On the news that Space Battleship Yamato will be revived by Director Anno
By Shinya Matsuura
Illustration: Yo Morinaga
See the original post here
Three points from this article
1. I was crazy about Yamato when I was in junior high school, but eventually drifted away
2. I don’t want to see love and suicide attacks being linked together in a fantasy story
3. If Yamato is a symbol of grudges, then that thing from the last movie…
On October 6, 2024, Khara, an anime production company led by Director Hideaki Anno, announced that “Voyager Holdings Co., Ltd. (CEO: Shoji Nishizaki) has granted us the rights to produce a new anime film based on Space Battleship Yamato, and we have also received permission from Tohokushinsha Co., Ltd. to use the copyright. We are currently working on planning a new theatrical production, aiming to start in 2025.”
In other words, we will be able to see “Shin Yamato” (tentative title) in a few years. It is well known that Director Anno was greatly influenced by the 1974 TV anime Space Battleship Yamato, and there are many sequences in his own directorial works that seem to be references to Yamato. The net is full of comments on this.
Director Anno’s “Shin” series has established an interesting brand. Mr. Y, who is from the Yamato generation, also informed us, “Episodes 1 to 5 of the original Yamato have been released for free on YouTube in 4K quality, and at first I thought it was a bit late to be watching Yamato, but once I started watching I couldn’t stop.”
I think Mr. Y was trying to write an article about Shin Yamato by director Anno. But sorry. The truth is, I was one of the early dropouts when it came to Space Battleship Yamato.
In the fall of 1974, when Yamato was on, local commercial broadcasting was still in its infancy, so depending on the area, you might or might not have been able to watch the show. For this reason, the following will be limited to the area around Tokyo where I lived as a junior high school student at the time.
Looking back, the TV programs that aired on Sundays at 7:30 p.m. were really something special. Nippon TV had Space Battleship Yamato. Fuji TV had Heidi Girl of the Alps, a masterpiece among TV anime masterpieces. It was directed by Isao Takahata and featured veterans such as Hayao Miyazaki and Yoichi Kotabe. Then TBS jumped in with the SF drama Monkey Army, which was planned by Sakyo Komatsu, Aritsune Toyota, Koji Tanaka, and other SF writers. Looking back, it was a dizzying extravagance.
This was a time when TV broadcasts had a huge influence on children. The topics of conversation in the classroom on Monday mornings were largely divided into the Yamato and Heidi camps, with a small minority from the Monkey group joining in. After some research, I found that Yamato and Monkey Army were broadcast for two arcs (six months) starting in October 1974. Heidi was broadcast for four arcs (one year) from January to December 1974, so those strangely passionate days in the classroom on Monday mornings lasted only three months, from October to December 1974.
A story that makes your blood boil and your heart pound, and the music…
Of course, I was on the Yamato side. Space Battleship Yamato was very interesting. Earth is invaded by the alien Gamilas Empire, and is becoming increasingly contaminated by radiation. Then, from the planet Iscandar in the Large Magellanic Cloud, 148,000 light years away, a message arrives with blueprints for the Wave-Motion Engine and says, “Come and pick up the Cosmo Cleaner D, a radiation removal device.”
Earth equips the Space Battleship Yamato with the engine, using the former Japanese Navy battleship Yamato sunk in World War II as a disguise, and sets off on a grand voyage into space. Standing in their way is the Gamilas army, boasting overwhelming military power.
It’s amazing how they came up with such a blood-curdling situation. At the end of the broadcast, a caption appears saying, “X days left until the destruction of the Earth,” and the number of days decreases by 7 days with each weekly broadcast, which was a novel idea that was conscious of the flow of real time. The music by Hiroshi Miyagawa was also very good, combining the right amount of sentimentality with a bold modernity.
