Although it is hard to imagine now, anime used to be called “TV manga” and was considered very lowly. However, there were people who became obsessed with the first full-scale SF anime series that quietly began in 1974: Space Battleship Yamato. Born around the late 50s and referred to as the first otaku generation today, they were high school students at that time. They formed a fan club for Yamato and continued their passion and love for the work even after its broadcast ended.

This eventually culminated in 1977 with OUT‘s special feature on Yamato in the May issue, and a theatrical release in August. After selling out immediately upon release, this legendary magazine published reprints, which was rare for magazines at that time. Starting from this special feature on Yamato in OUT magazine, I want to delve into what happened during 1976 when these events occurred. To do that, I interviewed Ryusuke Hikawa, an anime and tokusatsu researcher who experienced this era as a participant.

In 1974: Visiting the Production Site of
Space Battleship Yamato

Interviewer: In OUT‘s second issue, the June 1977 article titled Do You Remember? That Passionate Blood Flow of Yamato, you made your debut as a commercial media writer. Could you tell us about the flow from the initial broadcast of Space Battleship Yamato to your participation in the special feature?

Hikawa: I was born in 1958, but since my birthday is in early February and I was held back a year, I belong to the same generation as those born in 1957. When Space Battleship Yamato started airing in 1974, I was a second-year high school student. That’s when I visited the production studio located in Sakuradai with some friends, and it greatly impacted my fate.

At that time, I was attending a public high school near Kugayama Station on the Keio Inokashira train line. The school district covered the Suginami, Nerima, and Nakano areas. During the middle of Yamato‘s broadcast, just before New Year’s Day of 1975, my family moved to Hodogaya in Yokohama. That’s when I began commuting about two hours each way. At this age, being able to act independently, I got off at intermediate stations using my commuter pass to visit secondhand bookstores and collect novels.

When Yamato was still airing, and after making several visits to the studio at Sakuradai around March 1975, I learned about the shocking fact that Yamato would end its broadcast and that the Sakuradai Studio would dissolve. Back then, I believed anime productions were carried out by fixed companies. However, it turned out to be like today’s production committee format where they are managed through project-based operations rather than by established companies. They rented several floors of an office building and decided that once broadcasting ended (around May 1975), they would dismantle the studio, leaving only producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki’s office in Kyudan-cho as a sort of headquarters.

It was a disappointment because I thought they would create works like Yamato continuously at the same location. But I was informed that there wouldn’t be a next project. This news came as a shock; it felt unimaginable that such wonderful production materials would disappear and be disposed of. So I appealed to them, saying it was unthinkable for valuable materials for such an amazing work to vanish completely. The production department recognized my enthusiasm and said, “Since you’ve shown such passion, we’ll allow you to take them with you after gathering everything in one place.” As a result, my friends and I took the materials with us. Although many materials were scattered over time, what remained in my possession was donated to the Anime and Tokusatsu Archive Institute (a non-profit organization) where I also serve as vice chairman.

Interviewer: It seems surprising from today’s perspective that you could receive these materials by visiting the studio.

Hikawa: That’s because security issues didn’t arise until later on. After some time had passed since our visits to the studio, there was an incident involving cel theft. Since I genuinely sought to preserve and share the works rather than engaging in monetary transactions, I didn’t get involved in any sort of trade.

Interviewer: Nowadays, anime-related materials such as cels are obtained through second-hand specialty stores like Mandarake, or online auctions where they sometimes fetch high prices. Was it more casual back then, when they said things like, “You can take them with you”?

Hikawa: They were treated as waste products just like industrial waste. Also, few people visited studios back then. Therefore, our visits might have been seen as something rare. Perhaps they treated us kindly because they saw that someone had made the effort to come and see their work. It’s also possible that they recognized my ambition of wanting to become a professional in the field. However, I feel sorry for having disturbed them while they were working. To repay my debt to the creators, I have the duty of sharing achievements or preserving their works.

Interviewer: During this period, enthusiastic fans formed Yamato fan clubs in various locations, and many fanzines were born. You were a member of one of them, Yamato Association. What kind of activities did you engage in?

