As stated elsewhere, the mission of this website is to dig as deep as possible into the history of Star Blazers and Space Battleship Yamato so that every aspect of the phenomenon can be preserved for as long as there is an internet on Planet Earth. Therefore, there’s nothing we like more than bringing up treasure that was thought lost even in its home country. One such treasure was the “Lost” manga for Series 1 by Yuki Hijiri. (As presented here) As of 1980, it was no longer in a category by itself.

Akita Shoten’s monthly Bouken Oh [Adventure King] magazine had an association with Yamato that went all the way back to the beginning; it was the original home of Leiji Matsumoto’s first Yamato manga that ran concurrently with Series 1 in 1974-75. It then became the home of his Farewell to Yamato strip from July 1978 to December 1979. Thus, the magazine was aligned to embrace Yamato again just under a year later when Series 3 got rolling on TV. Leiji Matsumoto was too busy with other projects, so the assignment fell into the capable hands of his former assistant, artist Hiroshi Aizawa.

After assisting Matsumoto on the Farewell manga, he went on to do an adaptation of Captain Future, then brought his steady hand and a strong Matsumoto-inspired storytelling approach to Yamato III. (He later adapted the anime series Xabungle as shown upper right.) Yamato III shared the magazine with such titles as Tetsujin 28, Kamen Rider Super 1, and Legendary Giant Ideon. It ran for ten issues, outlasting the TV series itself by four months, and totaled over 160 pages. Like the Series 1 manga by Yuki Hijiri, it was destined never to be reprinted; the only way to see it now is to collect the individual issues of Adventure King–or let us do it for you.

Here, for the first time since its initial publication, Hiroshi Aizawa’s “lost” manga lives again! We will begin with the first half and bring you the rest at a later date. It is presented in both unretouched Japanese and fully translated English using Star Blazers nomenclature. As with all manga, pages read from right to left.

Translations by Sword Takeda, Tim Eldred, and Neil Nadelman. Edited and lettered by Tim Eldred.

Chapter 1 16 pages, October, 1980 Japanese version English version	Chapter 2 18 pages, December 1980 Japanese version English version	Chapter 3 15 pages, January 1981 Japanese version English version
Chapter 4 16 pages, February 1981 Japanese version English version	Chapter 5 14 pages, February 1981 Japanese version English version	Chapter 6 14 pages, March 1981 Japanese version English version
Chapter 7 13 pages, April 1981 Japanese version English version	Chapter 8 15 pages, May 1981 Japanese version English version	Chapter 9 13 pages, June 1981 Japanese version English version
	Chapter 10 12 pages, July 1981 Japanese version English version

Bonus:

A two-page spread from the 1978/79 Farewell to Yamato manga. Matsumoto’s touch is evident on the drawing of Kodai in the center, but all other characters were drawn by Aizawa.