Preproduction, March 1982
Four drafts of the manuscript were written throughout March. The individual drafts were never published, but the changes from one to the next were documented, and this is where we see many concepts jettisoned while others were refined.
Preproduction, April and May 1982
The last story outline by Yoshinobu Nishizaki sets up the beginning of scriptwriting and a flurry of SF concepts, battle strategies, and a script plan by Toshio Masuda. But even now, there were still ideas that would have taken a different direction…
Fan Club magazine #28
Published in April 1982, this issue delivered an extensive inside look at the film as it entered production with special announcements, staff interviews, and a particularly candid conversation between Yoshinobu Nishizaki and his fans.
The Final Act
The core writing team came together for the last time on June 28, 1982 to tie up all the loose ends and put every concept to rest for good. This is the script that came from that meeting, the entire final act of the movie all the way to the end.
These documents from deep within the archives of West Cape Corporation lay out a TV series we never saw. The working title was Space Battleship Yamato IV: The Final Chapter, and it was envisioned as a 26 (potentially 39) episode TV series. The 1982 promotional package is presented here in full.
This mini-documentary was produced for a series of fan gatherings in the summer of 1982. Until it is finally released from the vault of history, we have a complete transcript of this rarest-of-all Yamato productions as it was published in issue #30 of the fan club magazine (August, 1982).
Cosmo DNA is dedicated to learning about how the saga developed and the effect it had on anime in the years that followed. That’s also the topic of this essay by producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki. It was originally published in 1983 when Yamato was just shy of 10 years old, but time has done nothing to dull its message.
Final Yamato was the last opportunity for the production staff to pour their creative passion into the saga that propelled them to anime stardom. Here, then, are their own words to describe the experience. These interviews were originally published in 1983, a few months after the release of the film. [2 pages]
In any manner of film or TV production, the visible staff members rely on the invisible ones to bring their vision to life. This essay was written by a member of Final Yamato‘s invisible army, Assistant Producer Yasuhito Yamaki. The invisible staff often has the best stories to tell, and Yasuhito is no exception.
Final Yamato was met with more media coverage than any of its predecessors. Ever the marketeer, Producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki put as much energy into publicity as he did into the film itself. His devotion to both should be evident in this 1983 essay, originally published in the Final Yamato Roman Album.
In this collection of commentaries, the voice cast of Final Yamato bids farewell to the saga and the characters they inhabited, some for almost ten years. What does one say at the end of a life-changing decade? Find out here. (Originally published in the Final Yamato Roman Album.)
The first version of Final Yamato is now known as the 35mm cut, and it was released to video only once, but copies still survive and allow for a scene-by-scene comparison with the 70mm cut. That’s what this presentation is all about: a unique opportunity to see a Yamato film as a work-in-progress.