Hikawa: Initially, we had the group name CBYL (Cosmo Battleship Yamato Laboratory). Toward the end of the first broadcast, a fellow SF fan joined our visits to the studio. At that time, I invited a female visitor named Asami Kushino to become our club president, and we started engaging in fan club activities together. It was during the era of mimeograph copies and carbon copies, but she came up with the idea of using offset printing as well.

In the early days, Yasunobu Komaki, who later became editor-in-chief of Animage, was also involved. They were college students while we were three high school classmates at that time, so we trusted them to lead and manage everything since we would soon be preparing for university entrance exams. This situation continued for two years as I took a gap year for further studying.

However, when membership exceeded 200 people, it became increasingly difficult to handle administrative tasks. We reorganized and limited membership through an admission screening process. Thus it became Yamato Association. However, I wasn’t directly involved in that transition either.

There was more to our activities than just that, such as researching and providing materials. We also published a journal focused on research and communication about anime culture beyond Yamato-related topics. Additionally, regular newsletters were distributed to convey information. The core members consisted mainly of college students with experience in fandom-related activities, which provided us with essential know-how. I didn’t possess such sensibilities myself. What influenced me was being part of fandom culture whenever possible.

Fandom refers to an enthusiastic group of fans as well as a collective. It involves creating and managing organizations, publishing doujinshis (fanzines), holding regular meetings for interaction, solidifying connections among fans, and enhancing culture through critiques and research. In Japan, it takes the form of networks between organizations from various regions, including research groups at universities, with national conventions organized by fans in different locations across the country.

The style is modeled after what was developed in America. Conventions organized by fans started even earlier than the Japan SF Writers’ Club; authors were invited to participate and interact with fans. Research presentations and panel discussions were held in special sessions. It’s slightly different from Comiket culture and hobbyist doujinshis because it resembles academic societies that present research papers in journals and conferences. I believe this had a definite influence on me.

Interviewer: There was a preceding model.

Hikawa: Another influence came from “Kaiju Club” (to be mentioned later), which gathered at Tsuburaya Productions around the same time. Since Takahashi-san belonged to the same company back then and was an apprentice under Masashi Matsumoto, known for his articles in Kaiju Zukan (Monster Picture Book) and Weekly Shonen magazine, our activities leaned more toward studying rather than mere fan club affairs. Therefore, we emphasized primary sources when it came to Yamato-related materials while focusing on revealing facts as accurately as possible.

Of course, we also did interviews for testimonies where available. I visited Chief Director Noboru Ishiguro’s home many times to ask questions like “How did you film that scene?” or “What circumstances led to changes in the settings?” I asked about various details extensively.

But not everyone sought such things equally, especially since there were many female fans of Yamato who followed various characters passionately. We had to make sure to cater to the interests of those with preferences based on characters. That’s why we included parody manga, character essays with elements of love letters, and a section for reader submissions in addition to other topics unrelated to Yamato.

Interviewer: So that formed the basis for the Yamato special feature in OUT?

Hikawa: Although not exactly the same, many aspects of Yamato Association’s activities and ideas were transplanted into it. Having done so much groundwork enabled us to create the special feature within a relatively short period. There may have been some flaws considering our immaturity at that time, but we accomplished everything that needed to be done.

At right: The executive members of C.B.Y.L. (Cosmo Battleship Yamato Laboratory), one of the earliest Space Battleship Yamato fan clubs. Following the dissolution of C.B.Y.L. (January 1976), the fan club was re-established with a new structure led by Hikawa (under his real name, Tatsuya Nakatani), and became Yamato Association.

Co-authoring the First Yamato magazine feature

Hikawa: I graduated from high school in March 1976 and spent a year preparing for university entrance exams, so I wasn’t fully immersed in fan activities during that period. In early March 1977, when exam results were announced, I went to share my good news with my friends, saying, “I got accepted into Tokyo Institute of Technology,” and they celebrated by saying, “Congratulations! Now you will take over the club, too?”