Apparently Yamato didn’t get very good ratings when it was first aired, but when I remember the atmosphere in my middle school classroom at the time, it’s hard to believe. It may have been because they knew it would air at the same time as Heidi, so they targeted a teen audience. In other words, we middle school students were “struck by the spirit” just as the creators intended. Yamato gained more fans through reruns, and three years later, in August 1977, the film version was released and became a huge hit.
As for me, I drifted away from Yamato during the three-year rerun period. The reason was that, as I was watching the reruns, I found myself noticing the “bad elements” in the Yamato story (I’m not sure if this is the right way to put it).
At the climax of the story, Yamato fights a fleet led by Domel, a wise general of the Gamilas army, in a space region called the Rainbow Star Cluster. With its main weapon, the Wave-Motion Gun, sealed up, Yamato is cornered by the Domel fleet. However, it manages to turn the tables with a single blow, sinking Domel’s four space carriers one after another and turning the tide.
I was watching a rerun of the battle for the umpteenth time when it suddenly dawned on me; “Oh, this is just a re-enactment of the Battle of Midway, with the outcome reversed.”
If only we had won there…
The Battle of Midway (June 5-7, 1942) was a major defeat for Japan that changed the course of the war against the United States. After successfully attacking Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 8, 1941, the Japanese Navy set out to attack Midway Island as its next target, located about 1,000 km west of the Hawaiian Islands, which was being fortified by the U.S. military, and to destroy the U.S. aircraft carriers.
On June 5, an air attack force from four Japanese aircraft carriers (First Mobile Fleet) attacked Midway Island, starting the battle. At this time, a second attack force equipped with anti-ship torpedoes was waiting on the Japanese aircraft carriers. However, the Japanese side felt the need for further attacks on Midway Island, so they tried to remove the torpedoes and replace them with bombs for land attacks.
This timing allowed the Japanese and American aircraft carrier forces to know each other’s locations. The Japanese side tried to replace the equipment with torpedoes again, but while they were in the middle of the work, the forces that had attacked Midway Island began to return, causing chaos on the deck of the aircraft carrier.
At that moment, the American air force reached the skies above the Japanese aircraft carriers and began their attack. Bombs and torpedoes were falling on the confused deck. The Japanese Navy suffered heavy damage when bombs and torpedoes exploded, sinking four aircraft carriers: Kaga, Akagi, Soryu, and Hiryu, at once. Along with the aircraft carriers, many aircraft and experienced pilots were lost.
Furthermore, the commander of the Second Air Squadron, Rear Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi, who was on board Hiryu, was killed in action along with other skilled commanders. The heavily damaged Japanese fleet retreated. After the devastating defeat at Midway, Japan was pushed by the United States and began to slide toward defeat.
Of course, the decisive battle of the Rainbow Cluster with the Domel fleet differs in many ways from the historical fact of Midway. However, the scenario of “four aircraft carriers engaging in an air battle and being defeated and annihilated” inevitably reminds us of the destruction of Japan’s First Mobile Fleet at Midway.
The Battle of Domel vs. Yamato, which I was so engrossed in, was basically a reversal of the allies and enemies in the Battle of Midway. When I realized this, I was pretty disappointed as a middle schooler. I thought recreating the humiliating defeat that Japan suffered in real life by switching sides in a story was either cowardly or servile, or perhaps excessive self-pity or self-satisfaction, or just plain uncool.
From the Japanese perspective, the Battle of Midway was a battle where, “If only we hadn’t done this, or if only we had won here.” (Although I think the end would have been the same even if we had actually won there…) Later in the 1990s, this theme was used in various ways in the huge boom of fictional war novels. My friend, science-fiction writer Yuichi Sasamoto, dismissed these novels as “old man’s war porn.” As a middle school student, I couldn’t put into words the discomfort I felt during the Battle of the Rainbow Star Cluster, but after hearing what Sasamoto-san said, I felt, “Oh, so that’s what it was. I should have said it that way.”
