While animators toiled away on 3199 Chapter 2 for its November release, Yamato activity in September held steady as news trickled in from all corners and the 50th anniversary approached. We’ve already passed that date as of this writing, but the celebration has only just begun.
August 2024 was a textbook followup to the enormous premiere month of July; Chapter 1 closed its first – and very successful – theatrical run, a new concert performance joined the pantheon of all-time greats, and the month ended with a look at Chapter 2. Here’s all that and everything in between.
A few days before the premiere of Chapter 1 on July 19, 2024, “interview season” began with a series of conversations with staff and cast in print and on entertainment websites. New content added September 15!
From the Chapter 1 program book: SF researcher Shinya Ogura, science advisor for the Space Battleship Yamato remake series, presents some of his work for Dark Invasion with a look at the state of Earth’s solar system at the beginning of the series.
When Harutoshi Fukui submitted his story proposal for Yamato 2205, it also covered REBEL 3199. In other words, the entire next phase of the Yamato remakes was conceived in a single package. Now that 2205 is finished and REBEL 3199 is off the ground, it’s time to have a look at what he wrote.
The enormous momentum that built up in July burst wide open on the first two days of August with the hotly-anticipated premiere of Be Forever Yamato. Familiar patterns reappeared as fans emerged to make themselves part of the spectacle and merch poured out to welcome them. Here’s the full rundown of this amazing month.
There’s a seldom-heard name that belongs in the lineup of those who created Yamato: Head Writer Keisuke Fujikawa. As an alumni of Keio University’s Department of Literature, he was profiled in the online Keio Student Newspaper in a biographical account that itself reads like one of Fujikawa’s own heartfelt stories.
Starting in January 2019, Hachette Collections Japan embarked on a monumental project: a series of complex 1/350 models accompanied by an extensive Yamato 2202 encyclopedia built into the instruction manuals. Here, we dive into the deepest look at the series that can be found on paper. Final part added September 15!
Now THAT was a Yamato month! You have to go back over two years to the release of 2205 Chapter 2 to find this much action. The launch of REBEL 3199 brought us everything we’ve come to expect and MORE, since its international debut hit just a week later. Don’t worry if you missed anything, it’s all here from top to bottom. [2 pages]
The call was irresistible. With REBEL 3199 about to debut, Tim Eldred jumped a plane to visit Japan for the first time in almost five years to see it with his own eyes. How would post-pandemic Tokyo be different? What surprises were lurking around the corner? Which treasures would Japan yield up to a visiting scavenger? [2 pages]
This was the last round before the premiere of Be Forever Yamato in theaters, and thus became the single busiest month in all of Yamato history until the remake era began. To this day, no anime film has been promoted as heavily, and it’s hard to imagine one reaching these heights ever again. [2 pages]
Doujinshi publishing in the early years laid the groundwork for Yamato‘s explosive comeback in 1977, which in turn laid the groundwork for an entire industry. It all began with the ‘zines in this archive, which can be seen from cover to cover. New entries added August 2024
Things heated up quickly in the month of June, and not just from proximity to the sun. The final month before the premiere of 3199 Chapter 1 was full of promotion, live events, and news you can use. Because anticipation is always the best part.
Each theatrical premiere of a remake chapter has been preceded by a TV special with footage and interviews. That tradition is preserved with REBEL 3199, but now we’ve got something new: a complete English transcript! With this, another barrier has been lifted to give us a closer experience to fans in Japan.
The June 2024 issue of TV Fan (published by Media Boy) was the first mainstream magazine to publish a REBEL 3199 interview, a little under a month before the premiere of Chapter 1, and the hitters they scored couldn’t have been heavier: Daisuke Ono (Kodai) and Makoto Furukawa (Alphon) talking about what it means to be rivals.
From the Star Blazers/Yamato Premium Fan Club magazine Vol. 17: Yasushi Ishizu, mecha designer for the Garmillas side of the remakes, discusses his craft from the very beginning of 2199 all the way through 2205. How did he tackle the enormous responsibility of modernizing the classics? Find out in this expansive interview.
As Toei Studio’s animation staff labored through their final month on Be Forever Yamato, the publicity machine ramped up with major media coverage and the first live events of the summer. On the other side of the planet, Star Blazers was winning hearts and creating a groundswell of its own. Here’s a full view of this exciting month.
Despite their huge popularity, the live Yamato radio dramas still linger in relative obscurity, since news coverage was fleeting. At least until 1980. By the time the Be Forever radio drama was aired, media was there to cover it. Here is the result, along with the show itself.
With the days dropping rapidly away until the Chapter 1 premiere, May activity picked up substantially with another wave of promotion from the head office and a general increase across the board. Here’s what the busy month looked like…
When Yamato 2205 was first broadcast on Japanese TV in May/June 2024, series writer Harutoshi Fukui enhanced the viewing experience by live-tweeting comments during the broadcast of each episode. Since they were permanently published on Twitter, we can relive them on demand.
The runup to summer 1980 was deceptively quiet on the surface, but momentum was building like a freight train underneath as Be Forever moved into the second half of production. It culminated in a press conference that sounded the starting gun on the biggest promo campaign in anime history.
The month of April brought us closer to the July premiere of Chapter 1 with a new trailer, bolstered by the debut of the new 1/350 model from Hachette, various live events, and more. Here’s everything April had to offer in Yamato‘s 50th year…
Of the four different Final Yamato novelizations, the one most strongly remembered was published by Tokuma Shoten in the “AM Juju” library. Written by Keigo Masaki and illustrated by animator Yoshinori Kanada, it is presented here chapter by chapter in English. Chapters 16-18 added May 15!
When Farewell to Yamato returned to movie theaters in 4K at the start of 2024, some claimed that they remembered seeing extra scenes in 1978. As it happens, a fan named Yuji Onuma explored this topic in depth in a 2006 doujinshi. Here is Onuma’s article, generously translated for Cosmo DNA by Anton Mei Brandt.
The new decade dawned with the making of a new Yamato adventure that would be just one part of Academy Studio’s busiest year of them all. While the production team got started, a steady flow of media kept fans at bay. But…for how long? Here we examine the state of Yamato world for the first quarter of 1980.
March 2024 turned out to be a light but meaningful month with news from multiple fronts, new music & video releases, and a surprise announcement that gave us 50th anniversary bounty we can look forward to.
After the big announcements on January 3, everything went quiet again until March 2024 when we got the first news of official merch and a reveal of new characters and voice actors. Here’s a roundup of all the latest news…
This is a work-in-progress to catalog and index all information related to REBEL 3199. Data will be added and revised as new information becomes available. As the entries on this list receive coverage elsewhere on this site, links will be added to help you find them.
