Caption: “Please, just one more time!”
And Yamato is coming back…
Following the theatrical release of Be Forever Yamato, Yamato 3 is coming to TV! With a grand concept, it depicts a new battle of Yamato.
LEFT SIDE:
Yamato has also exploded
It’s too intermittent to call it nostalgic — but Yamato III is also on the way. This time it’s a long run of a year.
More characters are added and a new journey begins
Yamato‘s fourth journey (or is it?) is a galactic tour of the stars. Unlike Yamato 2, it doesn’t follow the movie version of Be Forever Yamato. In addition to various new people, the nostalgic Dessler also returns.
The scale is also much larger, the enemies are the entangled Galman Empire and the Bolar Federation, and a new beautiful princess character also appears. Kodai-kun has finally become the captain, but the captain always dies at the end…
RIGHT SIDE:
There’s a lot of mecha!
One of the fun things about Yamato is the new mecha that appears every time. Since this is a long series, there are various mechanics available. Let’s take a look at some of them.
BOTTOM RIGHT:
Be Forever Yamato has already become one more step of Yamato
Following Music Collection II, the drama edition has been released on record, and Be Forever has come to an end. A calendar for next year will also be released. This is a large format calendar that is twice the size, and features powerful scenes. The list price is 2,000 yen. For inquiries about mail order, please contact Academy Sales Co., Ltd. Also, we give this to our fans as a present! See the last page to apply.
Recommended! Pirates
This time, “Adventure Trek” hits Taiwan with pirated mecha! Not a single plant or tree is left unturned after the fun-loving Fanroad team walks through the area. Even though there are many tourists, we are probably the only ones who have rummaged through the bottom of a trash can in a Taiwanese candy store. Here, we will bring you a part of the pirate mood in color.
ADVENTURE TREK
The Great Pirate Trail
Recommended! Pirates
An adventure journey in search of the world’s joys. This time, let’s take a trip to Taiwan just for Fanroad fans.
Taiwan, known as the “beautiful treasure island,” is just a short flight from Tokyo. And it is a beautiful treasure island for us.
What is a pirated product?
It is a product made without regard for the copyrights of others. It is not allowed in Japan, and is not allowed in countries that are parties to the Universal Copyright Agreement. In Southeast Asian countries, it is more profitable to use other countries’ products than to protect the copyrights of their own, and there are many such countries.
There are many fakes that use brand marks without permission (and some amazing ones like Toyota-made watches), copies of original products, and so on, but our target is comic and character products!
We sent a large reporting team to neighboring Taiwan, where Japanese culture is easily transmitted. However, even though it is overseas, it can be cheaper than going to Hokkaido or Kyushu, so the group became big fans of Taiwan.
Is there a Yamato boom over there too?
When I turned the channel, Yamato was on!
All TV in Taiwan is on Channel 4, which is state-run (though there are still a lot of commercials), and the broadcast times are about half that of Japan. The programs they produce are mostly studio dramas or pop music (they show how to use pesticides in between songs!), and foreign movies are in English with Taiwanese subtitles. Japanese programs used to be like that too, but after diplomatic relations were cut, they started to re-voice Japanese into Mandarin and subtitle in Taiwanese.
As soon as we arrived in Taiwan, the reporting team bought many copies of TV Guide and searched for anime programs! (Actually, we had a hard time finding the program listing because it was only two pages long.) We found out that we were just in time for “Space Battleship” (the name “Yamato” has been removed and replaced with a Chinese ship because it can’t be set in Japan, which has no diplomatic relations with Taiwan).
In Taiwan, anime is broadcast every day from Monday to Friday, and Yamato will continue with Part 2. The subtitles are in Chinese characters, so you can still understand what they mean. There are also many publications, so let’s get ready for some pirated versions of Yamato.
LEFT: Space Battleship eye catcher
RIGHT: Subtitled “Kamira Sei” — Yes, that’s the part where Aihara is surprised to see the communications satellite!
The cover of the pirated edition of the deluxe book is very lively, but the inside is the same as the original.
Yamato publications are very diverse!
The most well-known pirated editions are comics. These are full-sized copies of Japanese comics, with lines written in Chinese and sound effects like “boom” and “crash” written in vague characters. Of course, the author’s name is rarely used, and while the Western names are written in Chinese characters, the Japanese characters are often given Chinese names. For example, in Yamato, Yuki Mori is called Koyuki-chan, a geisha girl. Also, titles are often not officially unified, but are changed depending on the publisher.
Yamato is also called “Space Battleship” or “Koutei-go.” This is a matter of government approval, and these books are shamelessly written on the back as being copyrighted, but it seems okay to publish books with this title and content. In other words, even if the content is the same it doesn’t matter how many copies are published or where they are published, as long as the title is different. In the past, these books used to be of poor quality, like magazine supplements, but these days they are often high quality and there are more color pages.
Color printing — or rather, color copying technology — has especially improved to the point where it’s hard to believe they were copied from a book. For example, in Yamato, the Japanese title is first painted over in the same color as the background, and the Chinese title is written over it, but you can barely see traces of the erasure. When you get to this level, it’s almost like a local art form!
LEFT: comics — The original name “Space Battleship” is written in big letters
RIGHT: Volume 1 from Shogakukan’s TV Masterpieces series
Inside, color kanjis are flying around everywhere!
Novels from Asahi Sonorama by “Yoshio Nishizaki”
There are also jigsaw puzzles
Of course, there are various character products as well
As well as books, there are also many character goods centered around printed materials that can be easily made into pirate editions. There are also lots of fancy stationery-type goods, various plamo, and superalloy type goods that are made by taking a mold from the actual item, and they are all pirate editions!
Even though it’s overseas, Taiwan is right next door
It’s very easy to get to neighboring Taiwan compared to other countries. A ferry from Okinawa costs only 16,000 yen each way. A round trip flight costs about 70,000 yen. Vaccinations are not necessary, and the security situation may be better than Tokyo. There are hardly any drunk people even late at night. Prices are cheap, and a hotel costs about 3,000 yen per night.
Japanese is also widely spoken, so when you buy something, bargain until you get the price you want. The same item might cost 2,000 yen at a department store, but 300 yen at a night market.