Ryusuke Hikawa’s Anime has a history
Part 56: The origins of Yamato‘s journey that has lasted more than half a century
See the original post here
Ryusuke Hikawa Profile
Born in 1958. Anime and tokusatsu researcher. 41 years have passed since his debut, the year before the launch of a monthly anime magazine. After graduating from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, he worked as a communications equipment engineer at an electronics manufacturer before becoming a full-time writer. He has served as a judge in the animation category at the Japan Media Arts Festival and the Mainichi Film Awards.
All the images shown here come from the 50th Anniversary Exhibition program book
From March 15th, the Space Battleship Yamato Complete Records Exhibition, planned and produced by Hideaki Anno, will be held at Seibu Shibuya (until March 31st). The subject of the exhibition, Space Battleship Yamato, is a monumental TV series that greatly changed the history of Japanese anime (broadcast in 26 episodes from October 6th, 1974 to March 30th, 1975). It was a huge hit when it was released as a re-edited movie version in 1977. It created an opportunity for “TV manga” for children to evolve into “anime” targeted at teens and above, and became the origin of the anime culture that continues to this day.
A major feature of this exhibition is that it focuses on raw materials such as proposals, design materials, storyboards, animation drawings, and art boards. This opportunity to see intermediate products in pencil and paint form, rather than working copies or printouts, is a groundbreaking opportunity.
The exhibition was organized primarily by the Anime and Tokusatsu Archive Centre (ATAC), and many of the original drawings and cels were provided by fans who, like the author, have been collecting them privately for many years. It is a comprehensive effort worthy of a work that created a boom through the collaboration of production and fans.
The author’s materials have already been donated to ATAC. The exhibition also contributes to the ongoing study of the conservation, storage, and utilization of intermediate products from media such as manga, anime, tokusatsu, and games, which is being carried out with the Agency for Cultural Affairs, and to the passing on of these to future generations and the promotion of culture and the arts.
In November 1974, I was a second-year high school student when I visited Office Academy Studio in Sakuradai, Nerima ward, where Space Battleship Yamato was being produced, and I was deeply impressed. In particular, the design documents I saw for the first time were so large that they completely changed the way I looked at anime. At a time when anime magazines had not yet been published, I did not fully understand that there existed blueprints for unifying the art style until I saw the real thing.
Space Battleship Yamato, born in the “TV manga era,” was unconventional. It could be said to be abnormal and unorthodox for its time. And as I saw the materials and other painstaking but intricate processes at the studio, and talked to the staff, I realized that there was a reason why a work that I thought was great became great. That intellectual curiosity has continued to energize my work for the past half century.
I am not ignoring the evaluation of the finished product and prioritizing the materials instead. I was simply shocked by the very existence of the “evidence.” And if the information that goes into the images, the way it is constructed, and the process are what makes them so great, then I thought this could be analyzed from an engineering perspective. Later, when I got a job at a manufacturer and started developing IT equipment and creating value, I became convinced that if I knew how to analyze it, I could apply it to other industrial work, and I was able to achieve some results in my 18 years as an engineer.
So what was the value of Space Battleship Yamato? For me, it was the “attractive force that makes you unable to look away” that emanated from the images. And the “pressure that makes you believe in the existence of people who take action” that increases in sync with the progress of the story from within the “Yamato world.” This is why the story also had great value. If this were a phenomenon that occurred in a story alone, we would see it in novels and manga, so this is also the reason for spending so much time and effort to make it into an anime.
The methodology is diverse because it is a comprehensive art. One method is “depiction based on the rationale of the concept” (there are many others, but I will leave them out for now). I have read making-of articles from before Yamato, but perhaps because they were aimed at children, it only seemed to me that the work was being done by a group of people working separately. They didn’t even understand the simple fact that “meaning and impact are carefully crafted” based on solid evidence and instructions, and I often doubt whether this point is still shared in 2025.
What I want you to pay attention to this time is the extraordinary quality and density of Yamato‘s mecha-related designs. Many of them were drawn in collaboration between Leiji Matsumoto, who was director, concept director, and designer, and Studio Nue (Kazutaka Miyatake, Naoyuki Katoh, and Kenichi Matsuzaki). They were creators who drew manga and illustrations, so even their line drawings can be appreciated as beautiful single images.
In addition to the “evidence” mentioned above, I want you to look at the complexity of the “structure” incorporated into the design. The essence of anime is “exaggeration and omission,” but this is the exact opposite. For Yamato itself, the beauty lies in where the curvature of the hull changes, and the “bulges” and “waists” are beautifully drawn; it makes sense why a “ship” is referred to with a feminine pronoun in English-speaking countries. However, this is also delicate and unsuitable for collaborative work.
The original role of a design is “unity.” Its mission is to communicate the shape so that it can be recognized as the same overall, no matter which animator draws it. The reason why mecha designs in the “TV manga era” often combine cubes, cylinders, spheres, etc. is because the shapes are easy to create and uniformity can be achieved.