Then they mentioned that Yamato would be featured in an upcoming special article in OUT and asked me if I could help. It was brought up by an editor who had just joined Minori Shobo. Later he called himself “Initial Biscuit K.” He came from Chuo University’s SF Research Society and later became editor-in-chief of Fanroad magazine.

He said something like, “I’ll be burying myself working overnight on several dozen pages,” but initially I hadn’t really experienced staying up overnight before. It caused some confusion like “Huh? I’ve never stayed up before,” but eventually he managed to finish writing synopses for Yamato.

Interviewer: The Yamato special feature has a large volume of about 60 pages. Which parts did you contribute to?

Hikawa: I worked on the story explanation for all 26 episodes (entitled This Is SF Romance! The Story of Yamato). I pulled an all-nighter to write the manuscript based on my memories, since there were no official documents or videos available at that time, and I had no access to scripts, so it was purely based on memory. There were quite a few revisions as well. There may be mistakes in the content.

Regarding the Yamato Encyclopedia, I mainly wrote the mecha section. At first, it was an extension of articles published in our club magazine. However, after submitting my work, there seemed to have been a change in editorial policy because someone else added sections related to characters. The Encyclopedia was arranged in alphabetical order, and it truly was homemade stuff. Since we didn’t have computers back then, we bought index cards from stationery stores and rearranged them to sort out information before turning them into manuscripts.

I also contributed to the Q&A section titled Explaining Yamato’s Seven Mysteries! This part examined Yamato from an SF perspective. I provided memos with research material while Yasunobu Komaki, who was also a hardcore fan of Yamato and later became editor-in-chief of Animage magazine, adapted the content into text. The introduction spread featuring related merchandise belonged to Komaki-san.

Interviewer: So materials owned by members were also utilized.

Hikawa: It was similar to when conscription occurred during times of war. Something like saying, “Provide all your available resources and manpower!” When it came specifically to staying up overnight, it was more like “Incredible! Stay up overnight!”

The cels that I had on hand were offered for that purpose. The Yamato used for the cover and the cel where Analyzer lifts Yuki Mori’s skirt were used, for example. However, in recent years, I was surprised when those cels appeared on online auctions and thought, “Give them back!” At the same time, considering the long passage of time as well as their still-existing state, I changed my position to something more positive, like, “It’s actually fine as long as they’re still out there.”

Interviewer: I’m surprised that the Yamato on the cover was a cel that you had.

Hikawa: Don’t you think that’s a little strange? It’s supposed to be a bank cel with Yamato approaching the foreground, but the lines were distorted. This was a hand- traced copy of a large-size cel (one of 240 frames) used in Episode 15. The size of Yamato is also quite small.

When the studio was dissolved, the large cels were damaged and difficult to reuse, so they were released as a kind of consolation prize. And because they were damaged to begin with, I cut them out and kept them on display in my room. They were not “good” at all, and I treated them roughly because they were like trash. Every time I look at the cover, I think that if OUT was going to become such a historic magazine, I should have given them better cel art. In other words, the overall direction was done by different people, so there were big gaps between our ideas, and I have very mixed feelings about it. But, of course, I’m proud of it.

Interviewer: There are many other unique projects in the Yamato special feature.

Hikawa: A feature titled Gunshot! The fun is just beginning! features famous lines of dialogue from the work with illustrations. The title was based on the original story The Fun is Just Beginning, which was serialized in Kinejun magazine by Makoto Wada. At that time, Taro Minamoto was also doing a parody project in Manga Shonen to find good scenes from manga, so he may have quoted it from Wada.

Interviewer: The issue also has a credit for “Cooperation: Academy Co., Ltd.” and uses a lot of materials and illustrations provided from the official side. How did the special feature come about in the first place?

Hikawa: I heard that when Mr. K went to meet Producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki with the plan, Nishizaki said, “This is perfect. I wanted to gather fans and screen Yamato.” Even after the broadcast had finished (1975), he was probably thinking, “I’m so happy that you’re featuring Yamato.” So I think it was something along those lines. I hadn’t met Nishizaki at that point. It was a work that he’d raised the funds for himself, so there was no need to coordinate with the various companies involved. Mr. K was given permission to use the materials as much as he wanted, and that’s why the feature was possible. It was a very special project in many ways.

