleship Yamato “Hot Blood” novel, and you can read more about it here.
Takagaki’s long-awaited comeback motivated the Daily Gendai newspaper to track him down for a brief interview in their “Where are they now” column.
Read that article here
April 2: Be Forever Yamato script completed
The month of April began with a pivotal production moment when the script for Be Forever was approved as final. Shown from left to right, the first draft was 214 pages long, the second was 156, and the final draft was 203. This lineup demonstrates that the title shifted from Yamato III to Be Forever on the second draft, after which the title was transferred over to the TV series that was now in development.
The goal was for scriptwriting to keep far enough ahead of storyboarding not to cause any delays, and the annoiting of a final draft allowed storyboard artists Masaharu Endo and Takeshi Shirato to transition smoothly into the finale.
Storyboard Part C picked up after the destruction of the Dark Nebula supply base and plunged Yamato into the Dark Nebula itself where the Goruba fleet was waiting (about 30 minutes of screen time). The cover page of Part C was an original sketch by Shirato, shown at right.
Storyboard Part D began with the “Warp Dimension” shift where everything went to widescreen and stayed that way to the end of the film (about an hour). The goal was to finish storyboards by May 10.
As storyboarding and animation continued, the other production milestones for April were a color design meeting on the 7th and a “Scanimation” meeting on the 30th. This was a technical process for compositing special effects on such scenes as the transition from the Dark Nebula to the Galaxy of Light.
April 5: Cosmoship Yamato manga, Volume 3
Leiji Matsumoto’s manga adaptation of Farewell/Yamato 2 has remained unfinished since its final appearance in the January 1980 issue of Bouken Oh [Adventure King], published in December 1979. However, it has also remained in print ever since with an endless stream of reissues. The third paperback collection contained the last eight chapters and the seldom-seen Eternal Story of Jura bonus chapter from 1976.
Read more about the manga here
Read the Jura chapter here
April 24: The Best One, June issue
Gakken’s monthly entertainment magazine was the first to publish the film’s title in its April issue, and now they were the first to publish the logo (just one day ahead of the official fan club magazine) at the start of a 4-page article.
See the article here
April 25: Fan club magazine No. 15
The Best One may have beat this issue to press with story info, but there was much more to be found in its pages; a detailed synopsis for the first half of the movie, the first announcements about “Warp Dimension” and the Festival in Budokan concert, several pages of art design, and early staff interviews with Leiji Matsumoto, Hiroshi Miyagawa, and Director Toshio Masuda.
See pages from this issue and read the interviews here
Elsewhere in the issue could be found fan mail, product offers, and a partial episode guide for The Blue Bird. The back cover gave everyone their first look at grown-up Sasha on the teaser poster. (Her reveal was never kept secret, incidentally. She was one of the film’s biggest selling points from the start.)
April context
April 26: Toward the Terra (feature film)
The SF anime world got another jewel in its crown when the famed 1977 manga Toward the Terra was adapted by Toei Animation (the same studio now animating Be Forever). It went on to gain another Yamato connection when Yutaka Izubuchi directed a 2007 version for TV. His next major project would be Yamato 2199.
Read more about it here
Anime magazines published in April: Animage May issue (Tokumo Shoten), Monthly Animation No. 4 (Bronze Co.)
OUT June issue (Minori Shobo), The Anime May issue (Kindaieigasha)
Bandai ad published in the May issue of Animage
May 4: The New Voyage Deluxe Edition
To this day, the single best and most comprehensive book on The New Voyage is this luxurious 290-page hardcover from Office Academy. Returning to the format that made the Series 1 set a winner, it delivered a level of depth and detail that took full advantage of home-court resources. The flyer above went out of its way to promote content related to previously-undisclosed deleted scenes.