When I rewatched Space Battleship Yamato after thinking that, I noticed more and more incongruities that I hadn’t noticed because of my love for the series. What does it mean that Yuki Mori is the only female crew member? Maybe there are actually more on board, but it’s just not depicted in the story. In the latter half, the rebellious engineer Yabu kidnaps Yuki in the hopes of having children, so maybe she really is the only one.
If they were to seriously depict a relationship between a man and a woman during a year-long space voyage in a closed environment, it would easily go beyond the scope of a children’s anime, so they were probably holding back, but it’s still unnatural. And then there’s Yuki’s death and resurrection in the final episode. “Kodai-kun is going to die!” It’s a show that’s full of momentum, but it reeks of cheap sentimentality. In the same episode, the “real death” of Captain Okita, who had already accomplished the work he was supposed to do, is depicted, so it stands out as being very cheap.
There are also other things that have been talked about among Yamato fans, such as “the color of the Gamilans’ skin changes halfway through” and “the third bridge seems to regenerate the next week even if it breaks or melts,” but I walked away from Space Battleship Yamato feeling disappointed, since I was once so enthusiastic about it.
So I didn’t go see the first movie either. In fact, I’ve never seen it until now. However, I did buy the record Symphonic Suite Space Battleship Yamato, which came out around the same time, and listened to it over and over again. The music of Yamato is actually wonderful.
The movie was a big hit, so in 1978, a sequel, Farewell to Yamato, was made and released in August. When I saw the subtitle was Soldiers of Love, I was so blue that I didn’t go to see it. When I found out that the ending was a suicide attack, I was even more sad. Even if it was fiction, we shouldn’t glorify suicide attacks.
Moreover, the suicide attack in Soldiers of Love was linked to the promotion that said, “This is the end of Yamato.” From the time the movie was announced, Yoshinobu Nishizaki, planner and executive producer, said, “We don’t intend to continue. This is the end of Yamato.” At the end of the movie, a caption was displayed that read, “To everyone who loved Yamato…goodbye. It will never be seen again.” This was the last movie, and it was a story of love and death in a suicide attack.
It was like a promotion saying “This is the end, it’s over, it’s a closing sale!” and Farewell to Yamato was an even bigger hit than the previous film.
Many people went to the cinema in a feverish state and shed tears. I remember a junior girl writing in the journal of the high school choir I was in at the time, “I went to see the movie! Kodai-kun (the main character who goes on a suicide mission at the end) is such a great kid!!”
Even so, I still bought the soundtrack record. The music was as great as ever. I was blown away by the powerful bass organ of White Comet, and Andromeda and Dessler Attack became long-time favorites. On the other hand, I was disappointed by the melody line Hero’s Hill, which seemed like a complete ripoff of the military song Senyuu [Comrade in Arms].
And then, into chaos
After squeezing people’s tears and wallets with “This is the end,” Yamato was easily revived as the TV anime Yamato 2 in October 1978, three months after the movie’s release. However, Yamato 2 was positioned as the TV version of Soldiers of Love and the content was expanded to 26 TV episodes, so at that point, “This is the end” was retracted.
However, the end of Yamato 2 was changed from death by suicide attack to Yamato not sinking and the main characters surviving. This was apparently the result of director Leiji Matsumoto, who did not approve of suicide attacks, insisting that “the story should depict the struggle of survival and reconstruction.” But, of course, there must have also been a large business motive of “We can’t let this big content end like this.” From that point on, Space Battleship Yamato became a confusing story that I couldn’t understand, since I had already lost interest in it.
If I were to write down the facts in chronological order, the TV special The New Voyage was broadcast in March 1979. It is a sequel to Yamato 2. In other words, this timing broke the promise that “they will never be seen again.” The third film, Be Forever Yamato, was released in August 1980. It is a sequel to The New Voyage. The TV anime Yamato III aired from October 1980 to March 1981 as a sequel to Be Forever. In March 1983, the fourth movie Final Yamato, which continues the story from Yamato III, was released.