To begin with, Yamato itself has an excessive number of lines. This is a terrible omen for animation, so much so that there is a legend that animators who were commissioned to do the work ran away. For example, the stock shot, which was used almost every week, in which Yamato approaches from the distance, crosses in front of the camera, then goes off into the distance again, uses around 250 frames of film. This means that a single line drawn in the design is multiplied by 250. However, there is a good reason for the large number of lines, and it is important to note that this reason also brings a sense of “pressure” to the screen.
Looking at the Wave-Motion Gun, the inside of the funnel-shaped muzzle has uneven grooves carved into it, and the caliber itself becomes thinner toward the back. These grooves are a design reminiscent of the “rifling” that is carved into real-world guns and cannon shells to increase the straightness of their trajectory when they are fired, and this is why there are so many lines. Such grooves may not be necessary for a Wave-Motion Gun that fires tachyon particles, but the design enhances the “realism” of the gun.
The on-board structures, modeled after the Battleship Yamato, are also extremely complex. There are main and secondary guns, a bridge, antennas, machine guns lined up on both sides, funnels, catapults, and even stabilizing wings, with slits everywhere. All of these have a combat role and are positioned three-dimensionally, so they cannot be omitted. When Yamato “turns,” the relative positions of all the parts must be calculated and deployed one by one into moving images. This is a difficult task, but when it is successful, the transition of the three-dimensional structure makes Yamato‘s presence more believable, as in the opening scene where the ship recedes back from the first bridge, moving past the main guns, and the whole picture appears.
The interior of Yamato, starting with the first bridge, is also full of details. But are the meters and levers placed there as decoration? No, that is not the case. Advanced ideas that were thought out logically at the design stage are incorporated throughout. Roles and operations are specified in detail, and the storyboards and direction interpret them to make the characters act. In other words, “functional beauty” is pursued overall.
The appeal of Yamato lies in its philosophy that it is ultimately humans who bring out this functional beauty, and the designs strive to highlight this. The fact that the ship’s onboard equipment, which embodies functional beauty, supported the story from behind the scenes, functioning as an interface when immature young people joined forces and overcame adversity, should be conveyed from the original art lined up in the exhibition. I’ll be very happy if you can enjoy this discovery, which is connected to the impact I felt when I was 16 years old.
Another highlight of this exhibition is the original animation drawings. In March 1975, I used my spring break to visit each studio that was nearing the end of production, and rescued many original drawings that were about to be sent to the paper recycling center. When the main Sakuradai Studio was disbanded, I asked the production staff to collect the intermediate production materials that were no longer needed. All of this was done based on the conviction that “it would be a national loss if this were to disappear, and that it is worthy of being placed in a museum someday,” so it was a little different from collecting. Half a century has passed, and it is deeply moving that we have finally reached a stage where this feeling can be proven.
The animation drawings (before corrections) are filled with a unique intensity. The lines are cleaned up in the animation process, but they are drawn with varying thickness to allow the movement to be read, and this also serves as instructions. The original drawings contain a lot of information that conveys the animator’s feelings, such as the pressure and brushstrokes used to draw them.
After the broadcast, the collected materials were arranged in order, along with the cels, animation drawings, designs, and storyboards. Because cels deteriorate, I took them out of the camera bags, read the sheets, assembled them, organized the frames, and took photos of them as still images. I later realized that this was similar to the work of an assistant director. Furthermore, even after the broadcast, I followed up with Chief Director Noboru Ishiguro, interviewed him, and analyzed for myself the “reason for making it so amazing.” Since there were no anime magazines at the time, I had to think and act on my own, which is also the starting point of my anime research.
(Read the interview with Ishiguro here)
To me, this is a “miracle exhibition.” I apologize for including some personal feelings, but I have tried to explain why it is a “miracle,” and to briefly explain some of the thoughts I would like you to ponder when you stand face to face with the original drawings. I would like you to reset the miscellaneous information you have gained from magazines and the internet over the past half century, and with an empty mind, take in the “pressure” that the original drawings radiate.
This is a rare opportunity, marking the 50th anniversary. It is a great chance to go back to the heart of half a century ago and relive what it was like. Doing so will not only help you to look back, but will also naturally give you a positive outlook, asking yourself, “What kind of future will we find in this?” I hope that something new will start from there.
Addendum: My book Visual Fantasy Culture Theory: From the Kaiju Boom to Space Battleship Yamato (Kadokawa) will be released on March 12th. The cover is by Yasuhiko Yoshikazu, and the endorsement on the obi is by Hideaki Anno. I am very grateful. This book is an attempt to explore the “TV manga era” that led to Yamato, to overview the situation including not only anime but also tokusatsu as “visual fantasy culture,” and to discover new cultural aspects from its comprehensiveness. Thank you for your support.