Read more about this book here
May 7: Be Forever epilogue planning
A special production meeting was held on this day to work out the film’s epilogue. This was previously postponed because a theme song had not been decided upon. After this meeting, the epilogue was rewritten twice and ultimately became an imaginary scene set to Until The Day of Love by Akira Fuse. Completion of the storyboard took the rest of the month, extending past the original May 10 deadline.
The next big event in film production was a meeting between Yoshinobu Nishizaki, Composer Hiroshi Miyagawa, and Sound Director Atsushi Tashiro on May 8 to begin the process of creating the score.
May 7: Gamera Super Monster released
Yamato‘s first-ever cameo appearance in another movie took place in this film from Toei’s beloved Gamera series. As Yamato departs from planet Telezart, live-action footage of Gamera was composited in, achieving an on-screen crossover.
The boy who serves as the film’s protagonist is definitely a product of his time, a mega-fan of both Gamera and Yamato; he beds down in this scene with books from both franchises, which leads him to imagine the dream team mash-up.
See the entire movie on Youtube here; the mashup scene begins at 52:00.
May 10: Animage, June issue
Animage‘s first article on Be Forever was only three pages of animation art, but bigger things were soon to come.
See the pages here
May 10: The Anime, June issue
The Animee’s first article on Be Forever was a more generous 9 pages, fairly light on content since there still wasn’t much to write about at this stage. It included speculation on what the launch scene might look like, an overview of Yamato‘s upgrades, a character lineup, and three short staff comments.
See the pages here
May 12: Hochi Shimbun article
The new design works for Be Forever weren’t limited to anime journals; mainstream newspapers also picked up the story in this initial wave of publicity. The Hochi Shimbun was indulgent enough to feature it in their Illustrated News Patrol feature.
A sidebar announced for the first time anywhere that Yoshinobu Nishizaki was leading an effort to locate the sunken hull of the Battleship Yamato.
Read the article here
May 18: Sunday Mainichi, May 25 issue
Beloved voice actor Yoko Asagami got herself some more press in this weekly news and entertainment magazine in the form of a brief 2-pager that read as follows:
Yuki Mori’s voice is well-known popular number 1 female voice actress Yoko Asagami
by Kunio Nishina
There is a woman with a beautiful voice.
You’d think she’d be a gorgeous girl, but when you meet her, your eternal love is suddenly over. You often lament, “God doesn’t give two gifts.”
There is a woman with a beautiful voice.
Her name is Yoko Asagami. She’s a voice actress by profession. God has given her two gifts. She’s not a beauty, but she’s cute. To be honest, she’s already 27 years old, but because of her cuteness, she looks much younger.
Every anime fan knows this, but just to be sure, Asagami is the voice of heroine Yuki Mori from Space Battleship Yamato. Right now, she’s the most popular heroine in the voice acting world.
“My popularity is Yuki Mori’s popularity, isn’t it?”
Anime fans overlap the characters in the story with real voice actors who used to be content with being behind the scenes, but they can now become idols.
“When a real person appears on TV or in a movie, I think they’re going to get recognized somewhere. But in anime, it’s just a voice job, so they don’t get recognized.”
Since the voice actor’s true face is not shown, viewers can idealize the voice actor as much as possible. Fans who get a glimpse of their real faces can enjoy the secret pleasure of learning the secrets behind the screen.
Ad for Asagami’s 1980 radio show, Animetopia
“It’s similar to radio dramas, but you can create various images using only a voice. You have to express the person’s age, life, and even anger or sadness to give the picture personality. I feel like it has more depth because it’s a world of voice alone.”
Before graduating from the afreco class of voice actor pioneer Ryo Kurosawa, she was too frail to go to kindergarten, so she became absorbed in reading picture books. Drawn to the world of storytelling, she became a voice actor. She didn’t know much about the challenges of voice acting, she only heard stories about it. Riding on the anime boom has brought her along smoothly.
She is currently doing two regular anime programs on TV and will soon start recording Space Battleship Yamato Part III. She is also a radio DJ and a host of three public programs. She became a freelancer last December and has been traveling from east to west. Her fan club is called “Kodanuki-kai,” and rather than being associated with her voice, it is associated with her face.
