This was the month when all the suspense finally broke. Farewell to Yamato destroyed all previous box office records for anime films (including that of Yamato itself) with a fresh, uncompromised, top-notch production. It was a moment no one could have foreseen four years earlier.
The “hidden story” behind the movie’s first TV broadcast is still one worth telling, because it represents both Yoshinobu Nishizaki at the peak of his power and Yamato at the peak of its popularity. Here that story is told in two 1978 news articles.
The final month before the Farewell to Yamato premiere was a steady climb of excitement and anticipation as film production plowed through its final stages and publicity ratcheted up to maximum. Here’s what a full-blown case of Yamato Fever looked like…
As 1978 approached its midpoint, Yamato fever was heating up. The publicity campaign was just starting to ramp up, but production was running at full speed as the premiere date loomed ever closer. Here’s everything that brought us to the end of June, a period that included major announcements and the birth of anime journalism.
SF writer Haruka Takachiho is a founding member of the famous Studio Nue. In 2022, he took to Twitter to relate a previously-unknown account of his stint as negotiator for the design work of Farewell to Yamato in 1978. His opponent? Producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki. And it’s definitely a tale for the ages.
From Como le va magazine: Toei Pictures Chairman Noriyuki Tada shares his memories of the 1977 Yamato movie. As a young staff member of Toei at the time, he got hooked on the TV series before the movie came along, and his account fills in some interesting details in the Yamato success story.
The new year brought new products, the birth of the official fan club, continued media attention, and a trickle of news about Yamato Part 2 that only vaguely hinted at the rush of preproduction activity behind the scenes. Here is an extensive record for the busy first quarter of 1978.
If we were to name this specific stretch of Yamato history, the appropriate word would probably be “Afterglow.” The feature film was still burning up the box office after three months, media coverage was still very active, and important new things arrived to firmly plant Yamato‘s flag into the soil of the future.
When the Yamato movie hit pop culture like a tidal wave, it earned so much attention that the term “Yamato Boom” spontaneously emerged in newspapers and magazines. To get the full force of that boom from a media perspective, here is a chronological index of all the magazine coverage (found so far) from this breakout year.
The explosion of diverse media coverage continued well after the August premiere of the Yamato movie as the boom expanded and brought anime into Japan’s mainstream entertainment culture. Soon, seemingly everyone had something to say about it.
As summer gave way to fall, Yamato‘s fortunes just kept on climbing in an unprecedented increase in demand. Media attention widened and deepened as it became increasingly obvious that Yamato had evolved from fad to phenom and was here to stay.
The whole world changed for the better in August 1977, and that is not an exaggeration. With the August 8 premiere of Space Battleship Yamato, the entire anime industry in Japan experienced a seismic shift that still gives us aftershocks today. In this report we’ll go through that pivotal month one step at a time and see how the future began.
It is no exaggeration to state that the period covered in this report was the most pivotal time in all of Yamato history. The movie that would change everything was already in production as the year began and there was low-level buzz about it, but getting that movie in front of the public was the key to everything that followed.
1976 was a slow year for Yamato. As “super robots” took over the anime landscape, Yamato fans probably despaired that their show was over forever. In fact, the most important action was happening under the surface, destined to change everything. But for now, let’s see what got Yamato fans through this year of dim prospects.
This series answers the question, “What if Cosmo DNA existed in real time during the production years?” Everything is chronicled in the order it all happened, bringing history to life in a whole new way. First up: the prehistory of Yamato all the way up to the end of “origin year” 1974. [2 pages]
From its 1978 debut onward, mecha design for the EDF fleet in Farewell to Yamato and Yamato 2 represented the pinnacle for the Yamato saga. These ships were revisited over and over, making this the single largest body of merchandising for any fleet in the series.
Over the decades sinces its premiere, modelmaking companies across the spectrum has returned to the original mecha catalog over and over to render it in 3D. Here is a comprehensive collection of Earth mecha from mainstream plamo to DIY garage kits.
With the explosive success of the Yamato movie in 1977, anime creators themselves emerged from the shadows to become full-fledged celebrities. Here we present two such examples from magazines published during the heyday, which put the spotlight on both Leiji Matsumoto and Yoshinobu Nishizaki.
A large range of mecha was designed and animated for the Dark Nebula Empire, but Bandai made a grand total of three model kits. In subsequent decades, fans addressed this deficit with a very respectable lineup of garage kits. All known models are presented here.
The Dengil Empire received a lot of design attention, but no model kits whatsoever. This was an arena that fans had to completely fill on their own with DIY garage kits in later years. All known Dengil models are presented here.
Presented here is a comprehensive collection of all the Galman and Bolar mecha that has been released in 3-D form from a host of different companies, mainstream plamo and DIY garage kits alike.
Presented here is a comprehensive collection of all the Gamilas mecha that has been released in 3-D form from a host of different companies, mainstream plamo and DIY garage kits alike.
Presented here is a comprehensive collection of all the Comet Empire mecha that has been released in 3-D form from a host of different companies, mainstream plamo and DIY garage kits alike.
Continuing our voyage back to the summer of 1980, we find some more magazine coverage of Be Forever Yamato, including some exclusive photos of the sea cruise and a rare interview with Leiji Matsumoto.
In 2009, film journalist Morihiko Saito examined the unprecedented success of the first Space Battleship Yamato, writing with a passion that only an original-generation fan could bring to the table. It became a chapter in his book The law of Anime Hit Movies and is presented here in full.
It is a little-known fact that Yamato 2199 Director Yutaka Izubuchi got his start very early when he participated in both Yamato III and Final Yamato as a fresh-faced newcomer. Here, he discusses his earliest experiences as both a fan and a staff member.
One of the things that made Space Battleship Yamato unique was a fan base so dedicated that they obtained copies of production materials to share in fanzines. It is thanks to them that a presentation like this one is now possible: a complete scene-by-scene examination of a single TV episode. [4 pages]