Editorial Department: The second issue of OUT (June issue) was released at the end of April, so I get the impression that the special feature was compiled in a short period of time. If you check the time schedule, it was created in about 10 days.

Interviewer: The indicia of OUT says that it is released on the first of every month, but the release date seems to have been the 27th of the month before. I think it was a pretty tight schedule.

Hikawa: Sorry, I’ve forgotten the details. I remember that the special feature started in the middle of March, and I took a break in the middle. I went to my grandparents’ house in Himeji for about a week to tell my relatives that I had passed my exam. But when I came back, I was surprised to see that the editing work was still going on. I’m sure it was created in a short period of less than a month.

Minori Shobo was a unique publisher

Interviewer: I’d like to ask about the publisher of OUT. The parent company of Minori Shobo was Asahi Paper, a paper wholesaler.

Hikawa: I have never been there, but I heard that they started a publishing company to use up the scraps (leftover paper) that had to be discarded in the paper handling process. I thought, “Really?”

Interviewer: “First you need paper.” They had some leftover paper, so they decided to make a magazine.

Hikawa: I was also involved in Rendezvous, the spinoff of OUT, and I was surprised that the color of the foldout paper used in the magazine was different from the sample I was given, and the issue on display in the bookstore. Maybe they just used a different paper because the roll ran out. I would like a bibliophile to look into it.

Interviewer: OUT ceased publication in 1995, and Minori Shobo also ceased operations and was liquidated in 1997. Because there was a lot of paper left over, it was just a vague “make something” thing, so it seems like OUT had the potential for free and unrestricted expression.

Hikawa: I was only involved with OUT in its early days, so I don’t know the details. In the early ’90s, when OUT was about to cease publication, it coincided with the launch of computer communication, and I got to know the deputy editor-in-chief at that time. Although the years have flown by, we got along well and had a good rapport. It would be interesting if the original company culture continued.

Interviewer: In the early days of OUT, a special issue called Ohagaki [Postcard] Magazine was published. It was on thick paper, and the front side of a page was printed with addresses and the back had a joke invitation, and they could be cut out and used as postcards. It was quite unique.

Hikawa: Everyone was surprised by that.

Interviewer: At the end of Ohagaki Magazine there was information about publishers and entertainment companies. It lists addresses of production companies, manga artists, etc., so you could send them fan letters. I think this kind of list was new at the time.

Hikawa: There was a lot of freedom. It was a time when few people had landlines, let alone cell phones. When I called a friend who was staying at an apartment, the landlord had to put me through. In the mid-70s, when my friends and I were getting to know each other, we mostly exchanged letters.

Editorial Department: It was like a late-night AM radio broadcast.

Hikawa: The early days of OUT were just like a late-night radio broadcast printed on paper. It was a niche, but there was a certain demand and enthusiasm. Still, it never reached the masses. I think that kind of fragmented culture existed in the mid-70s. Anime may have been like one of those things.

The “SF mind” injected into Yamato

Interviewer: You point out that the Yamato feature in OUT seems to have prepared the format for the anime magazines that came out later, but that Yamato was still intended to be seen as a science-fiction work.

Hikawa: That’s a bit complicated. At the time, Yamato was criticized by SF writers for being “scientifically wrong and unscientific,” so there was a backlash against that. Yamato won the Nebula Award (film and media category) selected by SF fans in 1975, just after the broadcast ended, so I thought that this was recognition. But it was criticized by hardcore SF fans saying, “How can such a non-SF work win the Nebula Award?” I was confused because I didn’t really understand why they were thinking in a subtractive way, when the concept of warp and other aspects of the story showed an “SF mind” that was outstanding for the time. Leading up to the awards ceremony, there was a movement to recognize various boundary-pushing works as SF, saying things like, “the penetration and expansion of SF.”

SF is short for science-fiction, but I think of it as “scientific fiction.” Fiction spun from scientific ideas. In that respect, Yamato was far superior to other works of the same period. It’s easy to say “the setting is wrong,” but why not try to argue that it is not wrong? How can we mobilize our limited scientific knowledge and provide evidence to overcome negative criticism? The result of desperately thinking about this was the Q&A (Seven Wonders of Yamato) section in the special feature.