“The other day, a male fan gave me some disposable diapers as a present. A female fan also sent me some candy…” Kodanuki smiled.
It seems to be a general wish for her to get married and have children soon.
Marriage? “Not yet.” Love? “No, no.”
Kodanuki is good at dodging the conversation.
May 21: Roadshow, July issue
Roadshow‘s first Be Forever coverage was only two pages, but provided a very high quality presentation of images that were beginning to become familiar. The text read as follows:
Yamato, carrying the beautiful and grown-up Sasha, challenges the Dark Nebula Empire!
Be Forever Yamato will be produced following Space Battleship Yamato and Farewell to Yamato. The story focuses on the battle between Earth and the Dark Nebula Empire after The New Voyage, which aired on TV last summer. Sasha has grown up to be a beautiful 17-year-old girl, and there is no doubt that she will be the heroine of the film.
Yamato itself has undergone an image change, with an anchor mark on its bow and battle emblems on its main guns. Its Wave-Motion Gun has been powered up, and it is equipped with a new mecha called a space sensor. How will Yamato challenge the Dark Nebula Empire that has extended its reach to Earth?
May 24: The Best One, July issue
The stakes went up again when The Best One published a 5-page article with more color art, a synopsis for the middle segment of the story, and a retrospective on The New Voyage.
See the article here
May 26: Be Forever Yamato press conference
This was the day the rubber truly hit the road. A similar event two years earlier for Farewell to Yamato put anime movie releases on the map for the mainstream press. Other such press events had been held since, but nothing could top a Yamato press conference for sheer excitement. The people who made anime blockbusters were now part of the story.
Led by Yoshinobu Nishizaki and Toei president Shigeru Okada, the lineup included Leiji Matsumoto, Composer Hiroshi Miyagawa, Chief Director Tomoharu Katsumata, Lyricist Yoko Yamaguchi, and singers Isao Sasaki and Akira Fuse. Also on hand was the 6.5 foot Yamato “precision cut model,” originally built in 1978 and newly upgraded to match its Be Forever specs.
The event got ample coverage in newspapers and magazines. This brief report in the next day’s Hochi Shimbun newspaper got right to the point:
Yamato Again
Part 3, Be Forever Yamato production announced, to be released in August
Be Forever Yamato will be the third Yamato film, following Space Battleship Yamato (1977) and Farewell to Yamato (1978), which was a record-breaking success. The announcement was held at the Tokyo Kaikan in Marunouchi, Tokyo, on May 26.
The previous Yamato film was supposed to be the last, but at the request of fans and the urging of Toei’s president, Shigeru Okada, who said, “It’s our business to make money,” Producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki, who has been working on Yamato since its inception, stepped up to the plate. Leiji Matsumoto, the creator of Yamato, readily agreed, saying, “I will conclude what the voyage of Yamato was all about” and President Okada said, “This is the last Yamato.”
The film will feature lyrics by Yu Aku and Yoko Yamaguchi, with a song composed by Akira Fuse. The film will open nationwide on August 2. A single of the theme song Angel of Romance (tentative title) sung by Fuse will be released by King Records on July 5.
The most extensive coverage came from the next issue of The Anime. If you don’t feel like waiting for Vintage Report 26, read it here.
May 30: Songs recorded
The month ended with another big step forward; both Isao Sasaki and Akira Fuse recorded their vocals for songs to be heard in Be Forever. Sasaki’s song Pendant of Stars was written by the long-standing duo of Yu Aku (lyrics) and Hiroshi Miyagawa (composition), and would be used as an “image song” during a montage in which Kodai pondered his loss of Yuki.
