A unique time capsule of anime history, and a portrait of Yoshinobu Nishizaki’s company at its most ambitious phase. Later history painted a slightly different picture, but here you can read and enjoy what can only be described as a gloriously optimistic document.
From the Star Blazers/Yamato Premium Fan Club magazine, Vol. 15 (October 2022): mecha designers Yasushi Ishizu and Mika Akitaka look back at the progressive year 1980 and share their impressions as fans while also commenting on the evolution of mecha design in the remake era.
From the Japanese edition of Starlog magazine: a collection of essays examining the newly-arrived “anime boom” with a focus on Yamato and Gundam. SF experts disdained it, fans loved it, and business moguls ate it up. This is a fascinating cross-section of what all three factions were thinking at the time.
Shortly after the TV premiere of Yamato 2, Matsumoto wrote this essay in which he recounts his memories of growing up the post-World War II years and carries it forward to his work on Yamato, which was now at the peak of its popularity. He also writes about his own father, who was the living model for Captain Okita.
Originally published in Yamato Perfect Manual #2, which offered more depth and detail than had been previously published outside Office Academy & West Cape Corporation. The 2nd volume contained extensive staff commentary, including this Matsumoto essay about the making of both Series 1 and Farewell to Yamato.
One of the most talented Yamato veterans is the virtuoso manga artist and animation director/designer Yasuhiko Yoshikazu. Here he talks about his Yamato experiences in 1983, shortly after the theatrical releases of Final Yamato and his own feature film, Crusher Joe.
Yamato events are now long over with, but enough documentation remains to provide a substantial and entertaining record of this unprecedented phenomenon. If you were enough of a fan to follow Yamato from place to place Grateful Dead style, this is what your calendar would have looked like from 1975 to 1983.
OUT was a magazine by fans for fans. This article perfectly represents that approach; the transcript of a round-table discussion at a Yamato fan club meeting. At the time, Yamato 2 was just past the halfway point of its first broadcast and with each new episode enlarging the context of the saga, there was plenty to discuss.
In 1981, the new magazine My Anime included autobiographical essays. Nishizaki was the first to take up the invitation, and he wrote a very personal account of his early struggles in the anime business. It’s a great snapshot in time and an unusually candid self-expose that can’t help but inspire.
The history of Yamato cutaway art
A surprising number of interior diagrams have been published over the years, almost none of which entirely agrees with the others. Here is a comprehensive look at how Yamato has evolved from the inside out.
The Yamato saga was the result of skillful intentions and some very lucky accidents. These factors combine to make Yamato an ideal frame through which a pivotal period in anime history can be observed and measured. One way to do that is to examine the design evolution of the Yamato itself.
Also produced by Yoshinobu Nishizaki, Triton had made its TV debut two years before Yamato. These programs and another named Blue Noah formed a triumvirate of action/adventure shows that made Office Academy an industry leade. Let’s examine these “brothers” of Yamato and see how they fit into the overall picture.
Immediately after 1979’s The New Voyage, two new projects demanded Yoshinobu Nishizaki’s attention: the development of Be Forever Yamato and the conversion of the first two series into Star Blazers. Despite the insane workload, he added a third project to the mix: the TV series Space Carrier Blue Noah.
I Love Anime! From Yamato to Gundam is a unique book that provides an in-depth examination of how anime and anime fandom evolved during the 1970s. Presented here are the sections devoted to Yamato, including the release of the first movie. Together they provide an insider’s view of a fascinating time in anime history.
In 1983, a special book published by Animec gave a detailed overview of the first TV series, which included the only known published interview with those who ran the best-known private Yamato fan clubs of the 1970s. The interview took the form of a round table discussion and is presented here in full.
Without the fans, Space Battleship Yamato would never have made it. It is no exaggeration to say that most of what we now take for granted in the diverse world of anime media can be traced back to the actions of these fans, whose only wish was to keep Yamato alive. Their first step was simply to be born at the right time.
The second part of Yamato fan history, covering the evolution from fandom to professional publishing via OUT magazine, which played a crucial role in the success of Yamato‘s return in 1977 and laid the foundation for anime fandom as we know it today. It could only have happened once, and we’re extremely lucky that it did.
As years passed and more stories were added to the Yamato pantheon, the context grew larger. The first opportunity to examine it as a whole was taken by Shogakukan Publishing, in a 1983 edition of the This is Animation series. That multi-part text is presented here. [4 pages]
In 1983, some of the first material was published that fleshed out the unseen backstory of the Yamato saga that fans could only speculate about before. For example, if you were dying to know what the cool blue guy was up to while the animation cameras were pointed elsewhere, this is what you’ve been waiting for. [3 pages]