Yamato came out in various forms, such as TV anime series, theatrical movies, and TV specials, so it’s very confusing. Though it had ended with “never to be seen again,” it was forced to continue, so things were chaotic, and fans started to drift away, especially after Yamato III.
At this time, I was a university student, and at the cultural festival of my high school, I got a copy of a manga study group magazine. In it there was a pretty intense parody manga called Space Battleship Kamatoto with the words “Condemn Yoshinobu Nishizaki!!”
Yamato, which had made people cry with Soldiers of Love, ultimately became the target of denunciation by high school student mania. This marked the end of the Yamato series.
The person who played the biggest role in creating Yamato, a film about “love, war, and suicide attack,” with Soldiers of Love at its apex, was producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki (1934-2010). There is a critical biography about him called The Man Who Created Space Battleship Yamato: The Madness of Yoshinobu Nishizaki (by Yasumasa Makimura and Tetsuhisa Yamada, Kodansha, 2015), which describes him as an extraordinary person.
He was ridiculous, evil, villainous, and a liar who constantly caused trouble for those around him, but he had the talent to accurately sense and provide what the masses wanted, and created ripples around himself.
I once heard from the late science writer Ryuichi Kaneko, who participated in the production of the TV anime Space Carrier Blue Noah, which Nishizaki produced at the same time as Yamato, about Nishizaki’s nonsense, which is too much to write here. However, it is also true that the content called Yamato would not have been created without Nishizaki.
Love and Kamikaze attacks must not be linked
There is no doubt that “Love, War and Suicide Attack” is a popular theme that brings tears to people’s eyes. In September 1998, Deep Impact (directed by Mimi Leder) and then Armageddon (directed by Michael Bay) were released in December of the same year. Two panic movies about a planet colliding with the Earth (a giant comet in Deep Impact, and an asteroid in Armageddon) were released back to back. I was surprised to find that the climaxes of both of these movies with the same theme were actually “kamikaze attacks and death.”
In Deep Impact, the hero, who has run out of options, launches a kamikaze attack on a giant comet with a nuclear bomb still on board. In Armageddon, the hero remains on the surface of the asteroid to press the detonation switch and detonate a bomb planted on the asteroid. Japanese people aren’t the only ones who like tear-jerking kamikaze attacks. In that sense, producer Nishizaki, who brought the “kamikaze attack” theme to Yamato, was right from a business perspective. However, that should be kept within the story.
The battleship Yamato participated in Operation Ten-Ichi, which was aimed at the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, the year of Japan’s defeat in the war. On April 7th, while en route to the battle, it was attacked by US Navy aircraft off Cape Bōno and sunk. When the crew set out, they were given clear orders that it was a “kamikaze mission.” Of the 3,332 men aboard the Yamato, only 276 survived. The rest shared the same fate as the ship.
There was absolutely no point in sending Yamato out at this time. The superiority of air power over battleships had already been established, and there was no battlefield where Yamato could use its gigantic 46cm guns to destroy enemy battleships. The plan was to unload supplies and soldiers in Okinawa to fight on land, using Yamato itself as a coastal artillery battery, but the fact was that the crew had been trained to operate ships. Sending them out to fight on land would have been a no-go.
So what should they have done? They should have done nothing. Japan would have lost anyway, so they should have offered Yamato up after the defeat. In compensation, they would have retained more than 3,000 capable personnel for postwar reconstruction.
The Japanese Navy was unable to cut its losses on sunk costs. They could not bear the fact that the battleship Yamato, which they had built with a huge amount of national funds, claiming that it would be “useful,” would not even be deployed when defeat was looming. The thinking was that if it had tried and failed, it would have been excusable, but if it had not tried at all, it would have been inexcusable. With this kind of organizational logic, 3,000 human lives were lost at sea.
Perhaps that is why Yamato, as an icon in the public’s mind, has become a cursed object.
The Battleship Yamato appears as Japan’s sworn enemy
Yamato appeared in manga and tokusatsu films before Space Battleship Yamato.