Akira Fuse was new to the Yamato music family, but (like Kenji Sawada in 1978) already had a thriving pop career. He set Yu Aku’s lyrics to his own composition to create Until the Day of Love, the song heard in the epilogue. He also recorded his own cover of Galaxy Legend, which was played as a postlude after the film (though the one heard in theaters was sung by Hiromi Iwasaki).
Read more about Be Forever‘s songs here
Sankei Sports newspaper reported on the session the next day:
With Mrs. Fuse by his side
Fuse records Be Forever Yamato theme song
Singer Akira Fuse will try his hand at anime film music for the first time. The recording of the theme song for Toei’s summer vacation movie Be Forever Yamato (directed by Toshio Masuda, produced by Office Academy, to be released on August 2) was held at the studio “Sound Inn” in Bancho, Tokyo, on the afternoon of the 30th. Fuse recorded two songs he composed, including Until the Day of Love (lyrics by Yu Aku).
For Toei, which is aiming for the third launch of Space Battleship Yamato, the film is an “all or nothing” project with a distribution target of 1.8 billion yen. Since the theme song would influence the image of the film, Fuse had several meetings with Executive Producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki before starting production of the song.
As the composer, he made requests to the 65-piece full orchestra, and only finished recording the song when was satisfied. Mrs. Fuse quietly watched her husband work, nodding occasionally and serving coffee, demonstrating her “supportive wifely qualities.”
Also spotted in May
Mecha Collection 19: Earth Defense Forces Fleet Okita Ship
While things were suspended between films, Bandai made the interesting choice of digging into the back catalog for two more additions to the Mecha Collection model kit lineup. There were many candidates to choose from, but they rightfully went with the two most iconic selections. The first was Okita’s battleship, which came with a tiny Cosmo Zero.
Mecha Collection 20: Earth Defense Forces Fleet Kodai Ship
“Kodai’s ship” was the name on the box, but it’s commonly known as the Yukikaze and has always been among the most popular mecha designs of the entire saga. It came with a tiny Black Tiger.
Bandai 1980 product catalog
Published when Yamato was still the king of sales among Bandai’s anime-based model kits, this 16-page landscape-format catalog promoted all the current releases alongside toys and models from other product lines, including an up-and-comer called Mobile Suit Gundam.
See it from cover to cover here
Contemporary magazine ads including Be Forever’s premiere date
Anime & Pop Hit March LP
The onslaught of song collection albums containing the Yamato theme continued apace in 1980. This one from Nippon Columbia ganged up marchable themes from Yamato, Doraemon, Galaxy Express 999, Toward the Terra, Lupin III, and more. However, it’s highly doubtful that the obviously European children on the album cover were marching to those songs.
These tracks were all covers of the originals performed by the Columbia March Orchestra under the baton of future Ghibli composer Joe Hisaishi.
Vega watch campaign starts
Other than Be Forever Yamato and the first flight of the American Space Shuttle, the most futuristic thing in the world back in 1980 was the digital watch. Thus, the Vega Company thought a Be Forever tie-in would be an ideal pairing. There was nothing on the watches themselves that acknowledged Yamato, but it wasn’t too much of a stretch back then to imagine Kodai consulting his trusty wrist-calculator in times of need.
See another Vega ad at the end of the page.
May context
May 8: Legendary Giant God Ideon
Colloquially known as Space Runaway Ideon, this TV series was the next project for Yoshiuki Tomino after Mobile Suit Gundam. Like its predecessor, it would later be considered a seminal work in SF anime.
Read more about it here
Anime magazines published in May: Animage June issue (Tokumo Shoten), Monthly Animation No. 5 (Bronze Co.)
OUT July issue (Minori Shobo), The Anime June issue (Kindaieigasha), Animec No. 11 (Rapport)
What’s next
It’s summer 1980, and Tokyo is about to E•X•P•L•O•D•E when the Be Forever campaign launches for real. Meanwhile, the English-speaking world finally starts to catch up with the freight train. Tune in to Vintage Report 26 when we revisit the high-velocity month of June 1980!