A question is raised as to why the skin color of the Gamilans, who are enemies of Earth, becomes blue halfway through the story. This suddenly became the case from Episode 11. When I asked Chief Director Noboru Ishiguro, he said, “If the skin color was the same, it would be hard to tell the difference between friend and foe, so the previous lighting made it look like skin color.” That was the production reason.

On the other hand, I had heard that human blood is red because the iron component of hemoglobin binds with oxygen, and squid blood is blue because the counterpart element is copper. So, even though it was an afterthought in the production, I thought, “You can’t say it’s wrong.”

Interviewer: How did SF fans accept Yamato at the time?

Hikawa: There were a lot of SF fans who liked Yamato. However, SF itself has a history of being looked down upon by the mainstream of literature. At that time, they tried to be recognized as a new form of literature by emphasizing scientific accuracy along with theoretical support.

Interviewer: That’s why some SF fans found Yamato difficult to accept.

Hikawa: That may be. Even in academic research, when you make a new discovery, if the paper is too novel, it’s difficult to connect it to previous literature and research, and it may be rejected. However, if you’re trying to do something scientifically, you try to use a multifaceted approach and reliable analytical methods.

I wanted to properly analyze the uniqueness of “Yamato” and make it something that can be shared. If I get too busy with work one day I might drift away, or I may die in an accident or from illness. So I wondered how I could share my work and make it last. It seems that I started thinking about such things when I was 16 or 17. However, I couldn’t put it into words at the time, and it was a bit immature, but I realized recently that the essence of what I do and what I want to do has not changed even after 50 years. There is a consistency.

Interviewer: I thought science-fiction was the essence of Yamato.

Hikawa: That’s what captures me. Especially the restraint against the “convenience of the setting.” For example, the concept of “warp.” Faster-than-light travel had appeared in previous anime, but it was a means to make storytelling more convenient. However, in the case of Yamato, the distance from Earth to Iscandar is shown as 148,000 light years, a specific number based on observational data. And the warp itself has restrictions and conditions for use. Yamato is damaged during a warp test, so it’s convenient and inconvenient. The restrictions make it feel more realistic.

Furthermore, it’s a story that tries to overcome the restrictions of reality. This is an attitude common to scientific proof and technological development, so that’s the point.

The first episode starts with a battle scene. Without any explanation, we understand that a fleet battle is taking place in space under the command of Captain Okita. When the ship is hit, the hull is gouged by heat and it tilts. This is probably a reaction to evaporated metal particles. The interior of the ship then switches to red emergency lighting. This is to increase visibility in an emergency, just like in a real submarine operation.

Furthermore, if the ship is hit, air escapes through a hole in the hull, and the crew is sucked out of the ship. Anyone thrown into the vacuum of space will die, but in that shot the bulkhead activates, showing that they have gone from a safe world to a world of death. It’s a very intelligent and well-supported sense of realism, of being on the brink of death.

Interviewer: What did you notice when you watched the work again later?

Hikawa: There are a lot of shots in the first episode where the characters are not visible. It’s full of meter and monitor shots, and sometimes not even the backs of the crew are shown. This directly connects the audience with what the crew is seeing.

Noboru Ishiguro was also a sci-fi fan, so I think that “SF mind” was reflected in the film. At the same time, he was also an engineer, so he was in a position similar to that of a special effects director in anime. For example, an optical printer is a machine for optical synthesis. This is a special effects device for such things as the “specium ray” in Ultraman. I heard that it was used to achieve expressions that are impossible on a film stand. Gradually, it became clear why I was attracted to Yamato; because it was full of sci-fi and special effects, which made sense to me.

When Mr. Ishiguro told me, “I originally joined the industry because I wanted to do effects animation,” that was the first peak of understanding. There are fields other than character animation. For example, how do you express flames, water, amorphous things, and phenomena that are difficult to capture with the outlines of anime? It is done artistically based on scientific knowledge.