First, there was Iron Rocks (above left) from Ultra Seven (1967-1968), a robot made by the Mimmi aliens from the sunken Yamato to fight Ultra Seven. There was also Satoru Ozawa’s submarine, Yamato Wonder (above right) from the manga Blue No. 6 (1967). It is a submarine built by the secret society MAX, an enemy of “Blue,” an international organization that protects world peace, by modifying the sunken Yamato.
Furthermore, there is the monster Yamaton (below left) that appears in the Ultraman manga (Daiji Ichimine, 1966-1967), a gigantic magnetic monster born from the remains of Yamato. They are all enemies of Japan.
Or we might add the short manga Chokan Fuushimi (above right, 1968) by Keiji Nakazawa, the author of Barefoot Gen. The huge battleship Fuushimi, which has the ability to dive and surpasses Yamato, is built in a dock in the Seto Inland Sea. Before setting off, it floods the dock with water, killing many of the workers involved in its construction to maintain secrecy.
If that is the case, then the 1974 revival as the Space Battleship Yamato, which travels to Iscandar to pick up a radiation removal device to save the Earth, may have been a kind of “requiem.” The battleship Yamato, which was sent on a completely meaningless suicide mission and sank with 3,000 men off the coast of Cape Bouno, became a vengeful spirit. But its meaning was reversed by the Space Battleship, a “ship of hope” to which the fate of all mankind was entrusted.
The story of the first Yamato TV series also follows this line. To save the Earth, the long round-trip space flight must be successful at all costs. Just as the theme song says, “We will definitely return.” Fighting and winning is a means, not an end. That’s why Yamato basically avoids combat with Gamilas. Because if it is defeated, its journey will end there.
The fact that this is twisted around in Soldiers of Love and reconnected to “suicide attacks” is nothing short of ironic.
It should be noted that even at the peak of the Yamato boom in 1978, when Soldiers of Love was released, many people were critical of the film, saying things like “spreading love around and then going on a suicide mission?” It’s something that should be noted again.
Mamoru Oshii’s theatrical anime Urusei Yatsura: Only You was released in theaters in the spring of 1983, the same year as Final Yamato. Based on the original story by Rumiko Takahashi, Urusei Yatsura is a slapstick comedy about Lum, an alien demon girl who becomes the wife of unfaithful high school student Ataru Moroboshi and causes all sorts of trouble.
In Only You, Ataru and Lum’s lovers’ quarrel escalates into a space war. In it, the situation promoted by Yamato‘s Nishizaki, “dying for love and saving the world,” is thoroughly mocked, with lines like “You bastards, die for love!” and “We’ll die together!”
I’m looking forward to the next Yamato
I’ve written a lot about it, but it’s not that I dislike Space Battleship Yamato. I was really into it when I was in middle school. In that sense, I’m looking forward to Anno’s version of Yamato.
Yamato has been remade as an anime and live-action movie. Among them, Yamato 2199 was created by director Yutaka Izubuchi, a passionate Yamato fan who thoroughly examined the problems of the original and created a concept that is easy to understand. I haven’t seen it yet because I just started caring for my mother, but now I might have to use a subscription service to watch it.
By the way, Director Izubuchi will also be working as a staff member on the new Anno version of Yamato. What’s with that double Kamen Rider situation!?
By the way, we have another symbol of the ghosts coming from the south. It goes without saying that it’s Godzilla. It has been pointed out that Godzilla is a symbol of natural disasters like typhoons, and at the same time, the vengeful spirit of soldiers who died on the southern front. That’s why in the first Godzilla doesn’t destroy the Imperial Palace, even though it attacks Tokyo. It only goes around once and returns to the sea.
If Space Battleship Yamato exists to appease the vengeful spirit of the battleship Yamato, it might even co-star with Godzilla in Anno’s version. The otaku middle schooler in me is a little excited. At least, I hope it won’t turn into some kind of old man’s story.