This brings us to the halfway point between The New Voyage and Be Forever. With Space Carrier Blue Noah off and running, the next new Academy TV series was announced, accompanied by another rush of riches that closed out a very eventful year and gave way to an even bigger one.
As summer merged into fall, the world of Yamato was only getting bigger in the wake of The New Voyage, and Office Academy studio was only getting busier. The American premiere of Star Blazers and the Japanese premiere of Blue Noah were just part of the picture. Here’s everything that happened in these productive months.
In the wake of The New Voyage, the popularity of Yamato‘s voice actors continued to grow in parallel with Yamato itself and the overall anime boom it helped to ignite. Here, those actors speak about their work in a pair of interviews, both published in September and October 1979.
July 1979 delivered a big one-two punch with both of the feature films returning to theaters and The New Voyage premiering on TV. It was no accident that these things reinforced each other, making this the third straight summer of Yamato fever.
This stretch of time can be described as a gap, since it marked the period between the Yamato 2 finale and the broadcast premiere of The New Voyage. Such gaps are replete throughout Yamato history, but as we all know they are often rich in news, media, and merch.
Your guide to everything seen in The New Voyage on the Yamato, Gamilas, and Dark Nebula sides, originally released as bonus features on the Voyager Entertainment New Voyage DVD.
“In the years since 1974, I have put my entire life as a producer into Space Battleship Yamato. These days, I think my whole life was leading up to the creation of this drama.” In this 1980 essay, Yoshinobu Nishizaki explains his thought process behind the making of this turning point in the saga of a lifetime.
Magazine coverage for The New Voyage was comparatively thin, but not hard to find; Animage, OUT, and the Yamato Fan Club Magazines all gave the film its due and fans did get a few words from the inside. Read it all here.
The New Voyage was first broadcast on Japan’s Fuji TV network Tuesday July 31, 1979, from 7:30-9pm. Referred to as a “telefeature,” the film occupies a special position in the Yamato saga in that it was intentionally designed to serve two audiences. Read the whole story of its development and release here.
In the months of January and February 1979, the writers created and modified several story treatments, passing them back and forth and building one idea on top of another. Inevitably, some fascinating but untenable concepts were discarded. In this series of story drafts, we get a look at other directions The New Voyage might have taken.
In this version of the story, we meet Youichi Maki of the sinister Galactic Crime League, whose vendetta against Kodai moves him to implicate Earth by destroying planet Gamilas. Everyone is caught up in the plot, including Starsha and Mamoru. Read the synopsis of this strange tale here.
Invasion forces from Dark Nebula Uralia attempt to tow planet Gamilas to their home in the center of the galaxy. The wedding of Kodai and Yuki is interrupted by this crisis and Yamato launches to join in the chase after a runaway Iscandar. We’re almost to the finished story here, but not quite…
As one of the Yamato animation staff’s most accomplished and prolific directors, Masuda’s treatment ran to twice the length of the others and was far more detailed. Although many of his ideas were too ambitious, others were solid enough to remain unchanged in the final movie. Read about them here.
This was the last draft before the script was written, but still contained a few unique points of its own. For example, what announcement from Yuki at the end of the story would have taken the rest of the saga in a different direction? Find out here.