In Episode 24, lava erupts and the planet Gamilas collapses. This scene, which Ishiguro drew himself, is a homage to Disney’s Fantasia. Disney had paid attention to effects animation since the early days and actively developed it. This knowledge was also passed down to us by Ishiguro.

That’s why Ishiguro said that he tried everything he had thought about for many years. He said, “If I use this technology, I should be able to make this kind of image.” There is a special effects mind in anime. Furthermore, at the base of that is a science-fiction mind that permeates everything.

By creating this solid structure, the world of the work becomes more believable. It’s constructed with scientific and technological ideas, and I realized that there are adults (creators) who do this. I think this is what kept me hooked on anime.

There were so many elements poured into every corner of the work that it was too good to be true. You couldn’t just say, “This anime was fun, but it’s over. Yes, let’s move on to the next one.” This could be seen from various materials, such as the setting documents and effects drawings by the SF artist group Studio Nue.

The beginning of selling various related goods

Interviewer: Please tell us about the boom that followed the OUT Yamato Special. In the summer of 1977, a movie version re-edited from the TV broadcast was released and became a big hit.

Hikawa: The Yamato Special sold very well, so producer Nishizaki felt a great response. In addition to the re-edited film, various projects were launched simultaneously, such as making a record with the main audio, to promote the movie.

At first, it was planned to screen the movie at just four Tokyu theaters in Tokyo. It would be difficult to do that with a Japanese film, but it seemed that theaters could show a foreign film that way. Then, I think in early May, Nishizaki gathered the Yamato fan clubs and started a strategy meeting to make the movie a success. The main venue was a conference room at the Grand Palace Hotel in Kudanshita. Individual meetings were also held, and I met Nishizaki for the first time.

“Guerilla marketing” promotional kit, summer 1977

This strategy really captured the hearts of the fans. For example, the novelty of including a poster as a bonus with advance tickets, which is now commonplace, was done for the first time with Yamato. He also asked each fan club to gather volunteers and put up the posters everywhere. He said, “Give two posters to each volunteer,” and I thought, “That’s a good idea.” He figured that if there was only one poster, they would keep it for themselves and not put it up.

Interviewer: You certainly understand the psychology of fans and fanatics.

Hikawa: We talked about things like calling radio shows and sending out postcards to ask them to play the theme song for Yamato. It was all grassroots strategies.

A little while later, at a meeting, Nishizaki said with a smile, “Hey guys, have you ever bought a ticket in advance at the cinema?” In other words, it was a story about how tickets can sell out quickly but people don’t usually buy them in advance. I had the cynical thought that if Yamato was popular in the first place, we wouldn’t have had to work this hard, but for the first time I thought, “This might be a big hit” even though I was skeptical.

Cel art exhibitions were also held in various places. Academy asked me to lend them some cel art, but the person in charge resigned midway and I never got them back. When I reminisce about the past, I always remember these related things, so I’m a little reluctant to do it.

Interviewer: What was the atmosphere like at the cinema when the film was released?

Hikawa: The thing that surprised me the most was the mountains of merchandise being sold at the concession stands. Postcards, pencils, etc. Nowadays it’s common to sell merchandise when a movie is released, but I think merchandise sales at theaters expanded thanks to Yamato.

Editorial Department: When Astro Boy was released, there were heaps of merchandise available.

Hikawa: There may have been some, but they were aimed at children. Yamato had a lot of merchandise for junior high and high school students.

Editorial Department: Like binders?

Hikawa: Like a binder or a notepad. They were practical, well designed, and even junior high and high school students could afford them. That was groundbreaking. They were clearly trying to create an atmosphere throughout that said, “This is not a cartoon movie for kids.”

The emergence of anime mooks and the spread of video decks

Interviewer: You see Yamato as an epoch-making work that changed anime from something for children to something that can be enjoyed by junior and senior high school students and adults.

Hikawa: It felt like a lot of things were changing in a short period of time. At the same time as the release of the film, books called anime mooks began to appear in large numbers. Mook is a combination of magazine and book. Publishers such as Tokuma Shoten and World Photo Press started releasing mooks that didn’t fit into any previous categories, and they became a hot topic. I think there were a lot of mooks about guns, military themes and space.

Before that, books were written by authors and published as works of literature, and magazines used illustrations on the color pages at the beginning of the issue to show diagrams. Mooks are a fusion of these two elements, and while they have a catalog-like feel, they also have pages that make you want to read it. This style is suited to anime. It has the quality of being enjoyable when you reorganize the information content in a program and when look at it again, you notice things you didn’t see the first time.

Interviewer: By organizing the information with visuals such as illustrations, you can deepen your understanding.

Hikawa: With the enrichment of information outside of a work, I think anime changed from something for children to something for adults and junior and senior high students during this period. Another big change was that it became something that “doesn’t go away.” You can enjoy it even if you watch it dozens of times. A catalyst for this was created.

This also changes the behavior of fans. So the degree of enjoyment, depth and literacy of anime viewing has changed.

Interviewer: In the late 70s, VTRs (Video Tape Recorders) began to spread to ordinary households. Sony’s Betamax was released in 1975, and Victor’s VHS deck in 1976.

Hikawa: Some of my seniors bought video decks immediately after they were released. However, one hour of tape cost 4,000 to 5,000 yen, so erasing and reusing was more common than storing it.

Interviewer: The price of a deck was about 230,000 yen for Beta and 256,000 yen for VHS. At that time, the starting salary of a national government employee with a university degree was 6,000 to 8,500 yen, so it was a big purchase of over three months’ salary.

Hikawa: We exchanged information about which discount shops were cheap, and we would run into friends at famous stores.

Interviewer: The spread of consumer (home) electronic devices had a big impact, after all.

Hikawa: The electronics revolution that occurred in the late 1970s changed the entire subculture. In 1978, Space Invaders and Yellow Magic Orchestra became popular, and in 1979, Sony released the Walkman.

In university lectures, it is explained that this electronics revolution brought about the “personalization of entertainment.” The Walkman and video decks are typical examples. You can shut yourself away in your own hobby and repeat it as many times as you like. This was decisive with the appearance of the Family Computer in 1983.

TV controlled the masses through radio waves. Broadcasting at the same time in a certain area is the same as monopolizing the land. That’s why broadcasting stations have a license system and cannot increase the number of channels at will. That’s how strong the control over radio waves was, but as entertainment became more personalized, cracks began to appear. The starting point of this may have been around 1974 or 1975.

The sense of urgency felt from “compressed viewing”

Interviewer: The broadcast period of Yamato corresponds exactly to that period.

Hikawa: Yamato was not a hit when it was first broadcast on TV, but it was accepted when it was rebroadcast. I think the main reason for this was that the 26 episodes could be compressed and viewed daily. By watching it continuously every day, you realize more and more, “Oh, so that’s what it was about.” The sense of urgency that the Earth is about to be destroyed also increases.

Interviewer: At the end of each episode, the narrator would say, “XX days left until the extinction of humanity,” and a caption with the number of days would be displayed.

Hikawa: It’s a different experience from watching it over six months. That’s probably why the movie version was such a hit. Back then, you could watch it four or five times after paying the admission fee once. This increases the depth of the images, and the repeatable effect is enhanced. The broadcast is more limiting; “Watch this channel at this time every week.” There is content that matches that and content that doesn’t. It was a time when such differences were becoming clear.

Interviewer: In a column in I Love Anime! Yamato to Gundam (Tokuma Shoten, by Tatsuya Nakatani = Hikawa’s real name), you mentioned that there was a version of Yamato that played Warship March during reruns.

Hikawa: It’s a famous story. When Warship March was played as background music in the Battleship Yamato flashback scene in Episode 2, younger staff members complained that they couldn’t cooperate with this kind of militarism. So, the music was replaced for that part in the original broadcast. However, the rerun reverted to the original sound, and Warship March was played.

Interviewer: There were two versions during the production process.

Hikawa: There’s also a theory that it was played during the original broadcast. This is probably because there were areas where it was broadcast on film net, and the cine tape (magnetic tape synchronized with the film) used for the original broadcast was not used, but was played from the optical track of the film. It would be quite difficult to find out now, though.

Interviewer: I hear that cassette recorders were used as a recording method before video.

Hikawa: The Blu-ray of Ultra Seven includes audio from the trailer, recorded by superfans. Even though not all the episodes were preserved, I wonder if this was something the station announcer would have put in.

Interviewer: It seems that you recorded by placing the tape recorder mic close to the TV.

Hikawa: If you weren’t careful when recording, your mother’s voice and other everyday sounds could be picked up. My TV happened to have an AUX (external output) terminal, so I connected a cable and recorded.

Interviewer: It seems that you also filmed the TV screen with a camera. It’s easy to say that, but it’s not easy to do.

Hikawa: When you film the TV screen with a single-lens reflex camera, the focal plane shutter and the direction of the search lines (on a TV) coincide, and interference fringes are created. After investigating the cause, I got some know-how, such as using a lens shutter camera or slowing down the shutter speed to one-eighth to prevent the fringes from appearing. The trade-off is that fast movements leave an afterimage, but with anime, it’s fine because it’s shot at about three frames per second. I did a lot of research like that.

By building up these experiences, I gradually came to understand the structure and procedures by which anime is made. For Yamato, I was given an entire shot pack, so it contained all the materials and time sheets. I could see that the background and cels were not just randomly combined, but that the screen image was controlled frame by frame, and that this was all consolidated into a timing sheet.

Understanding the structure of the work while watching

Interviewer: In anime, the shutter is pressed once for each of the 24 frames per second. It deepens your understanding even of the finer details.

Hikawa: Cel images deteriorate over time due to the chemical reaction between the carbon lines of the trace machine and the paint, so I tried to take photos and save the anime images. I decided on a frame and put the background and cels together with my own hands. The cels reflect light, so I bought non-glare glass at Yodobashi Camera and held them down, and adjusted the position of the light so that it wouldn’t be reflected.

This was almost the same as the “shooting” work that assistant actors do at anime production sites, or the work of camera assistants. Even if you’ve never worked on-site, you can get up close and personal with the details of anime production.

Interviewer: It’s quite educational.

Hikawa: Back then, the only textbooks around were for independent 8mm productions. I had to recreate each scene while thinking about why it was like that. Even the stacks of paper that were used around the animation production were all mixed together because they were going to be recycled. I wondered, “Why is this paper yellow?” and then I realized it was the original drawing corrected by the animation director. If it was only partially drawn, would the remaining part be traced and used as the original drawing before the correction?

This was the same kind of work as the reverse engineering I did later, after becoming an engineer. By disassembling a machine and analyzing the operation of the software, you can reverse-calculate the structure and design philosophy of the product. You can do the same thing with anime. It’s just that there are fewer people doing it now.

The experience of using my brain was very useful when I interviewed directors after becoming a full-time writer. They’re surprised by my in-depth questions, so they trust me and feel comfortable talking with me.

Interviewer: Today’s anime fans probably don’t go that deep into their viewing.

Hikawa: That can’t be helped. There are too many works, and it’s common for people to only be interested in characters and stories. I also think, “If that’s the case, why not watch something other than anime?” I wonder if self-proclaimed “consumers” think it’s okay for something to disappear after they’ve paid money and enjoyed it. I think they’re complacent because even if it disappears, there will be another one to replace it. I was desperately trying to figure out how to keep the work from disappearing. And before I knew it, 50 years had passed.

Space Battleship Yamato was a great work. But it wasn’t just because of that that it remains. The fans at the time, like me, were persistent. Yamato had an inherent heat that gave me that kind of passion. It was a heat that made me feel like I had to do something. For me, the chain and propagation of such passion is important.

Coming in Part 2: Before Yamato – the days of studying tokusatsu and monster movies

Special thanks to Anton Mei Brandt for translation support

RELATED LINKS

Doujinshi archive

Hikawa’s 1975 interview with Noboru Ishiguro

1977 OUT magazine articles

The early days of Yamato fan clubs (roundtable conversation)

Yamato content from I Love Anime!

An overview of Yamato fan history